Life on the Serengeti National Park is precarious especially for herbivores. The sad reality is that the death of a gazelle, for instance, gives life to a carnivore. As they grazed, the herd of gazelle were oblivious of the fact that hidden in the tall grasses was a stealth predator. Sensing the possibility of a meal, it crouched and inched surreptitiously towards its prey- the black spotted yellowish brown coat blending perfectly with the tawny background. As it came within attack range, its gaze fixated as it broke cover and pounced pinning it to the ground. The gazelle struggled to get up but it was too late; the leopard twisted its neck backward as the long canine teeth clamped on its neck crushing its windpipe. Death came quickly by asphyxiation-a text book exhibition by a silent killer.

Now it appears that humans and the gazelle have something in common; a stealth predator with a fatal attack strategy to boot. The only difference would be that unlike gazelles that fall prey to the big cats, humans also suffer a similar fate in “the hands” of high blood pressure. According to a recent Harvard Health publication, an alarming one in three American adults has high blood pressure. Known medically as hypertension, many people don’t even know they have it, because high blood pressure has no symptoms or warning signs. But when elevated blood pressure is accompanied by abnormal cholesterol and blood sugar levels, the damage to your arteries, kidneys, and heart accelerates exponentially. Fortunately, high blood pressure is easy to detect and treat. Sometimes people can keep blood pressure in a healthy range simply by making lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, increasing activity, and eating more healthfully.

Yet, from a recent bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO), “Nigeria is one of many developing countries where the health services have focused on treating infectious diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis, but in recent years, non-communicable conditions have become an increasing problem. One of the most prevalent non-communicable conditions worldwide, hypertension is responsible for an estimated 45% of deaths due to heart disease and 51% of deaths due to stroke globally.”

Sadly, when it comes to preventing and treating high blood pressure, one often-overlooked strategy is managing stress. For this reason, this article is aimed at identifying stress as one of the causes of high blood pressure and how effective stress management could help remedy it. Stress in this context, conforms to the terminology of Hans Selye 1950, and is referred to as “distress” -the type of stress that produces numerous physical and mental symptoms according to individual’s situational factors. Note that “eustress” otherwise known as good stress have helpful consequences. Generally speaking, stress management is one of the keys to a happy and successful life in today’s world. However, certain techniques and psychotherapy have been known to help people control stress levels to enhance healthy living-this is what stress management is all about.

Now here are some tested stress management techniques that I hope you would find useful:

In the first instance, we know that 100 years ago, there were twenty four hours in one day. There would still be twenty fours per day in the next century to come as long as the earth remains. Time lost can never be regained. This simply means that there is nothing we could do as mortals to increase the number of hours in a day-time is an inelastic resource. We could at best manage ourselves for time as there is no way to manage a unique and inelastic resource such as time. One way we could manage stress is by effectively managing ourselves for time.
There are many more stress management techniques on:
http://zemellive.com/the-silent-killer-high-blood-pressure/

High blood pressure not my portion ooo