Dangers of High Blood Pressure

    Let's talk about blood pressure. We need to keep our blood pressure in the healthy range for kidney health, cardiovascular health and brain health.                                                                                           

     So what causes high blood pressure? There are several things that can cause this such as fluid retention, lack of exercise, anabolic steroid use, obesity.  It can also be genetic. High blood pressure is really bad for kidney health. High blood pressure puts a strain on the heart. It makes the chambers enlarge. Too much pressure on the brain can cause you to have aneurysms , strokes.

   

 As bodybuilders we eat a lot of protein and we are constantly consuming food so, the kidneys are constantly filtering blood at a much higher rate than the average person who eats three times a day. Eating a high protein diet also taxes the kidneys but, I rarely meet people who eat more than 300g of protein a day so, it is not an issue as long as you don't have any kidney issues already and, your blood pressure is in check.  

    When you have chronic high blood pressure, the kidney filtering units made of nephrons become non-functional or sometimes they scar over and become sclerotic or fibrotic. We have millions of these filtering units.  The more you kill off and damage them, eventually you run out of these filtering units and your efficiency starts decreasing. That's why your creatinine will start to creep up, because you're not able to filter the blood adequately.

So consult your doctor if you have high blood pressure.