High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, researchers have identified steps to help keep it within the healthy range (90/60 to 120/90). One of these steps could be to take a 500 mg vitamin C supplement. Although our requirements are well below this number (75 to 90 mg), a report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is the first to show the effect of 500 mg of Vitamin C to moderately reduce blood pressure.

The study and results
To shed insight upon the connections between vitamin C supplements and blood pressure levels, researchers analyzed and combined data from 29 previous randomised, controlled trials on this topic. The median length of the studies was eight weeks and the median dose of vitamin C was 500 mg per day.

Here are the following findings :

·      In all participants, vitamin C supplementation reduced systolic blood pressure—the top number in a reading—by an average of 3.84, and reduced diastolic blood pressure—the bottom number—by an average of 1.48
·      In participants particularly with high blood pressure, vitamin C supplementation lowered systolic blood pressure by 4.85, and lowered diastolic blood pressure by 1.67

Tips to maintain healthy blood pressure

·      It’s important to know your numbers. High blood pressure has no obvious and clearly apparent symptoms. The only way to find out about your blood pressure is to get it checked.
·      Eat well. Base your diet around lots of fresh vegetables and fruit and include two or three servings of dairy daily, and not necessarily the low-fat version. Good fat is taken out and replaced with sugar! Eat no more than a few servings of red meat per week, preferably high quality, organically raised. If it’s not in your budget, just leave it out.
·      Forget table salt. A few flakes of sea salt will do the trick. Limit processed foods high in sodium (salt), and up your potassium intake. You can do this by including green leafy vegetables, beans and lentils, low-sodium tomato juice and sauce, oranges and orange juice, prunes and plums, bananas, apricots and raisins.
·       Keep physically active. Walk wherever your feet take you. Leave your car in the drive way. That will help you keep blood pressure lower, it will help you control your weight, which is quite important because being overweight is a high blood pressure risk factor. Enjoy life!

Now comes the boring part: pill popping. ! It is estimated that 5 million people in the US have heart failure, and with each decade the risk doubles. I hope I have your attention! You have tried, and failed, to get your high blood pressure under control. You kicked butt but now the tables are turned and your physician is arguably kick starting you into compliance. This will be the beginning of a trial and error period for you and your doctor: will you be able to tolerate this or that pill, will it help your blood pressure or won’t it? There’s no guarantee. We might as well have a look what is out there.

Diuretics

There are a bewildering variety of diuretics that treat a variety of conditions. Here I’ll be concerned with diuretics for high blood pressure which lower the amount of sodium in your body. So-called loop diuretics and thiazides work independently of their diuretic effect. Other mechanisms than those of reducing the amount of water in your body are involved. You won’t need as much medication as those that reduce blood pressure by having you run to the toilet. These two types of medication can have unpleasant side effects such as lassitude, or lethargy, including thirst, muscle cramps and low blood pressure! Spironolactone (Aldactone) or furosemide (Lasix) may cause much more serious side effects, such as arrhythmia, muscle weakness, coma, seizures, stupor…..

ACE Inhibitors

Angiotension-converting enzyme inhibitors also lower your blood pressure and improve the pumping ability of your heart. Popular names are enalapril (Vasotec), lisinopril (Zestril), ramipril (Altace) or captopril (Capoten). How do these drugs work? Imagine a garden hose. It’s stiff, hard, has shrunk to a smaller diameter, and you’re eager to water your lawn. Crank on the water pressure! Because that’s what it takes. Now put this chemical in the water supply and your garden hose will relax. Opened up the water will flow much easier and your garden will turn green again!

Beta Blockers

Such as such as carvedilol (Coreg) and metoprolol (Lopressor). Personally I have benefited from them. If you’re a bit on the anxious side at times, this will certainly help reduce that awfully fast and hard thumping poor heart of yours. They work by blocking adrenaline and noradrenaline in certain parts of your body. But still, you don’t want to be on permanently. Side effect include an inability to exert yourself. Or with quite some discomfort. It’s like putting the breaks on while driving your car.

Anticoagulants,

such as warfarin (Coumadin), to reduce the risk of blood clots that could cause a heart attack or stroke. So you have your choice…or doctors orders, depending on how well you tolerate these. Natural Methods of Lowering High Blood Pressure is Still the Best in the Long Term.

If  you have heart disease, you will have paid attention to your symptoms and you will be in treatment for it. But don’t bet on having those tell tale symptoms until it is too late. Heart failure doesn’t mean your heart is failing. It’s the pumping power that is failing: lacking the power to pump blood at an adequate rate for supply of oxygen and nutrients, your precious juice moves slower through the body on the way to the heart. In response to that slowness pressure builds up in the heart. What other can your heart do in response than stretch like an overblown balloon? Your heart chambers bag out as we can readily imagine, or become stiff and thick. A vicious cycle.

Your hear muscle adapts to cope with the changes, but not for the better. You know what happens at your grandkid’s birthday party: the little terror keeps on blowing and blowing that cool balloon, and eventually pop it goes. Bagged out. Unable to pump nicely, the way we expect, your kidneys try to compensate by storing water in your limbs, lungs and other organs. I mean blood is thicker than water, we say…Eventually you’ll notice this fluid retention in your legs, abdomen and bum, but you might not have caught on yet! You just thought you put on some weight! Naturally, you say, your body is slowing down a bit.

