High blood pressure runs in the family

A fam­ily reunion is a fan­tas­tic way to reju­ve­nate faith in God. Last Sat­ur­day I spent qual­ity time with rel­a­tives only seen every two years. I would like to spend more time with them but dis­tance and tim­ing are the issue.

As I looked into the eyes of an 86-year-old aunt or my 9-month-old niece, I was reminded that I shared part of everyone’s genetic makeup. Dur­ing the course of the day, I thought of Psalm 139:13–15: I praise you because I am fear­fully and won­der­fully made; your works are won­der­ful, I know that full well.

More than half of the peo­ple at the reunion pic­nic grove had sim­i­lar DNA run­ning through their veins; the oth­ers are lucky enough to love us. Traits like brown eyes and brown hair were com­mon. Dis­tinc­tive cowlicks that dis­rupt smooth straight hair were found in dis­tant cousins.

I am sure that if I took a sur­vey to iden­tify a fam­ily health his­tory, high blood pres­sure and elec­trolyte imbal­ance would be top on the list. Aunt Rose says that Grand­fa­ther John died of com­pli­ca­tions of high blood pres­sure. It runs in the family.

Mus­cles depend on cer­tain min­er­als that a body receives from our food. Sodium, potas­sium, chlo­ride, mag­ne­sium, cal­cium and phos­pho­rus are the com­mon elec­trolytes. These min­er­als affect the amount of water in the body. They also deter­mine the acid­ity of the blood and allow mus­cles to func­tion properly.

An imbal­ance of elec­trolytes can cause weak­ness, twitch­ing, seizures, numb­ness, mus­cle spasms, irreg­u­lar heart­beat, con­vul­sions, bone dis­or­ders and blood pres­sure changes, even death. Elec­trolytes become imbal­anced by many dif­fer­ent causes but mainly from the loss of water through sweat­ing, vom­it­ing or diarrhea.

These min­er­als cause the nerves to actu­ally respond to an elec­tri­cal charge. Water is the medium that allows the elec­tri­cal activ­ity to travel through­out the body.

When the min­er­als or water are in short sup­ply, the mus­cles and other organs just do not func­tion prop­erly. The heart is a series of mus­cles that depend upon a pre­cise bal­ance of elec­trolyte and water com­bi­na­tion. Rel­a­tives are quirky enough with­out an elec­trolyte imbal­ance adding to the situation.

The older rel­a­tives and the babies were not the only ones at high risk of an imbal­ance of elec­trolytes. Any­one who takes a blood pres­sure med­ica­tion needs to be prop­erly hydrated to main­tain a bal­ance of sodium and potas­sium and other minerals.

Luck­ily, the weather for the reunion was com­fort­able, not swel­ter­ing hot. Sweat­ing was kept to a min­i­mum. Elec­trolytes lost in per­spi­ra­tion can be dan­ger­ous to some­one prone to an imbalance.

Water, juices and fruit pro­vide ade­quate elec­trolytes even on an extremely hot day. Sports drinks are not needed unless an activ­ity causes some­one to sweat for more than an hour.

Look­ing through the pho­tos of that warm day in July the famil­iar faces remind me once again that we are all won­der­fully made. Cowlicks and high blood pres­sure are just two of the similarities.

Bob­bie Ran­dall is a cer­ti­fied dia­betes edu­ca­tor, reg­is­tered, licensed dietit­ian. She super­vises a dia­betes self-management train­ing pro­gram at Aultman-Orrville Hos­pi­tal, Orrville. Con­tact her at bobbie.randall@aultmanorrville.org or 330–684-4776.

Posted by Bobbie Randall on Jul 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.