10.) Getting stressed out. Taking on much more than you can handle at work can give you a lot of unnecessary stress that sticks with you long after you leave the office. Stress has been found to cause several ailments, hypertension among them.

What you can do is pace your work throughout the day, doing the harder tasks earlier on in the day.

9.) Worrying too much. This causes anxiety which has been proven to raise blood pressure. Making this a habit can cause as much damage as chronic hypertension, some experts say.

Meditation, yoga, or massage, can be some of the common remedies you can do to reduce anxiety.

8.) Eating the wrong things. Whether or not you're overweight, and whether or not you exercise regularly, taking in a lot of the bad stuff can cause your blood pressure to rise.

Cholesterol, trans fats, and salt are the "bad stuff" that we consume. You can use the new food guide pyramid as a guideline to help you, and your blood pressure, get back on track.

7.) Lack of exercise. We spend most of the day sitting down, at work, school, or at home. This can lead to obesity, and obesity can lead to hypertension.

Increase physical activity by walking the last few minutes to work, go up or down using the stairs, and play a sport during the weekends.

6.) Being overweight. This is the primary reason for the previous two ways to get hypertension. Unhealthy foods and lack of exercise will force your heart to work double time to deal with all that extra weight.

A healthy eating and exercise regimen should gradually help you ease into your ideal weight (and blood pressure).

5.) Too much caffeine. A lot of people rely on coffee to keep them energized the whole day. What they don't know is that caffeine has been proven to increase blood pressure temporarily, and the more they drink coffee in one day, the more it becomes sustained.

Limit coffee intake to two cups (24 oz.) a day, and you will be okay.

4.) Binge drinking. With all the stress and anxiety that we have, we tend to look for something to help us cope, and more often than that, it is alcohol. Binge drinking is not good for your blood vessels because too much alcohol constricts the vessels and raises your blood pressure by about 10%. Limit your alcohol intake to a glass of wine or a can of beer a day to avoid this, especially when you already have hypertension.

Of course, we can just skip all these and just follow my suggestions in #1, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So here are the top three ways:

3.) Smoking. Each stick you consume makes your blood pressure to increase by 5-10 mm Hg. Also, the nicotine decreases the amount of oxygen in the blood, making your heart work double time to keep the body's cells healthy.

Stopping this habit will give you health benefits within minutes, instantly.

2.) Not getting enough sleep. People who get less than six hours of sleep are twice more likely to suffer from hypertension than those who get more than six hours.

If you don't get enough sleep, your heart will work overtime to make you cope up with the energy that you need. If you are getting less than six hours of sleep a day, you should at least take midday catnaps. These have been found to reduce the risk of heart disease.

And the number one reason for hypertension?

1.) Not using my hypertension program. This is serious - I've advised my clients to follow my tips on how to avoid the first nine items, but the only thing that made them lower their blood pressure to ideal levels is when they did the simple exercises in my hypertension program.