Under Pressure & How's Your Heart?

25 August 2017 | Updated 01 January 1970

As many as 7 million people in the UK are living undiagnosed and therefore unaware that they are at risk of high blood pressure – often called the silent killer.

ThisWeekinFM is urging workers to get their blood pressure checked and take any necessary action to reach and maintain a healthy blood pressure.

Find your nearest free blood pressure check

From 18th-24th September 2017 Blood Pressure UK will have hundreds of Pressure Stations across the UK offering free blood pressure checks.

You can find your nearest free blood pressure check by entering a post code or town. http://www.bloodpressureuk.org/Home

Causes

There are many factors that can contribute to high blood pressure - not doing enough physical activity, being overweight or obese, having too much salt in your diet, regularly drinking too much alcohol as well as having a family history of high blood pressure. In the UK nearly 30% of adults suffer from high blood pressure.

Vicki Leslie from employee benefits outfit ECIS told ThisWeekinFM: “Whilst this isn’t a new problem, our modern lifestyles can make us more susceptible than ever to high blood pressure and the effects can be severe with sufferers up to 3 times more likely to develop heart disease or have a stroke. As high blood pressure often has no symptoms, many people are simply unaware they have it. This highlights the importance of having your blood pressure measured by a nurse or doctor as part of a healthcheck, particularly if you are over 40. A blood pressure check is standard procedure in the Health Assessments ECIS offers as part of the employee benefits schemes we run for trade bodies in the contracting sector."

Heart age

If you are looking to get employees engaged this September - or as an ongoing exercise - why not get them to use this online calculator to find out if their heart age matches up with their actual ages. https://www.nhs.uk/tools/pages/heartage.aspx

To help you, please feel free to copy or adapt the following to send as an email to 'All Staff': Public Health England, the NHS and the British Heart Foundation have created an online calculator that takes a look at the health of your heart. Simply enter a few details about yourself, such as your age, height, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol and the calculator will estimate the age of your heart, compared to your actual age.

Once you have your heart age, you can alter the information you put into the calculator to see if this lowers your heart age – for example stopping smoking or losing weight. Plus, you can get tailored information about how to look after your heart.

Know Your Numbers and World Heart Day

This September, Public Health England is campaigning to get as many people as possible to know their heart age, encouraging people across the UK to better understand their heart health and take steps to look after it. This is all in the lead up to World Heart Day on 29 September – an annual campaign to raise awareness of heart health and how to look after it, run by the World Heart Federation.

Charities, including Blood Pressure UK, the British Heart Foundation and the Stroke Association, as well as pharmacies, GPs and local organisations are teaming up to raise awareness of the importance of knowing your heart age and getting a blood pressure check.

Picture: Go on, have a heart and encourage colleagues, staff and all the people in your workplace to start looking after their hearts

Article written by Cathryn Ellis | Published 25 August 2017