Control Your Blood Pressure

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!

Heart failure as a result of an enlarged heart can be decreased or prevented in those with high blood pressure. Considering that 20% of all Americans with high blood pressure (that makes 12 million of them) have LVH, (left ventricular hypertrophy) they are all at risk of heart failure. NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell researchers (JAMA, 2004 and 2006), demonstrated in their study that prevention is the key to further risk to cardiac complications such as heart attack, stroke, atrial fibrillation and death.

“The message for high-blood-pressure patients is that by preventing or reversing enlarged heart, there is an added benefit, over and above any reduction in blood pressure, of lowering risk for heart failure,” says the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Peter Okin, director of clinical affairs and professor of medicine in the Greenberg Division of Cardiology at Weill Cornell Medical College and a cardiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070913090402.htm

And so the story goes again, ad nauseam: adults who don’t smoke, maintain their healthy weight, get plenty of exercise and physical activity; eat lots of fresh vegetable, leave out processed meats have a fighting chance. What more can you do? Natural Methods of Lowering Blood Pressure is Still the Best in the Long Term. Forget table salt. Have a few crystals of sea salt. Eat whole grain breakfast cereals for breakfast. On the other hand, if you want to stay fuller longer because you’re watching your weight, go for eggs with a bit of cheese. High protein and a small amount of fat makes the proverbial ‘King’s breakfast!’

Leave out all sodas that contain high fructose corn syrup or artifical sweeteners. Another benefit to all this is to those people with borderline diabetes. A healthy heart is a prerequisite for the health of the body as a whole. Live your life to the fullest with joy and commitment to health. Small but life long, life altering changes should give you the confidence in your body, mind and soul. Enjoy!

An enlarged heart can either be a  disease or a reaction to how you use your body. Yesterday I mentioned that serious and prolonged endurance exercise will ‘strengthen’ your heart…. as we’ve been told for a few decades now. But you might as well call it an ‘enlarged’ heart. Why not? Does the heart know the difference? Recent attention has been paid to highly trained athletes dropping dead at a young age. We may be in for a surprise in the very near future. In addition, our ancestors couldn’t afford to burn such vast amounts of calories without paying for it not even in the long run. Extreme endurance training is perhaps a modern condition of opportunity: that of the ‘overly full larder.’ I know that some African tribes stalk an animal for hours on end, but they don’t suffer from a full larder.

In the early stages symptoms are not easily noticed, or in some people symptoms do not necessarily appear. Usually, at the start only the lower chambers of the heart are affected. Wait too long though and the upper chambers will go too. By then you’ll know because the heart won’t be able to pump the necessary amount of blood to fulfill the demands of your body. Shortness of breath is the most obvious first sign you notice yourself – while you’re walking; waking up short of breath at night, and eventually, your ankles will be swollen. This is because fluid can build up behind the heart and store in the rest of the body, causing weight gain. The fluid also builds up in the lungs, causing wheezing, which is the mechanism of shortness of breath.

Shortness of breath being the most obvious symptom, there are other signs to watch out for. As mentioned above, weight gain is to be watched. It may be called obesity but if you are prescribed diuretics, you’ll notice you weren’t fat at all. You flush out all the fluids stored up in your body. For a while you stop wheezing, which will come as a great relief to you. Sleeping will be somewhat improved, but I am getting ahead of myself. Accompanied by ‘obesity’ is sleep apnea, where you suddenly stop breathing and wake up with a horrible startle because your body needs oxygen and your lungs need to fill up with vital air!

High blood pressure is, of course, a major culprit for an enlarged heart. With it come palpitations, chest pain, coughing and heart racing, or what I call ‘tripping’ – an uncomfortable feeling of going helter-skelter for want of a better expression. When that happens, don’t add panic to fear – breathe easy! Keep going. Calm yourself. Last but not least is coronary artery disease, the No. 1 killer in America and the Western world. Plaque builds up in the arteries and obstruct or even block efficient blood flow. Tomorrow I’ll be looking at what you can do about the condition before it becomes a disease – controlling your blood pressure aggressively, naturally is one way. Yes we can!

Last night a guy called on the toll free line, very hyper, asking for the BreatheEasy music. He told me he’d been a boxer, very fit and muscular, but then quit almost overnight to start his security business. ‘I get out of bed, get in the car, get on the desk, get in the car, get home and go to bed,’ he described his life style. ‘I have high blood pressure, it’s 190/120!’ ‘That’s quite high, haven’t you been to your doctor?’ I asked. ‘Yes, but I don’t like to take the medication, I am desperate to try the natural way, breathing naturally to lower my blood pressure.!’ Still sounding very stressed, I asked him how old he was. ‘Early thirties,’ he said. ‘I also have an enlarged heart, and I’m too scared to go back to find out I might die soon.’ After a long talk, we agreed it’s best to change life style, go to the doctor and talk about options and last but not least, do the breathing exercizes to get his blood pressure under control.

