Clinical evidence solidly indicates that hypertension increases the mortality and morbidity associated with coronary heart disease, stroke, congestive heart failure, and end stage kidney disease. Therefore, early identification of patients at risk for hypertension and therapy to prevent hypertension are ever more important.
The most important causal important factors for development of hypertension include obesity, excessive dietary salt consumption, reduced physical activity, excess alcohol intake, cigarette smoking, and inadequate intake of fruits, vegetables and potassium. Fewer than 20% of Americans engage in regular exercise, and only 25% consume five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Mean sodium intake is approximately 4100 mg per day for men and 2750 mg per day for women, most of which comes from processed foods. A healthier lifestyle could dramatically decrease the risk for developing hypertension.The major barriers for effective prevention of hypertension include insufficient attention to education by health care providers and perhaps more important, lack of reimbursement for health education services. Many restaurants serve increasingly large helpings and patients often rapidly consume their food, both of which result in a substantial caloric intake. There is lack of availability of healthy food choices in many school, work sites, and restaurants. Salt is added to food by industry and restaurants to enhance taste and flavor, and foods lower in salt and calories are frequently more expensive. These factors confound public health, clinician and patient effort to reduce blood pressure though diet.
Barriers of Prevention Hypertension
