Dr. Steve Kopecky

And then finally, smoking is a no-no because it vasoconstricts or makes your blood vessels get smaller.

So blood pressure is higher.

And alcohol.

Alcohol.

You know, more than about a drink a day and small amounts, you know, three ounces of wine for a woman, five ounces for a man is what no more than that is the recommendation.

And as alcohol is metabolized, it's metabolized to a substance called acetaldehyde.

Now, you've never heard of acetaldehyde or nor of your listeners, but they've heard of formaldehyde.

And it does the same thing as formaldehyde.

It pickles your arteries and makes them stiff.

And when the arteries are stiff, you know, they should expand with every heartbeat because the blood is pumped into the arteries.

If they can't expand because they're too stiff, then the pressure goes up.

So all these things are really, really important.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Some people have called it the poly pills.

It's a pill.

I remember, yeah.

A few things there.

There's a little bit of aspirin, a little bit of blood pressure-lowering medicine, a little bit of cholesterol-lowering medicine.

And the issue there is people really don't like to take medicines every day.

In fact, there's a thing called resistant hypertension, which is if you're on three medicines and one of them is a water pill, a diuretic called hydrochlorothiazide or HCTZ,