High Blood Pressure: How Your Primary Care Physician Can Help

When it comes to the likelihood of whether or not you’ll develop cardiovascular disease, you face two types of risks: modifiable risks and non- or unmodifiable risks. 

Non-modifiable factors are such things as your age, which you can’t change. Modifiable risks are those things you can influence by making changes to your habits and lifestyle or by taking medications. 

At Pinnacle Health Systems, we discuss modifiable risk factors with our patients, often as part of our primary care services. Our providers can help you manage chronic conditions, including hypertension, or high blood pressure, which is the No. 1 modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease in the United States. 

Primary care: Who needs it? 

Essentially, everyone needs a primary care provider, because that’s the person who serves as your first line of contact with the healthcare system. 

They let you know when you need screenings, keep an eye on your bloodwork year to year, and can help you manage chronic conditions like high blood pressure. 

When you’re diagnosed with high blood pressure, your primary care provider can help you create a plan that fits into your life. It can be overwhelming to think about changing what you eat, getting an exercise routine established, breaking or beginning habits, and reducing stress. 

When you begin a lifestyle change, it can also be difficult to know if all of your efforts are working. Your primary care provider monitors your blood pressure so you can see improvement over time. 

High blood pressure

You may already know that high blood pressure doesn’t usually cause symptoms you can feel. But it’s a serious problem. In the US, 47% of adults have hypertension, and it was a factor in 670,000 deaths in 2020. 

The good news is that researchers and doctors know how to manage high blood pressure:

• Monitoring blood pressure in the office
• Making lifestyle and diet changes
• Following up to learn how well the changes worked (or didn’t)
• Continuing the same sequence of events until your blood pressure is controlled

Studies and real-world experience both show that this process works. 

Managing hypertension

Some of the best interventions for managing high blood pressure include: 

• Consuming a healthy diet
• Reducing sodium intake
• Losing weight
• Taking potassium supplements
• Limiting or eliminating alcohol
• Physical activity

Your primary care provider can help you understand which of these interventions is most likely to work for you, as well as discuss medication if lifestyle changes don’t help or don’t help enough. 

If you’d like to learn more about managing hypertension and how your primary care provider can help, schedule an appointment at the Hollywood or Pembroke Pines location of Pinnacle Healthcare System. We’re always happy to discuss your situation and answer your questions.