5 Ways Your Senior Can Cope with High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure is common enough that just about everyone knows someone who has been diagnosed with this illness. What you might not be aware of is how high blood pressure can contribute to health issues like strokes, heart disease, and even chronic kidney disease. Getting high blood pressure under control improves your elderly family member’s overall quality of life and general health, so it’s worth finding solutions.

Get to Know Exactly What Her Numbers Are

The first step in managing high blood pressure is getting to know what your senior’s numbers are exactly. That means testing blood pressure not only in her doctor’s office during checkups but also at home. Home testing is a lot more accurate than it has ever been and keeping track of those numbers is going to help your senior and her doctor to figure out a plan that works for her.

Rule Out Underlying Causes of High Blood Pressure

There can be underlying health factors that contribute to high blood pressure. The sooner your elderly family member’s doctor rules those out for her, the sooner those issues can get handled. If there is an underlying health cause, your elderly family member may even be able to avoid having to take medication to manage her blood pressure levels.

Work Out a Care Plan with Her Doctor

Once your senior and her doctor know what she’s up against, it’s a lot easier to put together a comprehensive plan. If your senior’s blood pressure levels are at the lower end of high, she may find that lifestyle changes have a better chance of getting her blood pressure back to normal. For situations that are more complicated, your senior’s doctor may have a more complex care plan in mind for her as well.

Make Necessary Lifestyle Changes

Lifestyle changes include solutions like exercising more, losing weight, reducing alcohol intake and smoking, and changing what your senior eats. These might be changes that your senior has been avoiding for a while because they feel difficult or uncomfortable to consider. Having help from in-home care providers can make it easier to make some of these changes. Senior care providers can’t exercise for your senior, but they can remind her to include movement in her daily routine.

Avoid Stressing about Life as Much as Possible

Another factor to consider is stress. Being diagnosed with high blood pressure can be stressful enough for your elderly family member, but it’s not helpful for her health. In-home care providers can also help your elderly family member to have solutions available every day that make managing her stress a little easier. From there, other changes that she needs to make can help to bridge the gap even more.

High blood pressure is a manageable condition for your elderly family member, but she may need some help in order to do so properly. In-home care providers can offer gentle guidance that keeps your senior focused on meeting her health goals both now and in the future.