Natural Cures for High Blood Pressure
Lecture by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Dr. Joseph Mercola: Hi. This is Doctor Mercola. I want to talk to you about a very common problem, so common in fact that one out of three of you watching this has it, and that clinical condition is called hypertension. Now that sounds like you might be tense, before I started med school that’s what- I was confused, and I think that many people have that confusion. But hypertension, of course, is actually high blood pressure. And although tension or anxiety can contribute to high blood pressure, certainly, it is for the most part no the primary reason why people have high blood pressure.
Let me give you some of the definitions first. Typically, you’re diagnosed as having high blood pressure if your blood pressure reading is above 120 over 80. The first number is what’s called the systolic and that typically should be below 120. The bottom number is called the diastolic and that typically should be below 80. So if you’re below those ranges, there’s not much of a concern. However, if you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure it’s important to understand that one of the most common risk factors for high blood pressure is weight. If you’re obese, that is going to increase your risk. But, interestingly, the way that we diagnose hypertension is through by taking your blood pressure.
That’s typically done by putting a cuff around your arm. So it’s important to understand that there are different cuffs. If you are large or especially very large, you’re going to require a larger cuff. When you get the blood pressure taken with a cuff, it’s very important that you look at the blood pressure cuff and make sure, they typically have marks, to make sure that when they wrap the cuff around that it’s within that normal range. If it’s not, then you need to find the right sized cuff. It actually goes the other way, too, so that if you are a very tiny or small child, you need to use a pediatric cuff. So that’s an important consideration.
It’s also important to understand that there are typically medications used to control this and the traditional approach, that is the major strategy. Hypertension is really almost a dream come true for drug companies, similar to cholesterol, in that it is a drug that typically doesn’t have signs or symptoms but that is that they have developed a number of treatments for that don’t change or modify or at all address the cause of the disease. In fact, to this day I remember reading in my medical physiology textbook, when we were studying hypertension, and it was called Guyton, the Guyton textbook of physiology, and it listed that ninety-five percent of the cause of hypertension is what they call idiopathic, they don’t know, but that’s just not true. We know what the cause of hypertension is. For the most part, it’s related to your body making too much insulin, it’s very similar to cholesterol. So when your body makes too much insulin, it causes your blood pressure to increase.
There are, fortunately, very simple ways to lower your insulin levels. And you know, folks, you can measure this. All you have to do is have your blood tested by your doctor, a fasting insulin level, and your insulin level you want to strive for is about two or three. If it’s five or certainly over ten, you have got a problem and you need to lower that. And, of course, you don’t lower it with drugs, you lower it with natural approaches. one of the most effective ways to do that is with exercise, a regular effective exercise program which consists of certainly aerobics, anaerobics like sprint burst types of exercising, strength training and ideally you’d want to have someone monitor and supervise your problem because it’s really vital that you get this right. But a good comprehensive holistic exercise program will go a long way towards reducing that. Ideally to do that you’re going to want to get to about an hour a day, somewhere in that range, but you want to work slowly and start slowly. So that is one of the most important ones.
The other is to cut out foods that are going to raise your insulin, and typically foods that are going to do that are sugar types of foods or grains, because they break down to sugars very rapidly, even whole grains, organic whole grains will do that. So if you have a high blood pressure, hypertension, high cholesterol or obesity, you want to lower those so that would be breads, pastas, rice, cereal, potatoes, even if they’re organic it’s still going to do the same thing. Until you get those under control, you want to stay away from those. Fruits are also found in those categories because those are high in carbohydrates.
The other thing you can do is make sure that you’re reducing the stress because that is a factor for some people and prayer or meditation or EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique is another useful thing. Another interesting new insight that is very clearly powerful and effective is to normalize your Vitamin D levels. I’ve got lots of information on Vitamin D, you’ve probably seen or read some of it, but it you haven’t then clearly examine that because Vitamin D is unquestionably associated with an increased risk for heart disease, and Vitamin D we know now, actually, lowers and normalizes your blood pressure. So that’s a good strategy.
The other thing you want to do is to make sure that your Omega-6 to Omega-3 fat ratio is correct. Most people have that ratio as about twenty five to one because we radically increase the amount of Omega-6 fats, so you want to make sure you lower the amount of vegetable oils in your diet and make sure you have a high quality source of Omega-3 fatty acids, that’s going to be really crucial.
Now, I also want to give you a warning. You know I’m opposed to taking medications and drugs and clearly the long term strategy is to get off all of your medications. But if you’re on a medication, you certainly want to do that with a supervised health care professional. If you have very high blood pressure, I hardly ever recommend the use of medications, but it is vital that you go on a medication to lower your blood pressure if it’s very high because stroke is real. People die from strokes every day and if your blood pressure is too high, you are at risk for developing a stroke. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone with a stroke, but it is not pretty to lose your brain cells. It tends to be permanent and irreversible, so you want to make sure that you’re not increasing your risk for that. So make sure you’re using a safe medication by a physician who’s going to monitor your with those until you’re able to implement these lifestyle changes that will allow you to slowly wean off the medications and get the cause of the problem addressed.
Hopefully this will provide you with some practical insights and some strategies that you or your family members can use to take care of this very common condition. |