Financial issues, family burden causes high blood pressure — Dr. Eliason

Dr. Cecilia Eliason, senior lecturer at the University of Ghana

Dr. Cecilia Eliason, Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Ghana-Legon, has stated that people with low financial status and domestic burdens are more likely to have high blood pressure.

The senior lecturer emphasized that poverty can be a cause for the increase in high blood pressure with evidence from research findings.

She added that another factor that can account for the accumulation in one's blood pressure is ageing especially when one encounter domestic problems in marriage or in any other sphere of the social life.

“… financial issues and all that. Studies also have found out that, those of us from low socioeconomic backgrounds have high, incidents of high blood pressure.

” Your age as you age your BP increases and then your environment. There can be issues like marital issues,” she stated.

However, she asserted that blood pressure can be remedied but not completely. She stressed that it can only be stable when the person diagnosed with it adheres to the instructions given to him or her by a medical practitioner.

"There will be no instance where you will be asked to stop taking your drugs.

“If you are diagnosed hypertensive and you make sure you take your drugs, you go by changing your lifestyle, you can maintain your body weight with time, and your BP keeps maintaining at the low blood pressure, it is just that they may reduce the dosage of your drugs but to take you off no…. because if you take them off, you don’t know, there are risk factors”, she added.

She made these statements while speaking on the breakfast show on the Accra-based GTV on Tuesday, June 21, 2022, on the theme “Understanding blood pressure; the high and the low.”