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This card has three sections. Each section tells you when to check your blood sugar: before each meal, 1 to 2 hours aftereach meal, and at bedtime. Each time you check your blood sugar, write down the date, time, and results. Take this card withyou on your health care visits. Show it to your health care team. Talk about your goals and how you are doing.
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* Your blood sugar goals may be different if you are an older adult (over 65) and have had diabetes a long time. They may be different if you have other health problems like heart disease, or your blood sugar often gets too low.
Sleep apnea affects how much oxygen your body gets while you sleep and increases the risk for many health problems, including high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. It is more common among Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans than among whites.7
Insomnia refers to trouble falling sleep, staying asleep, or both. As many as 1 in 2 adults experiences short-term insomnia at some point, and 1 in 10 may have long-lasting insomnia.8 Insomnia is linked to high blood pressure and heart disease. Over time, poor sleep can also lead to unhealthy habits that can hurt your heart, including higher stress levels, less motivation to be physically active, and unhealthy food choices.
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Blood pressure is the force of blood that pushes against the walls of your arteries. Arteries are blood vessels that carry blood away from your heart to other parts of the body. Each time your heart beats, it pumps blood to the arteries. If the pressure in your arteries becomes too high, you have high blood pressure (also called hypertension). High blood pressure can put extra stress on your organs. This can lead to heart attack, heart failure, stroke and kidney failure.
Some women have high blood pressure before they get pregnant. Others have high blood pressure for the first time during pregnancy. About 8 in 100 women (8 percent) have some kind of high blood pressure during pregnancy. If you have high blood pressure, talk to your health care provider. Managing your blood pressure can help you have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.
At each prenatal care checkup, your provider checks your blood pressure. To do this, she wraps a cuff (band) around your upper arm. She pumps air into the cuff to measure the pressure in your arteries when the heart contracts and then relaxes. If you have a high reading, your provider can recheck it to find out for sure if you have high blood pressure. Your blood pressure can go up or down during the day.
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is blood pressure that is higher than normal. Your blood pressure changes throughout the day based on your activities. Having blood pressure measures consistently above normal may result in a diagnosis of high blood pressure (or hypertension).
Your health care team can diagnose high blood pressure and make treatment decisions by reviewing your systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels and comparing them to levels found in certain guidelines.
High blood pressure usually develops over time. It can happen because of unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as not getting enough regular physical activity. Certain health conditions, such as diabetes and having obesity, can also increase the risk for developing high blood pressure. High blood pressure can also happen during pregnancy.
High blood pressure can damage your arteries by making them less elastic, which decreases the flow of blood and oxygen to your heart and leads to heart disease. In addition, decreased blood flow to the heart can cause:
High blood pressure can cause the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the brain to burst or be blocked, causing a stroke. Brain cells die during a stroke because they do not get enough oxygen. Stroke can cause serious disabilities in speech, movement, and other basic activities. A stroke can also kill you.
Many people with high blood pressure can lower their blood pressure into a healthy range or keep their numbers in a healthy range by making lifestyle changes. Talk with your health care team about
In addition to making positive lifestyle changes, some people with high blood pressure need to take medicine to manage their blood pressure. Learn more about medicines for high blood pressure.
White blood cells, a part of the immune system, are the main type of cell responsible for protecting the body against infections. There are different types of white blood cells, and they each have a role in defending the body against infections. Normally, most of our white blood cells are neutrophils. Neutrophils are key infection-fighters and form an important defense against most types of infections. The other types of white blood cells (lymphocyte, monocytes, and macrophages) also help fight infections.
Some types of cancer can change the way the immune system blood cells work. For instance, lymphomas (Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin), multiple myeloma, and most types of leukemia start in immune system blood cells. Other types of cancer can also affect the immune system and its cells. They can change the immune system cells so that cells that once protected your body begin to interfere with the normal way your immune system works. Cancer cells can get into the bone marrow cells where blood cells are made. The cancer cells then compete with the normal bone marrow cells for space and nutrients. If too many normal bone marrow cells are destroyed or pushed out of the bone marrow, the few cells that are left won't be able to make enough white blood cells (WBCs) to help the body fight infection.
Cancer can also damage other parts of the immune system. A tumor that grows on the skin or in mucous membranes can break natural barriers and allow germs to get in. Tumors that are large might reduce blood flow to normal tissues by pressing on them or their blood supply. Tumors in the lungs may block normal mucus drainage, which can lead to infections. And, other types of tissues that have been damaged by cancer can be more prone to infections.
Certain cancer treatments can interfere with the way the immune system works. The damage can be short- or long-term. For example, if a person with cancer has their spleen removed due to cancer, this causes long-term damage because the spleen is part of the immune system. On the other hand, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and chemotherapy, either alone or in combination can lead to short-term (temporary) immune system damage because they affect immune system blood cells for a fairly short period of time. A bone marrow or stem cell transplant uses very high-dose treatments to kill cancer cells that also damage immune system cells for weeks to months.
Chemotherapy (often called chemo) is the most common cause of a weakened immune system in people getting cancer treatment. Chemotherapy can cause neutropenia (a decrease in the number of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, in your blood). This means your body may not be able to fight infections as well as it should. The effects on the immune system depend on many things, including:
Stem cell transplant (SCT) is the term used to include bone marrow transplant (BMT), peripheral blood stem cell transplant (PBSCT), and umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant (UCBSCT). Stem cell transplants are used to replace bone marrow cells that have been destroyed by cancer or by the chemo and/or radiation used to treat the cancer. These transplants allow doctors to use very high doses of chemo and/or total body irradiation (TBI) to try to kill all the cancer cells in the body.
Add in the threat of injuries from home fireworks shows and more road travel as July 4 and summer vacations approach, and the demand for blood at emergency rooms, trauma centers and burn units could also increase.
Right now, supplies are so low that he and his team have to choose which patients will get each unit of blood that comes in. The supply is nearly as short as it was in mid-March, when blood drives across America started getting canceled.
"Now, we have patients on the schedule for operations that were pushed back weeks or even months by the pandemic. A lack of blood could delay them further," he says. "I can't emphasize enough how much we need people to step forward and donate or host a blood drive now."
If you haven't given since March because of worries about going out, rest assured that blood drive organizers have put in place many new safety measures. This includes masks for donors, staff and volunteers, and more space between people.
And a bonus: For a limited time, donors at Red Cross drives will receive the results of an antibody test that will be conducted on their blood. This might indicate if they had COVID-19 earlier in the year, when the availability of testing for mild cases was very limited.
Maybe you're not a fan of needles. Maybe you've always been too busy. Maybe you just turned 17, the minimum age to give. Or you just never thought about giving blood because you figured they had enough of your type.
Whatever your reason, the urgent need for blood to help patients who have waited months for care, or are having an emergency, should give you more reason to consider giving. Read about how to deal with common concerns about giving blood, and learn more about being a first-time donor.
It used to be that having a tattoo or piercing, or going to a country where malaria is common, meant you couldn't give blood for a year. Both of those rules have recently been relaxed to just three months, in order to encourage more donations while still protecting the safety of patients who receive blood products.
Men who have sex with men, and women who have sex with such men, may also now give blood if they have not engaged in this type of sex for three months. Find out more about blood donation by LGBTQ+ individuals (LGBTQ+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and Gender non-conforming). 041b061a72