Lower blood pressure without drugs....

Today's post: Friday, 8-1-2008

High blood pressure is both a warning sign that you have significant health problems that will get worse unless you take action AND high blood pressure can harm you directly if it stays too high or goes high enough.

Most doctors prescribe drugs for people they see who have high blood pressure.

The bad news is that most of the time, the quality of life issues from those drugs are so bad, many people refuse to keep taking them while those that do take them wish they didn’t have to. It feels like making yourself sick on purpose. And, it doesn’t help that many of these drugs tend to ruin your sex life.

Worse, some of these drugs cause real harm from fainting to type II diabetes to heart failure.

Even worse than that, sometimes even taking 3 of these mixed review drugs at the same time doesn’t reduce high blood pressure to desirable levels.

And, worst of all, taking the drugs without addressing the other health issues that may be causing the high blood pressure or that it will make worse, provides little actual protection for your health.

Mercifully, there ARE better ways to lower high blood pressure that do NOT have these problems.

We will soon release an eBook on all of these methods.

(Keep reading our posts as many of them fit those themes. And, we will announce it here when this eBook is available to you.)

Here’s one of those methods in brief.

The eBook will go into much greater detail on it.

It was in the online health news last Wednesday, 7-30-2008

“NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Research shows that boosting levels of potassium in the diet may lower a person's risk of developing high blood pressure and may decrease blood pressure in people who already have "hypertension." “

Doctors and researchers have known for quite a long time that the DASH II diet that combines a LOT of nonstarchy vegetables and a moderately high intake of whole fruit with moderate and consistent salt restriction reliably lowers high blood pressure. (It also limits saturated fat.)

This diet even optimizes “normal” blood pressure and lowers it to desirable levels in people who do not have high blood pressure.

And, one of these researchers and a foremost expert on treating high blood pressure, Mark Houston, MD & his colleague, Dr. Karen J. Harper , co- wrote a recent July 2008 special supplement to The Journal of Clinical Hypertension explaining one of the major reasons why this is so.

The DASH II diet replaces foods like potato chips and commercial baked goods and other snacks plus excess salting of food that each produce a high intake of sodium salt with the plentiful vegetables and whole fruit that is high in potassium and recommends very light use of added salt. (The 1500 mg a day limit it suggests is NOT no salt at all. It does allow moderate salt intake occasionally.)

It seems that one of the drivers of high blood pressure is that the much higher levels of potassium our bodies evolved to ingest combined with modest amounts of sodium salt produces good health and optimal blood pressure while the reverse that many people have been eating instead produces high blood pressure and health problems.

These two doctors pointed out that point out that a healthy intake of potassium is thought to be one reason why vegetarians and peoples still eating traditional foods instead of junk food have a very low incidence of heart disease.

They also state that in such peoples still eating traditional foods instead of junk food only 1 percent of those people get high blood pressure. In contrast, in industrialized societies today where most people still eat diets high in processed foods and large amounts of dietary sodium 1 in 3 people have high blood pressure.

(That’s about 33 times as many people per every 100 people.)

They point out that the typical American diet most people still eat contains at least double the sodium and half the potassium it should to produce good health and avoid high blood pressure.

(Most unfortunately, this is still becoming the case in countries all over the world with very bad medical problems and increase medical costs resulting.)

The way that many people in the United States have been eating gives them twice as much sodium as potassium while the diet, that humans evolved to eat that tends to produce optimum blood pressure and good health contains five times as much potassium as sodium.

Unfortunately, the list of foods too many people still eat every day includes bread, desserts, and snacks that all contain a lot of sodium salt and hardly any potassium.

And, these same people all too often eat virtually no green or nonstarchy vegetables or whole fruit on most days each week.

The research of Doctor Houston and others show that reversing this eating pattern protects your health and either keeps your blood pressure at optimal levels or moves it that direction.

The even better news is that making this change tends to help people lose fat without becoming hungry.

And, losing this excess fat (or not gaining it in the first place) also protects your health and either keeps your blood pressure at optimal levels or moves it that direction.

Almost every nonstarchy and unsalted vegetable or whole fruit is high in potassium while virtually all refined grain foods, packaged foods, snacks etc now sold in stores are surprisingly high in added salt.

Clearly eliminating such foods at least 95 % if the time and replacing them with nonstarchy vegetables and whole fruit will help to lower high blood pressure.

One of the nice things is that many of the kinds of whole fruit that are high in potassium taste good. Bananas and cantaloupe are two examples.

Avocados are high in potassium. And, they have mostly heart health OK monosaturated oils.

And, though vegetables such as raw carrots or broccoli are less enticing, they have incredible other health benefits and are the most effective at helping you lose or prevent gaining excess bodyfat.