As evident from her Sunday appearance on the popular Bravo late night talk show ‘Watch What Happens: Live,’ actress Regina King definitely has it going on.
A great physique. A chic pixie ‘do. Glowing skin. A thriving Hollywood career.
Yep, to look at the ‘Southland’ star – who turns 40 on Saturday – you’d never guess that she is combating two health conditions that are thorns in the side of many African Americans: high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
“I definitely know that if I was not a very active person, I would have been diagnosed with it sooner. My sisters are not as active as me and all of them had been diagnosed with high blood pressure before I was,” says King, who was diagnosed in August.
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, occurs when the force of the blood against the artery wall becomes excessively high. It’s reportedly more prevalent in African Americans, with more than 40 percent affected by it, according to the American Heart Association. The medical community doesn’t have a definitive explanation behind hypertension’s higher occurrence in African Americans but does cite stress, obesity, alcohol overconsumption, physical inactivity, smoking and diabetes as controllable risk factors for it.
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article courtesy of BV Buzz.com
