High Blood Pressure Can Be Controlled

It is very easy to come out of you Doctors Surgery (or Healthcare Practitioners Surgery) after you have been diagnosed with High Blood Pressure and admit defeat totally. It is the easiest option to take, to just sit back and say to yourself “OK, I’ll have to come to terms with the pills then” but why should you when with a little bit of effort you can control this condition that you have?

It is probably the hardest of the options placed in front of you but isn’t the end result worth it?


It all really boils down to how badly you want it?


If your High Blood Pressure is largely brought about by being slightly over weight then isn’t the bonus of not only looking and feeling better when you lose the pounds but you actually feel a lot better from the inside out as well?


Believe me it does feel good and you do feel great afterwards.


The one important thing that you have to try understand right from the start is what are the main contributory factors that brought about the High Blood Pressure in the first place? This may not always be totally possible to find out and it might indeed be almost impossible to get by without some form of medication for the rest of your life but it is a target that is well worth aiming for.


In my case when I was diagnosed with High Blood Pressure my initial Blood Pressure reading was 216 over 160! A little on the high side I must admit and looking back on it, being told of how high my high blood pressure was at the time made me feel slightly intimidated if not a little worried.


I try not to sound too glib about this whole episode because the reading was extremely high and was (as I found out afterwards) extremely dangerous but I guess it was my ignorance of the whole condition that initially got me through that particular few days.


Concentrated and enforced bed rest, plus medication brought the blood pressure levels down to manageable proportions and then I was able to start to plan my way forward from there. Initially the medication was a mixture of amlodipine, bendroflumethiazide to act as a slight diuretic to make sure that water retention was not a major issue and additional cause of blood pressure.


Finally after a few months they prescribed a small amount of one of the new wonder drugs the Medical Fraternity is going on about – one of the statins. In my case Pravastatin.


I was diagnosed with HBP in June 2001 and since then my BP levels have never been over 130/140 over 80/87. I am 48 and so quite frankly these levels would be right on the button if I can keep maintaining them.


However over the past two years the levels have been constant and my last reading was 120 over 80 and I am at present, in consultation with my Doctor, experimenting with reducing the medication.


As of the time of this first part of the article, We have managed to reduce the amlodipine and I am just taking the “Bendro” plus the statin. I have to say that increased exercise and a slight change of diet have helped. In part two of this article I will go into more detail of how I have managed to bring this all about and also the plans for the future.

So to recap. You can reduce your Blood Pressure naturally but in most cases with medication and you can do something positive about keeping it down as well.
Stephen Morgan is an independent journalist writing for a number of websites. His latest projects include Living with High Blood Pressure, High Blood Pressure Pressure and Personal Bankruptcy

Author: Stephen Morgan
Article Source: http://www.article99.com

Investment Banking Salaries: Just How High Are They?

Just how much do investment bankers actually earn? Most of the people who want to break into investment banking have no idea how much money is really involved.

Sure, the Managing Directors and other senior people make several million a year on average; group heads can make $10 million or more. And the CEO of an investment bank can make upwards of $20 million, with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein making over $70 million in 2007.

But what does an entry-level investment banker - an investment banking analyst - actually make? Making six figures as a 23-year old just out of college is nice, but if you have to work 120 hours per week, you can't possibly be making that much per hour, right?

I honestly didn't know, so I had to investigate this and do some math myself. Could you actually make more working at McDonald 's than you could at Goldman Sachs, at least on an hourly basis?

For investment banking analysts, the best case scenario ever happened in 2007. Base salaries were $60,000 and bonuses were $90,000, for a total of $150,000 in compensation. Again, not bad for a 23-year old 's first "real-world job."

But what about the hours? Typically, entry-level bankers work around 90-100 hours per week in their first year. This could be off by a bit, but we'll go with it for now.

With 52 weeks of work per year (nope, no vacation) and 90 hours per week, you would have earned $32.05 per hour in the 2006-2007 year. If you had worked 100 hours, that would have dropped to $28.85.

Even if you had worked 140 hours a week, every week, you would still be at $20.60 per hour. And realistically it 's impossible to work that much consistently, so you could have only done better than that.

But times have not always been that good. After the Nasdaq crash and at the start of the last major recession, investment banking took a turn for the worst and bonuses disappeared.

In 2001-2002, Analysts were lucky to get $10,000 for their bonuses. They still worked a lot, but mostly on marketing and pitching clients rather than doing deals and bringing in revenue.

A $10,000 bonus and $60,000 salary means $14.96 per hour at 90 hours a week. Believe it or not, that 's still above McDonald 's wages and is actually not even that bad relative to a lot of jobs in the US.

But if you had worked 140 hours per week, consistently, back then? You would have made 9.62 per hour.

According to a Wiki Answers page on McDonald 's , the wage is $9.30/hour for those under 17 and $9.57/hour after "4 months of training."

This is a very low wage, and it looks like even in the worst possible years of investment banking, hourly analyst wages never dropped this low.

Actually, the above is not strictly true. What if you earned $0 for the bonus and only made the base salary of $60,000 while working 140 hours each week?

That would be $8.24 per hour. Finally: below McDonald 's wages. So theoretically it is possible to earn less than a McDonald 's worker as an investment banking analyst, though not terribly likely.

It could only happen if you worked a ridiculous amount in the very worst years of investment banking and got absolutely nothing for your bonus.

Even with a looming US recession, this scenario seems unlikely to return anytime soon. So your hourly wages as an investment banking analyst should be safe.

About the Author

Ian Spellfield, a former investment banker, advises students and young professionals on understanding investment banking and how to earn high investment banking salaries.