Medical App & Medical Advice with Hello Doctor

The A B C of blood pressure

Think of high blood pressure and you might think of red-faced angry people with steam coming out of their ears right before they clutch their chest and have a heart attack. It’s a classic image but not an entirely accurate one. High blood pressure certainly does place you at higher risk of a heart attack, but there is a lot more to the condition. Continue reading “The A B C of blood pressure”

The Big Salt Round Up

In partnership with Salt Watch, this season on the Hello Doctor TV show we brought you everything you need to know about salt: why too much is dangerous, how much your body actually needs, how much is too much, and how to substitute salt in recipes.

To help make it easier for you, here are our top Salt Watch blog posts from episode 1. Enjoy!

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The Dress Red Campaign

There’s a common misconception that heart disease is a “man’s disease”, but in South Africa, heart disease and stroke kills more women than men.
While breast cancer is often perceived as the biggest health threat to women, heart disease and stroke are the greatest threats globally, killing more people every day than all cancers combined!
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Tricks to help you reduce your salt intake

Reducing your salt intake can be as easy as switching brands. Always check labels when shopping, and compare the sodium content of different brands and choose the one with the least amount of sodium. Look out for foods with the Heart Mark – these products have less sodium compared to other products and this lets you know it’s been approved as part of a heart healthy diet.

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Salt: Knowledge is power

Salt is often added to packaged or processed foods as a preservative or for flavour. Sometimes these foods don’t even taste particularly salty. For example, bread, cereals, hard/block margarines, gravy and soup powders, processed meat products like sausage, polony and pies, meat and vegetable extracts, and convenience meals are just some of the products containing hidden salt that can contribute to our salt intake. Of course, this means that your salt intake can be really high without you even knowing it. Stay one step ahead of hidden salt by reading product labels. Here’s a quick “how-to-guide” on understanding food label information. Continue reading “Salt: Knowledge is power”

How hypertension is hitting South Africa

When it comes to hypertension, there are many risk factors which work together to put an individual at risk. Besides family history and genetics, unhealthy lifestyle factors such as poor diet, being overweight or obese, smoking and being physically inactive, are major problems in South Africa, and increase the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, according to Dr Mungal-Singh, CEO of the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa.

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