Awareness of lifestyle induced hypertension among adolescents.

Introduction: Hypertension or high blood pressure is a chronic medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is elevated. The normal blood pressure when a person is said to be at rest is within the range of 100-140 mmHg systolic and 60-90 mmHg diastolic. High blood pressure is said to be present if it is above 140/90 mmHg. High blood pressure is classified as primary high blood pressure and secondary high blood pressure. About 95% of hypertensive cases are primary and are defined as high blood pressure due to a different lifestyle and genetic factors. Lifestyle factors that increase the risk include excess salt in the diet, excess body weight, smoking, and alcohol use. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire containing around 15 questions was prepared and 100 adolescent students whose age ranging from 12 to 18 years were asked to take up the survey, and the corresponding results were concluded. Results: The results were found to be that a large number of students did not check their blood pressure regularly and 54% of the students got stressed quite often, and 44% of the students were less bothered about their health and skipped their breakfast. Although 60% of the students were already aware that junk foods can elevate blood pressure they still continued to eat it, 60% of the students were not aware that eating fruits can reduce their chances of blood pressure, 58% of the students were aware that physical inactivity caused hypertension, and 65% of the students were not aware that junk foods can cause stroke and ischemic disease. A large number of students were not aware that hypertension shows no symptoms and 61% of the students preferred low salt intake as a precaution measure to hypertension while the others preferred doing exercise and eating vegetables and fruits. Conclusion: Awareness of lifestyle induced disorders among the adolescents is necessary as it can be beneficial to them as well as they can educate the future generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]