By Nora Cain

The Health Library at Stanford

High blood pressure is one of the leading causes of disability or death due to stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney failure. It’s also the most common chronic illness Americans face. An estimated 50 million American adults have high blood pressure. That’s about one out of every four people in this country. Each year, 2 million new cases of the disease are diagnosed.”

These staggering statistics are quoted from the book “Mayo Clinic on High Blood Pressure” by Dr. Sheldon G. Sheps and should act as an alarm for those of us who have not kept high blood pressure in mind as we go through our list of “to check” health items. For precisely this reason, The Health Library has added “Mayo Clinic on High Blood Pressure” to its e-books collection, which can be viewed online on its Web site, healthlibrary.stanford.edu.

Since hypertension (the medical term for high blood pressure) doesn’t present with any symptoms, it is a silent menace to good health and can go undetected, doing its damage for years if you are not having regular checkups. Who gets high blood pressure? Chapter 2 “Are You At Risk?” outlines concisely the known risk factors for developing hypertension.

These are broken down into two types of risk - unmodifiable, meaning those you cannot change, and modifiable, those you can change. Among the unmodifiable risks, the author lists race - African-Americans are twice as likely as caucasians to develop hypertension; age - among those over 65, half have high blood pressure; and sex - before age 50 the greatest number of hypertensives tend to be men, but after age 50 there is a higher incidence among women.

The risks that we do have some control over include weight, diet and exercise. These are the cornerstones of good health, and “Mayo Clinic on High Blood Pressure” does an effective job of correlating them to maintaining healthy blood pressure. The chapter “The Shakedown on Salt” covers the effects of sodium on high blood pressure and discusses the problem of sodium sensitivity, which affects a great number of people with high blood pressure. This book is especially clear in its discussion of the effects of sodium on high blood pressure and explains ways to reduce sodium intake. The section on alternative seasonings for different foods should present at least a few new ideas to the reader about ways to avoid making salt the only seasoning when you cook.

If you think that diet is the only way to control blood pressure, the chapter on tobacco, alcohol and caffeine will be illuminating. Rather than using the scare tactics of many health campaigns, the author relies just on the data, which show what effects these substances have on persons with hypertension. Again, the individual is shown another tool for taking control of their hypertension.

“Mayo Clinic on High Blood Pressure” makes it easy for anyone who’s interested in taking control of their blood pressure, through diet and exercise, proper medication, or a combination of the two. The book can be checked out in an electronic format, at no cost, from the e-books section on The Health Library’s Web site. It can also be purchased, in the Bookstore section.

Write to The Health Library at health.library@medcenter.stanford.edu. The Health Library resources are not intended as a substitute for medical care and should be used to formulate questions for discussion with your physician. The main branch is located at 2-B Stanford Shopping Center. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and until 9 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, call 725-8400. The Health Library is a community service of Stanford Hospital and Clinics.