An enlarged heart is not a disease in itself but a physical sign of accompanying diseases. Those diseases are myriad and will be listed below. Not all conditions lead to an enlarged heart, and treatment will depend on the underlying cause:

Alcoholism; Amyloidosis (an abnormal protein deposit in organs and tissue); anemia; arrythmia; cocaine and crack abuse; heart attack, heart disease and heart valve disease;

autoimmune diseases; thyroid disease; high blood pressure and many more. However, recently it has been understood that athletic endurance training such as marathons and Iron Man challenges in all it’s variations may cause an enlarged heart. Just as body muscles are being worked, the heart is a muscle and reacts to training or overtraining by becoming larger. Even medications can be responsible for an enlarged heart. Pregnancy, viral infections and nutritional deficiencies are further causes.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about symptoms of an enlarged heart and what to do about it. But like my late night caller insisted, he wanted to lower his blood pressure naturally. You can’t go wrong with it. It will also relieve his stress, an obviously related cause for his high blood pressure. By the time we were finished, he was breathing much lighter, much slower and he was a bit more hopeful again. Good luck to him. It’s a commitment to his own well being and health.

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…

You have the silent disease, but you don’t need to suffer in silence, your doctor tells you. Here you are sitting in his, or her office, and you’re told that you have joined the majority of humanity that suffers from hypertension – but relax! There are plenty of drugs on the market that will alleviate that pesky little problem. After all, did you even know you had hypertension? It’s the silent disease, with no symptoms really, until maybe years later when, finally, the damage has been done and you’re beyond hope. Now you just may feel the pressure of stress on you – your poor heart races, you sweat, you may have palpitations, you’re breathless! But you don’t relate that to high blood pressure, no! You’re in the prime of your life!

However, now you’ve been told! It’s official. You’re now the perfect candidate for Big Pharma! Go make ‘em happy and take your pick of a wide choice of drugs. After all, that’s human progress, isn’t it? Your doctor will be more than happy to get you on the right path to health again. So you start out on say diuretics. Take them in the morning your doc tells you or you’ll be up all night going to the bathroom. The accompanying fatigue that your sleeplessness might bring on is simply doubled because fatigue is already a know and common side effect. When driving anywhere, make sure you have  that empty bottle under your seat. Sooner than later you’ll have to make use of it and you’ll be glad I told you. Trust me, David was on diuretics, and the inconvenience of it certainly didn’t have us in stitches. More like in ditches.

So in desperation, you may try beta blockers. Not so bad, I said at the beginning. Being a little hyper, it can calm your heart rate and the loudness of it all; indeed you may feel positively relieved that your heart is not thumping! However, if your doctor tells you that changes in life style also do the trick, then you’ll find out that beta blockers don’t like life style changes. Go for a run, go for a jog or a fast paced walk. You’ll feel like lead. In your legs and in the pit of your stomach. Cold hands and feet? Yes, like prickly ice caps your fingernails will feel, if you feel anything. Oh, and erection problems for you wonderful men out there. But we don’t want to mention that, do we? That’s just a side effect, and who cares when your life and well being  is at stake.

So what more choices do we have out there? ACE inhibitors, yes! Your blood vessels relax because the ACE inhibitor blocks the formation of the hormone that causes them to narrow in the first place. However, you won’t relax for long because you’ll be plagued by a dry hacking cough, and believe me, it had me wretching like when I had the dreaded whooping cough in my Halcyon years. It felt like the coughing canceled out any beneficial effect the drug had on my vessels. I was busting my ears with the pain of that hacking cough. But for your own good, this you won’t really have in large print from your beloved pill provider. Big Pharma only loves your money. And lovingly serenades your doctor. After all he’s the middle man. More dollar for dollar is spent on advertising to get you, dearest (potential) patient, than on research for instance. Yes. Investors have to be fed, clothed and housed in grand style first and foremost. Hospitals and clinics and great health care are incidentals. But I digress. http://www.alternet.org/story/155331/ask_your_doctor_if_this_big_pharma_scam_is_right_for_you:_the_dangers_of_a_drugged_up_america/

So do I want you scared? Yes, scared of easy answers as this pill popping solution suggests. It isn’t. I know, there are plenty of patients who’re sadly well beyond any natural intervention, and I don’t want them getting off the wagon. Life is hard enough, and choices become limited when the going gets tough and your heart and health has already suffered beyond repair. But repair itself your heart can, your precious big, warm and so far beating heart. Life style choices we hear about every day. Nothing new. Diet, tick that off: no fat, low fat; the DASH diet! High in calcium, potassium and magnesium. You can buy that stuff anywhere. Or eat a banana. Don’t smoke, duh. Exercise. I’d go further and do like I do: I ditched the car when David died and started walking for my supper and all other victuals. Has done my blood pressure enormously good. And the inconvenience of it all: imagine, you can’t or won’t want to carry more than you can eat and drink for a couple of days. Not being able to drive for that last bit of treat I might fancy late at night! Not on foot, dear Abby! That’ll lower your blood pressure naturally, I might say!

The last bit of wonderful experience I can pass on, and this is no advice – after all, I’m a long shot away from being a doctor, is this: Music! Listen to music, but not just any old music. Slow breathing with music. It’ll make you breathe in and out, slower and longer, calmer and more relaxed. Slow breathing with music will lower your blood pressure naturally. 15 minutes a day and that is enough it’ll scare the vampires from your door (thank you, Frankie goes to Hollywood, I’ve even tried it with his music) or rather the scary stuff that hardens your arteries, the unknown and known causes of high blood pressure. Get on the ball when you reach that certain age, whenever that’ll be and get your daily dose of je ne sais quoi, whatever that means! Go for it before Big Pharma has you by the proverbial balls. Happy and healthy breathing, I say!