Keeping high blood pressure under control is essential for your senior, especially if she wants to avoid other health issues like heart disease, stroke, and even kidney disease. Meeting this goal might mean that your elderly family member needs a little bit of extra help on a routine basis.
Follow Her Care Plan Thoroughly
Once she’s diagnosed with high blood pressure, your senior’s medical team will outline a plan of care for her. That care plan is designed to help her to reduce her blood pressure and improve her overall health and quality of life. It might mean taking medications, adjusting her lifestyle a bit, and more. Home health care providers can be an incredibly helpful tool in adopting those new habits.
Increase Activity Levels within Reason
Exercise can help to reduce blood pressure, but it has to be approached properly. If your elderly family member needs help with mobility, physical therapy might be a good first step for her when she considers moving more. She also needs to have clearance from her doctor before she starts exercising regularly.
Adjust Her Diet
What your elderly family member eats and drinks can have a massive impact on her blood pressure. If she’s drinking a lot of caffeine, alcohol, or both, that can increase blood pressure. Certain foods can also have a negative effect. Too much sodium, especially in processed foods, and generally unhealthy food choices can mean that your senior’s body doesn’t have what it needs to keep her blood pressure regulated.
Monitor Her Health
One of the best tools that your senior has when she is trying to get her blood pressure under control is information. Monitoring blood pressure at home is a lot easier and more accurate than it ever used to be. But even with tools that are easy to use, your elderly family member might feel a bit intimidated about checking her blood pressure at home. Your senior may still feel more comfortable having home health care providers keep tabs on these numbers for her to ensure that she’s got accurate information.
Address Stressors
Stress is a massive contributing factor for high blood pressure, so anything that your elderly family member can do to address stress in her life is going to assist her in her plan to reduce her blood pressure. Avoiding stressful situations whenever possible can help quite a lot, but that’s not always easy to do, of course. Journaling can help, as can taking time to rest and engage in activities that she enjoys regularly. By having help from home health care providers, your elderly family member can take some time to rest when she needs to without feeling as if she’s unable to do that.
Over time, your elderly family member may need to make changes to her care plan in order to keep her blood pressure levels where they need to be. Home health care services can help her to do that seamlessly, so that she is able to focus on simply enjoying her life and not worrying about the changes that she needs to make.