Jake: Hey, I’m Jake of Body by Jake with your health and wellness tip of the day. Dr. Art Mollen time – health and wellness time! Dr. Art! Okay, buddy, great to see you. I’ve got a good one for you, What’s the most important thing to know about your health? Blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar? I would assume its all three.
Dr. Art: It’s basically what we refer to as “know your numbers.” Blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood sugar, and these are some simple things that you can get at your doctor’s office.
So you know what your blood sugar is? If your fasting blood sugar is higher than 100 then it’s probably too high. Now you want to make sure that it’s a fasting blood sugar and not after you’ve eaten or anything like that.
So when you have your blood sugar checked, you want to make sure, again, that it’s about you know, 100 or even less. That’s a fasting blood sugar. If it’s higher than that, you may have diabetes or you may have a propensity to develop diabetes down the road.
Then your doctor probably is going to do another blood test called hemoglobin A1c. And that determines what your blood sugar is over the last three months. So that’s another way to check your blood sugar. But blood sugar is really important.
If you have a family history absolutely get your blood sugar checked. Blood pressure: blood pressure is easy.
You can go to the pharmacy and get your blood pressure checked and get your own blood pressure cuff at home and get a check. Normal blood pressure 110 over 70.
If it’s higher than that then basically you might need blood pressure medication, or you might have something else going on that’s causing your blood pressure to be elevated outside of you know, maybe someone screaming at you, which could elevate your blood pressure.
So basically, if blood pressure remains elevated – again above 110 over 70, if you’re taking blood pressure medication, then you may have high blood pressure.
That’s not even in the normal range. It could be as high as 160 over 90 – that’s high blood pressure and that needs to be treated. And if it’s not lowered with medication, then we need to be aggressively concerned about maybe something’s wrong with your kidneys. So check that out as well. And then finally cholesterol: normal cholesterol should be about 150.
A lot of times, you know, years ago, I remember cholesterol level if you had under 300 – Jake if you had under 300 they said it was fine! But now we know that at 150 – it lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease.
Those numbers, they can only change and there’s so many medications out there that can lower your cholesterol, or you can do it naturally by taking fish oils and omega-3 fatty acids. And that’s an easy way to lower cholesterol. So the end of the day know your numbers. Blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol.
Jake: I love it. So simple, so together and right, and always straight ahead.
