Understanding Hypertension and Treating It With Chiropractic Care
Your heart beats approximately 100,000 times every day. Every pump of your heart sends blood to the arteries all over your body to help them function properly. How much force is used to send that blood is known as your blood pressure. When your blood pressure is too high, it means that there's a high force of the blood against the walls of your arteries. This is known as hypertension.
Hypertension can lead to a variety of symptoms, including persistent headaches, difficulty breathing and dizziness. It can affect your overall quality of life, causing sleep issues, difficulty regulating your emotions and overwhelming tiredness.
Having hypertension is common, with the condition affecting more than 1 billion people around the world. However, if it’s not properly managed and treated, it can lead to more severe health concerns, including an increased risk of stroke or heart disease.
Risk Factors and Common Causes
While there isn’t one exact cause of hypertension, several potential contributing factors can increase the likelihood of developing high blood pressure. Some risk factors are out of your control; others can stem from your lifestyle or habits. Developing hypertension is often due to a combination of multiple factors.
Here’s a list of risk factors and common causes for hypertension:
Family history of hypertension
Overweight or obesity
Lack of exercise
Smoking
Excessive alcohol consumption
Unhealthy diet (high cholesterol, sodium, saturated fat)
Stress
Poor posture
Birth control pills
Corticosteroids
Medical conditions that are often linked to hypertension:
Diabetes
Kidney disease
Hyperthyroidism
Sleep apnea
Factors that impact how your blood circulates can lead to elevated blood pressure, which is why taking care of your spinal health with chiropractic care can play a significant role in treating hypertension.
The Chiropractic Approach to Hypertension Management
If you’ve been diagnosed with hypertension, it’s important that you talk to your doctor about how it can be treated, such as a medication prescription. It can also be helpful to explore nonpharmaceutical options, such as chiropractic care, to incorporate into your hypertension treatment plan.
By treating hypertension with a holistic approach life chiropractic care, you’ll be able to move along your wellness journey by encouraging healing for every part of your body, not just your hypertension.
Your spinal health goes hand in hand with your nervous system functions. When you have pain, weak back muscles or misalignment, it can impact the communication between your nerves, leading to issues like hypertension due to changes in heart rate and blood restriction.
One of the biggest benefits of seeking the help of a chiropractor to manage hypertension is that it helps your overall wellness, not just your blood pressure. With proper alignment, you can have an increased quality of life by:
Decreasing pain
Reducing the risk of injury or recurring medical issues
Improving posture
Enhancing your athletic performance
Increasing coordination
Specific Benefits of Chiropractic Care for Hypertension
A chiropractor can help treat hypertension in ways that go beyond the numbers you see on a monitoring device. By partnering chiropractic care with your traditional medical care, you’re addressing the issue from every direction to get the best results possible.
Here are the benefits of including chiropractic care for your hypertension treatment:
Improved nervous system function — When your nervous system is functioning to the best of its ability, it’ll improve your everyday mental and physical capabilities. Important nervous system functions include sensory perception, stress management and concentration.
Better blood flow and circulation — Having poor blood circulation due to hypertension can lead to leg pain, fatigue and cold extremities. Treating hypertension with chiropractic care can boost your blood flow to make sure every part of your body is getting the oxygen and nutrients it needs.
Stress reduction through adjustments — Stress can be a risk factor for hypertension, and the inverse is also true — having a medical concern can cause anxiety. One of the biggest benefits of chiropractic care is stress reduction. When your chiropractor makes adjustments, they’re reducing pressure placed on the nervous system and alleviating muscle tension, which can help both your mind and body relax.
Supporting overall body balance — When your nervous system isn’t functioning properly due to spinal dysfunction or poor alignment, it throws off the rest of your body because the nerves aren’t able to communicate properly. With the right alignment by a chiropractor, you can encourage balance throughout your body for overall better well-being.
Supporting Your Journey to Better Health
If you have hypertension, proper management is key to improving your health for a better quality of life. That’s why booking a visit to Jireh Chiropractic should be the next step in your journey.
Your first visit will involve sharing your medical history with us as well as discussing the problems that brought you in and what you hope to accomplish with our help. After that, we’ll complete a thorough evaluation that includes a variety of tests, including a posture analysis, a vitals check, orthopedic tests and a full spinal analysis.
Along with chiropractic treatments, we’ll ensure that we provide you with care that will benefit you in the long run. We always incorporate ongoing monitoring and lifestyle change recommendations into all of our personalized care plans.
The doctors of Jireh Chiropractic have years of education and expertise. It can also be helpful to hear what past and current members have to say about our practice. One of our many raving reviewers said, “Dr. Johnny and Dr. Bethany have created a practice that is holistic, calm, and incredibly welcoming.” You can check out our long list of positive reviews on our homepage.
Click to schedule an appointment with us to start treating your hypertension today. If you have any questions, you can take a look at our FAQs page.