High blood pressure (hypertension) Changing your lifestyle can go a long way toward controlling high blood pressure. Your doctor may recommend you eat a healthy diet with less salt, exercise regularly, quit smoking and maintain a healthy weight. But sometimes lifestyle changes aren t enough. In addition to diet and exercise, your doctor may recommend medication to lower your blood pressure. Your blood pressure treatment goal depends on how healthy you are. Young adults with even slightly above-normal blood pressure may be more likely to have heart problems later in life. Some people had slightly above-normal blood pressure (120/80 to 139/89) when they were still under age 30. This level is not high enough to be considered high blood pressure. It is known as prehypertension. The term prehypertension. It describes people with blood pressures between 120/80 and 139/89. Most of them did not have symptoms. The heart abnormalities were seen on echocardiograms. Get your blood pressure checked regularly. Even if it is less than 120/80, check your pressure at least once per year. And definitely don’t let more than 2 years go by without getting it checked. If your blood pressure is higher than 120/80, even on a single reading, take it seriously. And that’s true even if you are young. High blood pressure is a silent killer, often with no obvious or visible symptoms. The only way to find out if you have hypertension is through testing by your physician, who will make the diagnosis on the basis of two or more readings taken on different visits.