Learn about High Blood Pressure Risk Factors

Mona Khanna, MD, MPH, talks about things you can do to decrease your chances for developing hypertension.

Dr. Mona Khanna: We know exactly what the risk factors are for developing hypertension and there are some they can't be controlled and some that is completely out of your control. The ones that you can do anything about are your sex. We know that man have a tendency to develop high blood pressure younger ages, where as women have a tendency to develop high blood pressure after the age of 60. You can't do anything about that nor can you do anything about your family history. If high blood pressure runs in your family well guess what that's going to be a risk factor for you. Which you can't control though and what we would like to focus on are obesity, keep your weight at a normal average weight, make sure you have enough physical activity, activity and exercise that helps to negate getting high blood pressure. Make sure you keep your stress levels down because we know that higher stress leads to possibly developing high blood pressure directly and then last of all is salt. The more salt that you use on your food added salt, you raise your sodium levels in your body and that tends to retain fluid and that's another risk factor for developing high blood pressure.