Apr 23 2009
Hypertension The Uninvited Guest That Will Not Leave
Hypertension is known as the silent killer. I am not a Doctor so I will not be speaking from a medical point of view, but I am going to vent from my own personal experiences. I watched my Pop suffer from this disease for years then he developed diabetes and then he had a double stoke and died at 77 years old. Our family would try to help him to eat the foods that contained no salt and also when he became a diabetic we tried to help him eat the sugarfree foods. He tried to stick with the salt free and then the sugarfree. He would be good for a while, but he wanted to eat foods that he was familiar with. He wanted to enjoy his food. I am 55 years old and I have been suffering from Hypertension for about 16years and I look back on the times when we thought we were helping my Pop, but in reality we weren’t helping at all. We continued to eat the salty food and sweets even in his presence. We really did not think about his feelings. I love to eat and I have to admit sadly that I am a food addict. I have come to this realization, because I will eat food that I know is harmful to my health and even to my life, but I will eat it anyway. I will eat it because it tastes so good. I did not understand my Poppa then, but I understand him now. I feel very frustrated in my attempts to eat the right foods, because when I read the food lables and most things are high in salt and sugar. Even the foods you least expect have large amounts of salt in them. I try to watch my salt, but there are times when I think this can’t hurt or a little taste of that can’t hurt. Well it does, because my Doctor wrote out a prescription for a third Blood Pressure medication. I have decision to make. Will I let Hypertension control my life and eat what ever I want salty or not and suffer the consequences or will I learn to control the Hypertension and give my life a fighting chance. Truly it is an uninvited guest bullying my blood.
