“5 Million Ago” people in France “who have high blood pressure and don’t know it”, warned Tuesday, May 17, Professor Xavier Girerd, cardiologist and president of the High Blood Pressure Research Foundation. On the occasion of World Hypertension Day, this foundation offers vouchers worth 100 euros to encourage the French to self-test. “It’s a bit of a fun action to push people to do this very simple gesturehe explains. Not treating high blood pressure means exposing yourself to the risk of very serious so-called cardiovascular complications.
franceinfo: Is high blood pressure a disease that we do not detect enough?
Xavier Girard: High blood pressure is the most common disease on the planet. There are 10 million people who suffer from it in France and, this morning for example, there are 10 million people who are going to take at least one medicine to treat it. The problem is that there are 5 million who suffer from it and do not know it. However, not treating high blood pressure means exposing yourself to the risk of very serious so-called cardiovascular complications. The first being stroke, paralysis. Definitely worth spending four minutes testing for blood pressure. This is the slogan we have chosen at the Foundation in charge of arterial hypertension for this World Hypertension Day.
Why do you offer self-testing?
The problem is that there are fewer and fewer doctors who have the time to measure this blood pressure. This is why we have had the possibility for about twenty years to measure our own blood pressure, to do what is called self-screening. It requires having an automatic blood pressure monitor but it is very simple to measure its tension. We propose an action that lasts four minutes. I measure my blood pressure, I take the picture of the screen of the automatic blood pressure monitor. Then, I send the photo to a dedicated email address: [email protected]. I can thus receive a voucher for 100 euros. It’s a somewhat playful action to encourage people to do this very simple gesture. Many people are afraid to measure their blood pressure. They don’t know what to do next. We will not make a medical diagnosis with this game, you have to go see your doctor to be able to take care of high blood pressure.
Do you have to be in special conditions to take your blood pressure?
Smoking should be avoided within half an hour. Smoking raises blood pressure a little for half an hour. You also have to try to be calm and therefore not listen to bad news on the radio, for example.
Is hypertension easily curable?
We are very lucky to live in France because we have a medical fabric that can treat everyone’s hypertension. There is still an individual action: you have to take medicine every morning to treat your hypertension. For more than sixty years we have drugs that are very well known and very well evaluated. Some can give undesirable effects and many people can thus know that they are hypertensive and do not take their treatment, for example. This is called adherence issues. You just have to motivate people and there are more of them than before. The Covid-19 helped us because finally, people know today that you have to take care of your health. Measuring your blood pressure is taking care of your cardiovascular health. It’s not hypertension from stress but from the disease of the arteries linked to aging and being overweight. There are hypertensive families of parents to children. If your father or your mother had high blood pressure before the age of 50 and you are 30 or 40 yourself, you absolutely must be screened. If you’ve gained weight recently, you should. There are people who are in very good shape, who are very athletic and who are hypertensive. It’s not a drama either. We live very well, we can play sports, we can work with high blood pressure. But if we do nothing after ten years, we risk a very serious accident.