HHS HealthBeat (August 27, 2009)

Six things right on blood pressure

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Living right can help people live healthier, and researcher John Forman of Brigham and Women’s Hospital can back that up with the experiences of women who did it.

Forman looked at lifestyle factors and blood pressure in 14 years of data on almost 84,000 women. He found women who did six things right had an 80 percent lower risk of developing high blood pressure.

And those six things?

[John Forman speaks] "Keeping a normal weight, exercising an average of 30 minutes a day, eating a healthy diet, drinking alcohol in moderation, avoiding over-the-counter pain relieves, and taking 400 micrograms or more of supplemental folic acid."

Doing even just one lowers the risk some.

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011