Blood Pressure & Cholesterol
What you need to know

Here’s the difficulty with both high Blood Pressure and elevated Cholesterol, you wont necessarily know you have a problem until you really have a problem. Both conditions can be asymptomatic in the early stages. Please don’t rely on banging headaches, dizziness or disturbed vision to suggest that your Blood Pressure is out of control. Similarly you wont know that raised Cholesterol is laying down fatty deposits on you Arteries until you reach the point of early stage Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD)

I will repeat a point that I will continue to make, take responsibility for your own health, get yourself checked.

Before we get down to the nitty gritty lets have a quick check on how up to speed we are on what’s going on inside us.

First of all you guys out there with a credit card put your hands up, ok apart from the couple in the Outer Hebrides that’s about all of you, now, if you know your PIN number keep your hands up, good apart from a few of you my age when memory starts to become a problem that’s most of you. Right, here’s the curved ball, all those who know your Blood Pressure and /or Cholesterol levels keep your hands up. Oh dear, all of a sudden I don’t see many calloused, shovel type mitts still aloft.

In all seriousness what, in the great scheme of things, do you think may be more important? Food for thought guys.

Lets first of all have a very quick look at the bits inside us that we are particularly interested in. First of all the Cardio Vascular system.

Your heart is basically a 4 chambered pump, it’s about the size of your fist, weighs somewhere in the region of 250g - 350g, sits at a slight angle within your rib cage, in front of your vertebral column (spine) but behind your Sternum (breast bone) and is flanked and slightly over lapped by your lungs.

The 4 main divisions of the heart are the Right and Left Atrium and the Right and Left Ventricle. The Right Atrium receives de oxygenated blood from the trunk, arms, legs etc via the Superior and Inferior Vena Cava. This oxygen poor blood is transferred via a one way valve to the Right Ventricle where it begins its journey to the lungs by being pumped out of the heart via the Right and Left Pulmonary Artery. These Arteries gradually decrease in size until we get to the Capillaries in the lungs which is the point that gas exchange takes place and the blood becomes “charged” with fresh oxygen taken in via the Respiratory System.

This freshly oxygenated blood is returned to the heart by the Venous system, finally arriving via the Right and Left Pulmonary Vein. These veins supply the Left Atrium, which in a similar way to the right side of the heart, pushes the blood via a one way pump into the Left Ventricle which in turn pumps the blood, now full of precious oxygen, to the various organs of the body via the Aorta.

The speed at which these pumping actions take place is called your Heart Rate and is governed by the Hearts “electrical wiring”. The same as all muscle fibres within the body the Heart responds to electrical charges delivered via the nervous system. These are controlled by the Sinoatrial node which is, in effect, your hearts own built in pace maker. It is the electrical system of the heart which is being measured when an Electrocardiogram (ECG) is taken.

Heart rate will be subject to a number of different controlling factors such as physical exertion, stress or disease. A “normal Heart Rate” would be between 60 - 100 beats per minute. A heart rate less than 60 per min would be considered low and is known as Bradycardia. A rate of more than 100 per min would be considered high and is known as Tachycardia .

Heart Rate or pulse rate are normally recorded at the wrist (Radial Pulse) or side of the neck (Carotid Pulse) which are 2 points where the Arteries are relatively close to the surface

Once in circulation the blood is controlled by the Arteries and Veins. Arteries carry blood from the heart under relatively high pressure and veins return blood towards the heart. The further Arteries and veins are from the heart the smaller and thinner they become eventually allowing for the exchange of nutriments and waste products.

The blood in circulation around the body will be subject to a degree of pressure to drive it through the Arteries and it is this pressure that we are looking to measure when you have your Blood pressure taken by a Doctor.

Before the current fancy digital readers the Doctor used a pressure cuff, Stethoscope and a rectangular box with a vertical glass tube inside containing a silvery fluid (Sphygmomanometer). The height reached by the fluid (Mercury) gave the reading and the numbers concerned are expressed as Millimetres of Mercury (mmHg).

As most of you would have seen BP is normally written as 2 figures i.e. 120/80, the first, and larger, of these two figures is known as the Systolic blood pressure (Sbp) and is the measure of the blood pressure against the Arterial walls at the point that the Ventricles contract and your heart “beats”. The second, and lower of the figures is the Diastolic pressure (Dbp) and is measured when your heart is at rest. Both these readings give an indication of the resistance caused to the circulating blood as a result of Vasodilatation (opening of the blood vessels) or Vasoconstriction (closing of the blood vessels). Constriction is the one we need to be aware of and can be caused by a number of physiological factors including disease.