In the meantime, unbeknownst to you, your body is filling up with the fluid, and like the proverbial drop in the bucket, it is just a matter of time before that last drop will come and get you. Your lungs are congested and you’re drowning. You’re wheezing some time

Before that event, and if you’re the type who’d rather not know, let your doctor tell you it’s…bronchitis! After all, you hardly ever go to the doctor, you have no intimate relationship with them, and you’re both wildly guessing at this point. Your half-full glass philosophy will keep you on an even keel, and I am sure although doctors are known for imagining they have all the diseases they encounter while training, it really does helps not to think of the worst first. So it is bronchitis, strange but well, they are the doctors after all.

Before I continue on this road tomorrow, I’ll stress the fact that it IS important to keep fit, to exercise as long as one can – and in addition – it IS important to keep one’s blood pressure as low as possible. To recap, the heart is under greater pressure, therefore the blood can’t deliver what the body needs, your kidneys respond by withholding water that your body stores in extremities, organs, and your lungs. In response to this challenge, try to lower your blood pressure at all cost and lower it naturally. Of course with this disease you’ll be taking many pills to contain the situation for as long as possible, but it never hurts to go just that extra mile.

…to be continued

Is there anybody still out there who during dark winter months remembers coughing, spluttering, sniffing and sneezing, heaving feverishly, unable to get out of bed and there was no relief? No pill to take except chicken soup, Grandma’s old stand by? I do, but then again, I grew up in the old world where medication was not available for your every little ache and pain – your ailments were just that – insignificant, and you got over it in due time. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. And I’m still here.

Those Halcyon days, however, are over by a long shot where you felt victorious for fighting your inner demons without any intervention from Big Pharma. I am not saying I miss all those times, but when it comes to pain relief, the pain is in the taking what you take. Aspirin was all we had, the universal panacea since Hippocratic’ times, and it delivered what it promised. It gave us relief of pain, fever, headaches, etc. and even I can appreciate the slogan Bayer coined for it ‘The wonder drug that does wonders.’ Millions of people now take Aspirin every day to prevent heart attacks and doctor’s order to ‘take 2 Aspirins and call me in the morning’ suggests that you have survived another night and are fit enough to tell your doctor all about it.

But I get carried away with the virtues of this little pill. Because for every virtue, there’s the opposite, and that is vice. An aspirin is an aspirin is an aspirin. In the body of the wrong person, it can wreak havoc as badly as any other pill. Bayer would like you believe that their brand is superior, and they’ll charge you for it royally – or big bucks as they say over the pond. After all, somebody has to pay for all those flashy ads. The rise of choices of pills for every different ache and pain has been phenomenal. There’s big money in them there pills. So we come to one of them, the NSAIDs, anti-inflammatory drugs.

I remember arriving in California in 1980, getting a prescription for ‘xxxxxx,’ a nifty, oval-shaped little capsule that truly took pain away; you know, that inconvenient time of the month when doctors tell you that you could well be temporarily insane. Well, I had been with the pain of it all in the old world at least, and I lurved that drug! And in no time this wonderful drug became available OTC – over the counter. First you had to ask your pharmacist to hand it over to you. Now the shelves of your local drug store are groaning under the weight of that plentiful choice. Have been taking them faithfully over the years, treating myself to pain relief from minor pains to major injuries. Now what do I end up with? High blood pressure! Or drug induced hypertension, as the professionals call it. This ain’t no way to lower your blood pressure naturally!

So let me figure out what it exactly does to my body so I can appreciate the danger of taking these little puppies over a life time. Us women out there hate suffering from (yes!) fluid retention, the water in our bodies or mere certain places of our bodies (we all know where!)where it just sticks and wobbles like Jello or Blancmange for you discerning Brits. I have seen plenty of ‘water relief pills/tablets’ on offer at the local drug store/pharmacy so this is an issue. So here you are: holding a pack of ibuprofen and a pack of water relief pills to take your monthly misery away. ‘You don’t want to do that!’ your friendly check-out person warns you? No! Highly unlikely! Ibuprofen causes fluid retention, decreasing the function of your kidneys, therefore raising your blood pressure which of course puts greater stress on your poor heart and kidneys. This ain’t no way to treat a lady….or high blood pressure naturally!

There have been plenty of studies in women who had no high blood pressure to begin with, but after prolonged use of ibuprofen/NSAIDs ended up with hypertension. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9074128/ns/health-heart_health/t/are-painkillers-risks-worth-benefits/ Of course sometimes the risk doesn’t outweigh the benefit. Think of yourself with such  conditions that are truly painful: arthritis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, gout, or even psioritic arthritis. Pain is the name of the game, and I don’t know if that kind of prolonged, debilitating pain can be borne without accepting the risks of taking pain relief. Of course not, so you accept hypertension as the necessary evil for the benefit of pain relief. And you’ll have to accept taking medication for your drug induced hypertension. Not an easy road to take, but here you’re sitting stranded anyway. The consensus is: if your pain is bearable (and that is certainly pain in the eye of the beholder) hold off on those pain killers. Use them infrequently so you get the best benefit from them. Or better, try to lower high blood pressure naturally. Not just high blood pressure, but other normal, everyday ailments, aches and pains. Chicken soup will do…