Control Your Blood Pressure

When it comes to diet, most people think of it as deprivation. Diet is restriction, boredom, it is prescribed by some so-called expert (how many books have you bought on the subject and yet got nowhere?). Sadly, most of us have lost our way, we’re unable to trust ourselves what is right and good for us. We’re no longer self-sufficient, foraging Neanderthals, neither are we evolved enough to be linked up to some magic tube that feeds us all the right stuff in the just right amount, with the benefit of no thinking and planning necessary. So this gives some of us considerable anxiety. What is right and how do you do it?

Exercise is diet. No way around it. The easiest diet there is around, I might say. Take it from me. I have ditched my car. Not an easy choice. I am not telling you to do the same. In some places, commuting is the only way out of Sleepyville. So you just get out of the car earlier and walk a bit longer to your destination. The proverbial 20 minutes a day are a joke. But you could go for a sprint a day. A high intensity 3 minute workout is apparently just as good. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251 Imagine the time you have left over to do all the cooking from scratch! I ran this morning. I enjoy it, that’s why I do it. Then, just to get my hair cut, run errands (!) I walked into town, did what I had to do and had a look around. After that the long trek back (10 km, if that helps) Good, that’s done.

The next specifically smart diet is this: avoid having anything in your kitchen cupboards that make you weak in the knees, especially after a hard day, whatever a hard day means to you. Physical exertions has made me weak in the knees, and I have nothing in the cupboards that I can take off the shelf and put in my mouth, pronto. Nothing there that doesn’t need to be prepared and cooked. I am patting my back. Well done, I have painted myself into a very healthy corner. No goodies, no car, and quite a way to walk to the nearest shop. So that diet is done and dusted.

So lets recap: exercise will lower your blood pressure naturally. At the moment I feel like the aforementioned foraging Neanderthal, but you don’t have to go as far! ‘Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health’ says the presenter of Horizon: The Truth about Exercise. The 3 minute sprint will do it for you. Then do diet again: have nothing in your cupboards that seduce you to fudge your healthy living. Treats now and again are allowed and welcome. Even I do it and enjoy it tremendously. But only once in a while. Aerobic fitness brings on the right weight brings on the right lower blood pressure naturally. What more do you want and need to do? Nada!

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!

If you belong to those people who believe that the right kind of climate greatly improves your physical health and mental well being, then this is for you: the ‘right climate?’ Lots of predictable sunshine for me! Isn’t there anything more reassuring getting out of bed in the morning and seeing the sun rise over the horizon – slowly, quietly, unencumbered by gray skies and clouds; reflecting back on the water (another must – living by the sea), nothing but blue sky, blue skies from now on… with a nod to Willy Nelson. Waves gently washing against the shore. Breathe in, breathe out, and there you have your natural solution to lowering your blood pressure. First thing in the morning!

I have set the mood. Now imagine yourself in Southern California – LA, if you like, or more likely Venice, by the Beach. The setting or climate is igual, as they say. The conquistadores must have thought they were coming home to roost, so does the environment remind me of Southern Spain. But hike up to Mount Wilson, the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, you’ll start getting a whiff of humanity, or rather it’s  incessant activities. You smell gasoline. It hangs around on some days like a dull blanket suspended over the valley where Los Angeles has sprawled out. Heart healthy living? Go clutch your heart at the thought of it. And it’s not getting any better. The cars are not getting smaller, nor are the people.

Lifestyle, I am afraid, cancels out climate. Not for all, of course – how could I be so presumptuous, but even the ‘healthy’ may show strange preoccupations (size 0 anyone?).The pace for Southern Californians is fast and furious; the diet is fast food and gluttonous. Eat all you can buffets are taken advantage of as if there were no tomorrow. Chinese buffets warn you to eat and get out, not have a marathon session for 4 long and filling hours only to return for more. A culture that can kill you. Not for the faint hearted. Competition is the name of the game. Muscle-bound men, and women, grace the scenery at Venice Beach. Pumping iron in front of gawping tourists may be inspirational, but who’ll be lowering their blood pressure naturally, if not you?

Or me. Sitting sedately here on the Southern coast of Spain, life beats to a different drum. 3 hour siestas are still common. The sun beats down on you. Shops close. From 1:30 until 5:30. 4 hours even! Dentists, doctors, bankers, in short professionals, go to local restaurants and enjoy heart healthy food: Lettuce with slices of onion and pale pink tomatoes. A bit of olive oil and vinegar on it. No more. No artery clogging gunk. Some olives. Gazpacho, fresh cooked fish, small pieces of meat cooked a la plancha. El pan without butter! Builders, plumbers, mechanics get to do the same. At their local poligono. No need to drive. Cheap menus del dia serve what’s fresh, in season and on hand. With a bottle of raunchy red wine to pass around, or in summer, tinto de verano. Red raunchy wine and lemonade. With lots of ice. Yum!

Here on the Mediterranean the animal has a shorter life span. Cordero (lamb) has no juicy green grass to feast on such as British sheep can call their own. When they’re finally on your plate, their chops are as big as your palm. Here on the Med, feeding and growing season is short. The chops are as tiny as fingernails, and you’ll have to eat a dozen or so to make up for the difference. If you’re so inclined. The whole animal is still precious, and all its internal bits are prepared and eaten. Want not waste not. Food waste and gluttony has arrived with the pressures of modern life, but you’ll have to look very carefully, rather than be poked in the eye by it. The Mediterranean diet and life style still comes out on top for lowering your blood pressure naturally. Culture comes out on top. Climate is only a secondary contribution.