Norfolk: Check your blood pressure

1 in 6 adults in Norfolk don’t know they have high blood pressure.  Are you one of them?

High blood pressure rarely has noticeable symptoms and left untreated can lead to strokes, heart attacks and other serious diseases.

Knowing your blood pressure is important.  Following the success our 2018 Public Health campaign we are again raising awareness of the risks of high blood pressure and asking any Norfolk residents who have not had their blood pressure reading taken in the last five years to ‘Get Checked’ in a local participating pharmacy.

The NHS have currently commissioned a number of pharmacies in Norwich and Great Yarmouth to carry out free checks as part of the campaign, a list of which can be found below with more being added across the rest of the county in the coming weeks.

Regardless of where you live many pharmacies continue to offer free BP checks or will check your blood pressure for you as part of a wider health MOT so pop along to your local pharmacy and ask if they offer this service to get your blood pressure checked now!

Your blood pressure reading

Check what the figures from your Blood Pressure reading mean for your health with this useful online tool from the NHS

What do I do if I have high blood pressure?

You should be advised about making some simple lifestyle changes, or be prescribed medication by your GP, but usually it's easy to treat.

There isn’t always an explanation for the cause of high blood pressure, but these can play a part:

• Not doing enough physical activity
• Being overweight or obese
• Having too much salt in your diet
• Regularly drinking too much alcohol

And by dealing with it now, you can avoid much more serious issues later on in life.

Even if you don't have high blood pressure, making some simple lifestyle changes like being more active or not drinking too much alcohol may help prevent you developing it in the future.

You can find more information about high blood pressure and how it's treated at the British Heart Foundation website.

Look after your health

There are lots of ways you can check and assess your health

• Take the NHS health quiz
• Find out about the One You Apps to help you make simple lifestyle changes
• Heart Age tool - Find out how old your heart really is and how you can improve your health with this interactive quiz
• Over 40?  Want to know your chance of developing heart, diabetes, stroke or kidney problems?  Find out if you are eligible for a NHS Health Check.