Preparing for a baby - is your blood pressure okay?

Imagine that your baby in your womb receives life from you through two tubes the thickness of a straw. Your blood, containing the precious oxygen and nutrients needed for energy production and growth, arrives at your uterus through these tubes.

It is very important that your vascular system, circulation, and blood pressure are in good condition to perform this task. Of course, fitness is also closely related to your lifestyle, weight, and amount of exercise in previous years.

You will see 3 numbers on your blood pressure monitor. The first number is the maximum blood pressure during heart contraction (SYS), the second is the minimum blood pressure measured when the heart relaxes (DIA), and the third is the heart rate (PUL). Always keep SYS below 140 mmHg, DIA below 90 mmHg, and PUL below 100 / min under all circumstances.

If you are young (<30), not overweight, do not smoke, exercise regularly, and eat a healthy diet, then this is most likely fine.

If you are older, overweight, have a sedentary job, do not exercise regularly, have bad blood lipids, have insulin resistance/diabetes, or have already developed high blood pressure, then these straws (and the developing blood circulation in the placenta) are no longer perfect.

And that's the point. We pay so much attention to blood pressure not for the sake of the numbers on the blood pressure monitor, but for the sake of healthy circulation in the placenta. A well-controlled high blood pressure disease that requires little medication usually causes little trouble during pregnancy, but a slow deterioration in the blood supply to the placenta can cause the baby to have growth retardation and low amniotic fluid. It may be that the baby has to be delivered earlier because of this.

In rare cases, things get worse, and complications escalate (preeclampsia, maternal epileptic seizures, placental abruption), which can quickly become life-threatening. This is the world of life-saving cesarean sections and intensive care units that we know from TV series, but we want to avoid this from afar.

(Parenthetic note: if you are planning to get pregnant, your life should not be spent in fear of all the serious obstetric complications, and that is not the purpose of this post. The goal is to know about the role of blood pressure and, in collaboration with your obstetrician, do everything you can to put the factors you can control in the right direction)

What can you do for the health of your blood pressure (and your entire circulatory system)?

• Regular, low-intensity but sustained physical exercise (e.g. 30-45 minutes of walking, swimming, yoga, light jogging, cycling, dancing / zumba) 3-4 times a week. Sport is good for your body weight and mental balance! Not to mention that you will be a fit and energetic mother :) The goal is 150 minutes of exercise per week. However, DO NOT do heavy weight training, sprinting or high-intensity interval training, because the sudden maximum load can raise your blood pressure.

  
  

• Pay attention to the salt! Don't add extra salt to your food, you can easily get used to a "salt-free" diet in a few weeks (in quotation marks because many foods already contain a lot of salt, even without extra salting)

  
  

• Pay attention to the right amount and quality of sleep! (If your partner indicates that you snore a lot, be sure to sign up for a sleep study, because snoring is not just a “bad habit”, but also shows that you are not getting enough oxygen at night. Especially if you stop breathing for long seconds (sleep apnea). You are almost drowning, and your body is fighting this while sleeping, instead of resting. And the fight raises blood pressure.

  
  

• Being overweight or carrying extra pounds also increases blood pressure (and can cause a ton of other problems during pregnancy). A dietitian can help you transition to a healthy eating strategy. This is extremely important because, in addition to blood pressure, being overweight/insulin resistant is another big problem that can cause complications during pregnancy and make childbirth more difficult.

  
  

• Reduce stress! Stress is a very sneaky thing, if it has been working inside you for many years, you may not even notice how tense your everyday life is.

  
  

I wish you good preparation! Dr. Máté Hazay