January 13, 2006
TRACY KALYTIAK\Frontiersman assistant editor
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“We were talking and my mother was saying her arm felt funny, the side of her face felt funny,” Palmer resident Stachelrodt remembered of the day 24 years ago when a stroke touched off by high blood pressure felled, and later killed, her mother. “Nothing led up to it. It was the holidays, and from what I've learned and understood, people get busy and forget their medicines. She happened not to take them for a couple of days.”
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, can, if untreated, touch off a sudden fatal heart attack or a stroke like the one that killed Stachelrodt's mother. The condition afflicts one in four Americans. Ninety percent of those with hypertension must take medicine, an average of 2.2 prescriptions per person, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
Blood pressure - the force of blood against arterial walls - rises and falls throughout the day, and is given as two numbers. The top number is systolic pressure, the pressure in the system during a heartbeat when blood is being forcefully ejected from the heart. The bottom number is diastolic pressure, the pressure during the time between beats when the heart is briefly at rest, filling up for the next beat.
Hypertension develops when blood pressure remains elevated over time, according to the NHLBI.
Dr. Michael D. Sebastian, a contributor to Avweb.com, wrote that a systolic reading of greater than 140 or a diastolic reading of more than 90 is abnormally high, though a blood pressure reading above 120/80 is considered to be a condition known as prehypertension.
When blood courses at high intensity through vessels in the body for extended periods of time, the blood's force against arterial walls alters the cells of their normally smooth lining, hardening them and causing the injured arteries to accumulate plaques of cholesterol that can narrow the vessel, according to the Mayo Clinic's Web site.
The thickened, narrowed vessels impede blood flow throughout the body, according to Sebastian, and, if a plaque breaks, its rough interior is exposed to blood passing over it in the artery. The ragged surface stimulates blood clotting, and a clot or wayward piece of broken-off plaque can completely shut off the artery, causing the death of oxygen-starved tissue beyond the blockage. If it happens in the heart, a heart attack can result. If it occurs in a vessel feeding oxygen to the brain, a stroke can occur.
Hypertension can also cause kidney failure and aneurysms, which can form when pressure in a weakened artery causes a section of its wall to bulge and become vulnerable to rupture.
Treatment is based upon the degree of elevation of one or both of the systolic and diastolic numbers, and on a consideration of a person's medical history, including the presence of other risk factors, such as smoking, obesity, family history and diabetes, Sebastian wrote.
It's crucial for those with hypertension to prevent damage to their vessels and reduce the chance of heart attack or stroke by maintaining their blood pressure at consistently safe levels. Using a $50-$60 meter, properly calibrated at a doctor's office, is one way this monitoring can be done outside a doctor's office, according to the NHLBI.
People with hypertension can help keep their blood pressure levels by adhering to a diet low in sodium (which causes fluid retention and thereby boosts blood volume), exercising regularly and reducing the amount of fat they consume.
A person with hypertension should eat no more than 2,400 milligrams of sodium a day. Reading nutrition labels on food is critical because many processed and restaurant foods contain huge amounts of sodium - one can of Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup, for example, contains more than 2,000 milligrams of sodium. And even a healthy-looking one-fourth-cup portion of 2 percent cottage cheese contains 229 milligrams of sodium.
People who follow the so-called DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet found that their blood pressure levels dropped within two weeks, according to NHLBI studies of the diet's effects on 459 adults. And adhering to the DASH eating plan and reducing sodium intake can help prevent the occurrence of hypertension in the first place. Additional details about the DASH plan can be found at http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:7LNeEv1s7N8J:www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/hbp/dash/+dash+diet&hl=en.
Two foods in particular that show a benefit in people with hypertension are garlic and bananas.
Stachelrodt, the youngest of eight children, was 14 when her mother died.
The last time she saw her mother alive was when rescuers were carrying her out of that living room, because her father did not want her and her siblings to follow the ambulance to the hospital. “I don't think she knew what was going on,” Stachelrodt said. “She looked frightened, but I couldn't see pain in her face. She didn't really say a whole lot.”
Her mother lost consciousness by the time she reached the hospital, five minutes away, and never awoke.
The hospital called the next day, a few hours after Stachelrodt's father went home to shower and rest from the night's ordeal. Stachelrodt's mother was dead by the time the family arrived.
“It's horrible, it's like just walking through a fog,” Stachelrodt said of the days after her mother's death. “I'm 38 and I still do not like to do Christmas. It's very hard. If I didn't have children, I wouldn't do it.”
Stachelrodt's three daughters, ages 19, 14 and 10, will only know their grandmother through pictures and their mother's recollections.
“She was in her early 50s. She wasn't very tall, 5 foot 2, with black hair that was starting to gray, blue eyes,” Stachelrodt said. “She was a little overweight. She was the kind of mom that everybody wanted. She volunteered for everything, made everything from scratch.
“My daughters know she was a very good woman, they know she was a great woman. They all wish they could have met her. It's very hard when you don't get to know people your family and parents loved.”
Stachelrodt was angry with her mother for neglecting to take her medicine for two days, but knows the oversight was not intentional.
“She took it every day. She took care of herself, but she just slipped, I guess,” she said.
The times Stachelrodt most misses her mother are when she's in the kitchen.
“When you're cooking and you wish you had mom's recipe, but it's in mom's head,” she said. “I just miss everything really. At least I had her for 14 years.”
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