Towards that goal, here is some timely advice from an unutterably dull, overweening, self-righteous bell end.
Jules Birch, founder of Works with Water Nutraceuticals, explains: “Following England in the World Cup is often a very stressful and all-absorbing experience. Football fans are likely to experience high blood pressure through stress, smoking, drinking and eating junk food, which directly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes”Apart from that, enjoy yourself ... if it's possible.
Alcohol
A man’s safe daily unit limit is 4, or just one pint of 4% or stronger lager. Every additional pint raises systolic blood pressure by another 4 mmHg, so just 5 pints takes blood pressure into red card territory. During the last World Cup in 2006, 815 million pints were sold in the UK, 60 million more than the previous June.
Anxiety
Episodes of anxiety cause dramatic spikes in blood pressure. If these temporary episodes occur frequently they can cause just as much damage to blood vessels and to major organs such as the heart and kidneys as consistently high blood pressure. Furthermore, when you’re anxious you're more likely to resort to other unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking and overeating.
Fast Food
For many of us, typical World Cup celebrations will include a large quantity of high calorie, salty party food, raising blood pressure even more. To maintain a healthy level, Jules Birch from Works with Water Nutraceuticals recommends an adult should eat no more than 6g of salt a day, and that any food with more than 20g total fat or 5g saturated fat per 100g of food should be avoided completely. Unfortunately, one of Britain’s half time favourites, pizza, often contains 15g saturated fat and at least 3g of salt.
Or, you could avoid it altogether seeing as the game "distract[s] the populace from political injustice and compensate[s] them for lives of hard labour".
And we always thought watching a football match was a fairly uncomplicated matter, eh. Who knew?
