Q My family has a history of strokes and heart attacks at an early age. I am 47 and my doctor has diagnosed high blood pressure and now I'm terrified that I'm next. What can I do to prevent this?

A Your doctor and practice nurses will be able to give you much help and advice with obvious measures such as stopping smoking, losing weight, taking regular healthy exercise, eating a low fat, low sugar and high fibre diet and avoiding excess salt intake. These are the mainstays of prevention and beyond that you might need your cholesterol checking and also diabetes should be ruled out by a simple blood test.

More holistically, I think it's important to understand how blood pressure might arise and it's interesting that you say that you're "terrified".

Most people express tension, anxiety or fear in their bodies somehow. For some it's in their spines often causing bad backs or necks, for others it's in their chests causing asthma or other lung diseases. For others still it's in their guts causing stomach ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome. In your family's case the pattern might be to hold tension in the cardiovascular system which pushes up blood pressure and can damage the heart and blood vessels. Other processes can be involved but very often this pattern relates to chronic worrying, suppressed anger or general tension in life.

Along with the lifestyle changes mentioned above, think about how you manage things in life and ask yourself is there underlying tension? One of the most neglected, but important, preventive measures is proper relaxation and a calmer perspective on life. Many of us know that lack of peace and relaxation is the underlying cause for many of our health problems.