You might want anti-aging products to reduce your wrinkles and stop your hair from going gray, but they’re not the most important things you can do to try to limit the impact of growing older. You also want to try to control the health effects, which includes trying to avoid the increasing likelihood of high blood pressure.
A study that investigated systolic and diastolic blood pressure figures in adults from 2001 and 2008 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21485611/) recorded that women’s average blood pressure increased from 110/68 when they were aged 18 to 39 to 122/74 when they were aged 40 to 59 and 139/68 once they were over 60. For men, it went from 119/70 to 124/77 and 133/69 over the same period.
It’s not always entirely clear why blood pressure tends to increase with age. It may be because your blood vessels become stiff, or because of a buildup of fatty deposits hindering blood flow. When the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute launched an education program in the 1970s, people started being more careful with their blood pressure and seeking treatment, causing rates to fall. Now, however, with increasing life expectancies and changing lifestyles, it has since risen again, a trend that seems likely to continue.
With that said, there’s still a balancing act to try to achieve when managing age-related blood pressure changes. Something called orthostatic (postural) hypotension, when low blood pressure makes you feel dizzy when you stand up, can also become more common when you’re older. You need your blood pressure low enough to avoid heart attacks but high enough to avoid the light-headedness of orthostatic hypotension.
As with many things, the best thing you can do to avoid high blood pressure before medical intervention is needed is change your lifestyle. Less salt, more vegetables. Less alcohol, more exercise. That will also have an impact on the other side effects of aging, from the physical and the cosmetic to the mental and emotional.
The other important thing to do is check your blood pressure. Hypertension rarely shows significant symptoms, so the only way to see if it’s in the danger zone is to measure it. If you’re in an at-risk group, such as because you’re older, your doctor will want to take a look pretty regularly. You can also buy a machine to measure it at home and be certain.
