Hypertension Assignment Paper

Topic: Hypertension A 56-year-old patient with newly diagnosed stage 1 hypertension has been referred to you for counseling regarding lifestyle modifications. He is married, with four children — two in high school, two in college. His job as a senior vice-president for a major retail chain requires that he work long hours and frequently eat at restaurants. He smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, has a body mass index (BMI) of 29 kg/m2, and a waist-hip ratio of 1.6. He usually drinks one to two dry martinis to relax after he gets home from work. Hypertension Assignment Paper. How would you develop a realistic plan to help this patient reduce his blood pressure and prevent complications? Which risk factors would be among your top two or three priorities for this patient, and what interventions or recommendations would you provide for modifying these?

Any realistic plan to reduce the patient’s blood pressure and eliminate the complications associated with them will be grounded on five core points. The plan will constitute a lifestyle change aimed at eliminating stressors in the patient’s life, enhancing his health, and eliminating unhealthy habits (Muntner et al., 2018). The first point is to ensure that the patient knows why they are engaging in lifestyle change. This will mean counseling him on why high blood pressure is harmful and what type of impact the lifestyle change in question could have on it (Yang et al., 2017). This will also mean reminding the patient of what is at stake in the line of his family and his career.

The second step will involve setting achievable goals. From short-term to long-term goals, it is important to ensure that they are achievable as making too many changes at once can sabotage efforts to lower the patient’s blood pressure. Thirdly, the patient will do well to track his progress. This will involve measuring their blood pressure and weight regularly (Nolan et al., 2018). The fourth pillar is perhaps the most important and has to do with making health a habit, from gradually reducing his smoking and alcohol intake to eating more healthy and home-cooked meals. The patient will also have to subscribe to a regular exercise regimen and stick to it (Herrod et al., 2018). It is important to note that most attempts at reducing blood pressure fail at this juncture. The final point is to ensure that the patient does not go through this lifestyle change alone but has friends and family support. Hypertension Assignment Paper.

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Based on an analysis of the case, the top three risk factors that the above lifestyle change needs to focus on are the patient’s smoking, weight, and unhealthy eating habits. It is for this reason that all three are addressed in the fourth pillar of the lifestyle change. It is recommended that the patient seek to address these risk factors one at a time to ensure they do not get frustrated and give up on the plan (Liu et al., 2020).

References

Herrod, P. J., Doleman, B., Blackwell, J. E., O’Boyle, F., Williams, J. P., Lund, J. N., & Phillips, B. E. (2018). Exercise and other nonpharmacological strategies to reduce blood pressure in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Society of Hypertension, 12(4), 248-267.

Liu, S., Tanaka, R., Barr, S., & Nolan, R. P. (2020). Effects of self-guided e-counseling on health behaviors and blood pressure: Results of a randomized trial. Patient education and counseling, 103(3), 635-641.

Muntner, P., Carey, R. M., Gidding, S., Jones, D. W., Taler, S. J., Wright, J. T., & Whelton, P. K. (2018). Potential US population impact of the 2017 ACC/AHA high blood pressure guideline. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 71(2), 109-118.

Nolan, R. P., Feldman, R., Dawes, M., Kaczorowski, J., Lynn, H., Barr, S. I., … & Liu, S. (2018). A randomized controlled trial of e-counseling for hypertension: REACH. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 11(7), e004420.

Yang, M. H., Kang, S. Y., Lee, J. A., Kim, Y. S., Sung, E. J., Lee, K. Y., … & Lee, S. Y. (2017). The effect of lifestyle changes on blood pressure control among hypertensive patients. Korean Journal of family medicine, 38(4), 173. Hypertension Assignment Paper.