- High blood pressure often runs in families and can be genetic.
- It can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke if left untreated, a cardiologist told Insider.
It's never too early to start thinking about your heart health, especially when it comes to managing your blood pressure, cardiologist Marc Katz told Insider.
Katz not only treats people with heart disease, but is also a preventative cardiologist for otherwise healthy individuals. This means he is all too familiar with the lifestyle factors that can lead to high blood pressure, a condition that can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, and various other health problems.
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is blood pressure that is 130/80 mm Hg or higher. It can be caused by both genetic and lifestyle factors, and tends to rise with age. There are hundreds of different genetic variations that can affect your hypertension risk, according to a 2019 study.
But while you can't change your genes, it is possible to lower your risk of hypertension by establishing healthy habits early in life, Katz said. "The earlier that you make those positive changes, the bigger the impact you will have on your own health 10, 20, or 30 years down the line," he told Insider.
Here are three ways people in their 20s and 30s can change their lifestyle habits and lower their risk of high blood pressure.
1. Put down the steak
Katz said he tells his patients to avoid excessive red meat intake, which can spike cholesterol levels.
Cholesterol and blood pressure are closely connected because the heart has to pump extra-hard to move blood through arteries that have been narrowed or hardened by cholesterol buildup, according to Cleveland Clinic.
High blood pressure and high cholesterol are two of the biggest causes of heart disease, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and addressing diet is one way to get these under control. Katz said most cholesterol-raising foods come from other animals, because they make cholesterol too.
"When we eat that, it's gotta go somewhere," he said.
He said he tells his patients to enjoy "everything in moderation," and that includes steak dinners.
In general, he said that a healthy diet should consist of incremental changes over a lifetime, like baking foods instead of frying or using healthier cooking oils, instead of trying the latest weight loss trend.
2. Keep hitting the gym, even after a setback
A healthy diet can only go so far without exercise — and there's never enough exercise to offset a terrible diet, Katz said.
For both lifestyle factors, he said he tells his patients to aim for movement in the right direction rather than a perfect record.
"Everyone goes through life and things happen to them where they can't be in the gym everyday that week, or they're really stressed and they had a few weeks of not eating right," Katz said. "Just because that happens, doesn't mean you have to punish yourself forever."
3. Quit vaping for good
The association between smoking cigarettes and high blood pressure is well-documented: according to the American Heart Association, smoking cigarettes causes an increase in blood pressure that can lead to organ damage.
Katz said vaping should be considered a risk factor for heart health as well. The evidence isn't as strong, since e-cigarettes are relatively new, but early research has found that vaping also causes blood pressure and heart rate to spike.
E-cigarette use is more popular among younger generations compared to those who smoke cigarettes, and while some people assume vaping is better for you, the impact on heart function might be similar, according to preliminary findings presented at the AHA's Scientific Sessions 2022.
Even though many of the cigarette smokers in the study had been using nicotine for decades longer than the vapers, the vaping group had similarly high blood pressure and heart rate directly after vaping. The long-term effects of vaping on heart health still aren't known.
"Eventually, young people need to make that decision: do you really want to be vaping for the rest of your life?" Katz said. "I don't think you'll find a doctor out there who thinks that it's healthy."