New blood pressure guidelines: 130 is the new 140
Dr. Marty Stillman reassures me about my blood pressure
For many years I have been telling listeners and patients that “one-third of you have high blood pressure and many of you don’t know it.” Turns out I need to update that to “nearly one-half of you have high blood pressure and many of you don’t know it.”
That is because the American College of Cardiology / American Heart Association guidelines for hypertension – high blood pressure – were recently updated. Like any good scientific process, the guidelines change as our knowledge of the science changes. That is exactly what occurred this past month.
I mentioned all this on the most recent Healthy Matters radio broadcast. I started the show off with this information, all of which you can listen to on the podcast by clicking Healthy Matters show #463, November 19,2017.
Your doctor may be . . . should be . . . talking about this with you at some future visit. In this post I’ll try to break the new guidelines down for you a bit. If you read on, you’ll find:
- New 2017 blood pressure guidelines
- Bad effects of high blood pressure
- A word about garden hoses and metal pipes. Huh?
- How to measure your own blood pressure.
- Treatments for high blood pressure.
- Tips about healthy living.
Let’s get to it.
Incontinence is a great topic for a Sunday morning chat
By Dschwen – via Wikimedia Commons
It is Sunday, November 12, and you get up in the morning like you always do, splash some warm water on your face, pour yourself a cup of coffee, maybe make scrambled eggs, and you sit down at the breakfast table for a relaxing start to your day. Maybe you read the paper, maybe someone from your family is sitting across from you.
Then you turn on the radio and there are two guys having a conversation about . . . male incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
So much for the tranquil start to your day.
Those two guys talking about male parts and bodily functions were none other than me and my guest on Healthy Matters, Dr. Travis Pagliara. He’s a urologist at Hennepin and our topic for this fall Sunday was male incontinence and other unsettling issues. And you know what? It was a blast. Dr. “P” is super knowledgeable about a topic that most men don’t like to talk about but that has a big impact on their lives. So read on for a bit of wisdom about the plumbing, gents. And women, read on so that you find out what guys are experiencing . . . but maybe aren’t telling you about.
Dr. Pagliara is a riot and if you are the least bit uncomfortable with this topic, I encourage you to listen to him on the podcast of the show. You won’t be uncomfortable after listening to this guy. He’s fun AND he knows his stuff. Check out the podcast by clicking the logo below. You can also subscribe to the podcast on this link. That way you can listen whenever you want on your computer or mobile device, without commercial breaks. What could be better?
Healthy Matters show #462, November 12, 2017
Podcasts
Get your mammogram questions answered here!
October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I welcomed two outstanding experts to the WCCO studios for the live broadcast of Healthy Matters. We focused on the common screening test – the mammogram – and tried to answer your questions about this well-known but still sorta mysterious test that women (and a few men) get all the time.
To help me, I turned to repeat radio guest and my friend Dr. Tony Severt. He is the Assistant Chief of Radiology at HCMC (the mother-ship where I work) and is a expert in women’s imaging, including mammograms and other breast imaging (like ultrasound and MRI).
As an aside, there is a bit of wisdom that some doctors heed . . . that it is always good for us non-radiologists to have a “go-to” radiologist to help us when we need advice on the best imaging to order or how to interpret the imaging that we have. Dr. Severt is my “go-to” guy! He’s smart, really understands the patient perspective, and he is kind and willing to help. So I dragged him down to the studio last Sunday morning.
But Dr. Severt is not the one who actually performs the mammogram. That job goes to mammogram technologists who are highly skilled, patient-focused, and dedicated professionals. These women (yes, the mammogram techs are all women as it should be) are supervised at HCMC by Leah Hahn. Leah joined us in the studio to give the first-hand perspective of one who knows her stuff about mammograms. For more about mammograms, click the HCMC radiology page here. And for an advance look at Minnesota’s newest and finest breast care center, scroll to the bottom of this post!
As always, the best way to catch up on a past show is by listening to the podcast. Click this logo to reach the main podcast page, then select Healthy Matters show #460, October 29, 2017.
Podcasts
The problem, as usual with a live radio broadcast, is that we never get to all the questions that people call and text in to us. So the rest of this post is simply a Q&A. I’m using the text questions that listeners sent and have asked Dr. Severt and Leah to give their responses. Here they are . . . read more…