Normal Blood Pressure is commonly stated as 120/80 and anything in excess of 140/90 is considered the beginning of Hypertension. Due to our current western lifestyle millions of people are suffering from high BP, with some 50 million in the USA alone (American College of Sports Medicine figures). The link between hypertension and Cardiovascular disease is proven beyond doubt with the major killers being Coronary Heart Disease and Strokes. One major study states that for individuals in the age range 40 - 70 each increase in Systolic BP of 20 mmHg or an increase in Diastolic BP of 10 mmHg doubles the risk of CVD.

Transient increases to Blood pressure will occur on a day by day basis and can be caused by any number of things such as stress, Central Nervous System stimulants (a strong cup of coffee will do it) physical exertion etc. These increases will take place and soon return to normal. However, long term, chronic high BP is the real problem and may be caused by:

● Genetic predisposition
● Smoking
● Obesity
● Diet
● Alcohol use
● Recreational Drug use
● Steroid/GH/other ergogenic aids
● Lack of Cardio Vascular exercise

Bottom line is Hypertension aint big and it aint clever, take responsibility for your health, get it checked.

Having taken some of your time on the joys of Blood Pressure lets now have a quick look at Cholesterol. The immediate layman’s reaction to the word is that all and any Cholesterol is bad and should be avoided at all costs. The real story is not quite as easy as that.

We are all subject to 2 sources of Cholesterol, that which our bodies manufacture (endogenous cholesterol) and that which we assimilate as part of our diet (exogenous cholesterol).

Cholesterol is known as a Derived Lipid and exists only in animal tissue, foods of a plant origin contain no Cholesterol.

We need Cholesterol to perform many vital functions within our bodies including:
● Formation of cell membranes
● Precursor in the synthesis of Vitamin D
● Precursor in the formation of the sex hormones estrogen, androgen and progesterone.
● Key component in the synthesis of bile

Although a degree of Cholesterol is vital to our existence an excess will start to cause us problems. We have little control over the amount our bodies make (apart from drug therapy) and therefore we are strongly advised to restrict both Cholesterol rich foods and those high in Saturated fats. Examples of foods high in Cholesterol are:
● Egg yolks
● Diary Foods
● Organ meats, liver, kidney, brain etc
● Shellfish (Shrimp/Prawns in particular)
● Many manufactured, processed, pre packaged foods

An excess of Cholesterol can have a direct link to Atherosclerosis which is a degenerative condition where Cholesterol rich fatty deposits called Plaque are deposited on the Artery walls leading to them narrowing and potentially closing all together.

The transport of Cholesterol around the body is handled by substances known as Lipoproteins which are split into 3 main types - Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL) Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL) and High Density Lipoproteins (HDL). Of these we are interested in the LDL’s and HDL’s.

LDL’s have a nasty trait of sticking the Cholesterol they contain to the walls of Arteries potentially leading to the Atherosclerosis condition referred to above. HDL’s however have the reverse effect and tend to “scrub” the Artery walls clean of cholesterol and transport it to the liver where it is excreted as a component of bile.

Dietary control together with life style management, stopping smoking and increasing physical activity will all have an effect on Cholesterol and the level of LDL‘s & HDL‘s. Once again some of the regular practices carried out by competitive bodybuilders will have an adverse effect on blood Cholesterol, Triglycerides and lipid levels generally so it really is a damn good idea to have things checked before embarking on the next “course”.

Cholesterol is checked via a simple blood test and is usually measured in mill moles per litre. A total Cholesterol level of less than 5mmol/L is usually seen to be acceptable as is a LDL level of less than 2mmol/L and a HDL level above 2mmol/L.

At Physical Frontiers we aim to keep ourselves and our athletes healthy thereby helping us achieve our genetic potential.

Please remember that the interpretation of any medical results should be performed by a qualified medical practitioner, ideally some one who understands the requirements of our sport.

Paul Ehren can be contacted at info@physicalfrontiers.co.uk or tel: 07768 563 688
Dr. Jass Lidder can be contacted at Drjass@physicalfrontiers.co.uk