You track your steps, sleep and your heart rate. But when did you monitor your blood pressure levels last? Tracking your blood pressure is essential as it tells you how well your blood vessels handle the 2,000 gallons of blood your heart pumps in a day. But it turns out that blood pressure issue is more prevalent in people in the age group of 21 to 36. When your blood pressure levels rise, your blood vessels stiffen, forcing your blood pressure to become even higher. An ugly chain of inflammation, plaque build-up, stroke and heart attack follows this event. Here's what is believed to be the main culprits behind shooting blood pressure levels in millennials.

Wellness Trends Don't Make Millenials Healthy

You may think that the customised kombucha or cryotherapy can take you to the peak of wellness, but when it comes to your blood pressure, those so-called 'health-promoting trends' may not do much. Yes, the wellness trends promise great results, but only a few have long-term benefits. It would help if you sure stuck to your regular fitness routine to maintain a healthy weight and quit smoking, but it may not be wise blindly trust or follow anything that promises drastic results without getting to the facts. Long Office Work Hours Linked to Regular, Hidden High Blood Pressure: Study

Being Broke Breaks Millennials

You would be amazed to know that millennials carry more than four times debt than Xers do. Add stress to it; millennials get the bad rapport of the highest blood sugar levels of any generation. More than the pressure, it is the binge eating and cutting down on sleep that contributes to high blood pressure. Most of us may overlook the medical term hypertension for high blood pressure, but it literally boils down to 'hyper' and 'tension.' Home Remedy of the Week: Eat Dark Chocolate to Reduce High Blood Pressure or Hypertension

Junk Food Gives Them the Lifestyle Disease

If you eat home-cooked meals every day, you consume around 1,000 fewer calories. However, it turns out that average millennials eat out or buy takeout food five times a week which means that they devour into all the blood pressure-boosting sodium and calories that come along with it. Sodium can be particularly sneaky as it ends up in surprising ways in your food via your bread, pretzels and crackers. With all the junk food comes the extra weight which shoots up their blood pressure and thickens the heart muscle early. Smoky Environment Increase Risk of High Blood Pressure: Study

Millennials Don't Move!

Your heart needs to move blood through the body to keep things supple and functioning correctly. And between long commutes, labour-saving devices and more screen time, one gets no time to really move around. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the leading causes of high blood pressure and millennials seem to be trapped in it.

However, you can do away with this whole saga by making pretty simple lifestyle choices. Start with walking for 45 minutes every day and filling up your plate with more potassium. Hang out more with your BFFs as it turns out that friends help buffer stress and thus help curb any stress-related lifestyle disease.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 26, 2019 05:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).