Dear Roger, Blood pressure is a complex topic. But, I have been there and done that too. Mine used to read very high, like 160/95 and sometimes even higher. That was in my early 20s. I got talked into taking some blood pressure drug then that nearly killed me, it was not potassium conserving and I got into trouble from losing too much potassium. It was one of the several incidents in my life that made me start questioning the drug giving establishment. I was on birth control pills in that time frame and they were one of the causes of my high blood pressure then. Also I was taking over the counter sinus and cold remedies all the time for my constant runny and stuffed up nose. Most of the antihistamines on the market also raise blood pressure, but no one ever tells you that. But even when I went off all drugs, I am still prone to high blood pressures. One thing that is a less than obvious link between being overweight and having high blood pressure is the ignorance of the people taking the blood pressure. It has to do with cuff size. Too many doctors and nurses think that a "one size fits all" philosophy can apply to blood pressure cuffs. If you have a fat bulky arm and some twit puts a little normal size cuff on your arm it is going to give a much higher reading than it actually is. It it also hurts a lot due to this size matching issue, pain can drive it up another 10 or 20 points. Then fear that it is going to be high causes enough tension to drive it up even more. Also the need to urinate during a blood pressure exam can drive it up another 5 points. Getting a cuff that fits, and they do comd in all sizes in the offices of people who know what they are doing, can make all the differnce in the world. Most doctors today, not all, but most, will put people on dangerous drastic drugs based on one or two high blood pressure readings, assuming it is what they like to call essential hypertension" meaning they dont know what the hell caused it but the are going to aggressively treat the "symptom" rather than look for the underlying cause. What sort of things cause high blood pressure? Well that is a very long list. Did you know that it can be higher in one arm than the other. That time of day makes a difference, that what you were doing before it was taken affects it. That emotions can drive it higher than a kite. That it can go to unmeasurably high levels in a weight lifter. 300/200 is not uncommon during a lift by olympic power lifters. Scary huh? Caffine in coffee and soda can raise it up. Ditto for the caffeine that is in chocolate. Anything that can cause you to produce too much adrenaline can also cause raised blood pressure. Endocrine disorders such as Cushings disease where there is a tumor on the pituitary or on the adrenals causing the body to produce too much cortisol Cotisol is the "stress-hormone" it raises blood pressure as part of the fight-or-flight response that is meant to keep you alive in a situation of impending physical danger. But when this mechanism is not shut off or chronically fires you get high blood pressure. High blood pressure is not a permanent problem. It is a sign that something is not harmonious with you. It can be caused by being too sedentary. It can be cause by hyperinsulinism from eating too many carbs and sweets and is a pre-diabetic state. Vitamin deficiencies are the usual cause of high blood pressure. Vitamin C in doses of 6 grams a day or more can offset cortisol and lower stress related hypertension. As a side effect it can also clear aterial plaques that may be contributing to the problem. Hypertension can also be a mineral deficiency. Since there can be hundreds of causes of high BP and even a combination of causes, you have to really find out what is the cause. Yours is not all that high really as far as these things go. Mine was that high again at the beginning of this summer when I finally got the courage to get on a scale and see how far off the track I had gotten this past year. I was horrified to learn that I weighed about 220 and my blood pressure was 160 over 95. Also menopause causes temporary hypertension in women and I am in that category as well right now. Well I went on the Atkins diet as I knew weight was my problem I had been stress eating for nearly a year and stress drinking beer. I have a lot a family problems with my mother, and my daughter especially after the death of her baby last year, so I abused my body. I knew I was doing it, but on those day s when you feel that all that is most important to you is totally out of your control a bowl of chocolate ice cream and 3 or 4 beers can stop that jittery feeling like you want to bang your head on the wall or just run in the woods and scream and never stop running until you dissolve or something. It seems sometimes that I can solve everybody elses problems but my own. Anyway. I and Mike, my hubby both went on the Atkins diet around June first. He weighed 258 pounds. As of this morning he was down to 114. I am down to 184. I will be fasting this weekend as well and will be down to the 170s by Monday. My blood pressure was down to 130 over 85 as of a week ago. My husband, even when very overweight does not get much above 120/80, for him that is high, he is one of these people with chronic low blood pressure, 100/70 is normal for him and on occasion he has had readings like 80/50. Gets real slow heartbeats too. If he were not hell bent on being a mouse potatoe he has the physical parameters of a natural endurance athlete. He can work out and work out, and hardly get his heartrate up to normal. In some people this would be a sign of a diseased or failing heart, but in people with good athletic genes it is an edge. He can hike up mountains with no effort while other with him including me have to stop every few hundred yards to rest and breathe. He can run up hills and beat teeenagers. To show them the evils of smoking. He doe not smoke and never has and these hot studs that used to hang with my daughter chainsmoked and thought just because they were young they should be able to beat a fat old man up a hill. He surprised them, and at his normal weight, no telling what he will be able to do if we can only figure out a way to pry his bottom up from the computer chair. Roger, you need to evaluate every parameter of you life. Do you smoke? If so, is it worth dying for? Do you exercise enough, not just areobic, but resistance or weight training? Do you eat too many simple sugars or white sugars and white flowers? Are your favorite foods worth dying for? Do you drink enough water? 64 ounces a day is the minimum for most adults more if you have more body mass and are in dryer hotter climates. I drink a gallon or more a day. Do you have any vitamin or mineral deficiencies. Magnesium smooths out the arteries and treats the type of high blood pressure related to tightening or spasms in the arteries. Do you also have high cholesteroal and triglicerides. Have you had your homocystine levels checked. Homocystine can be treated with folic acids acid supplements. Other b-vitamins also play a major role. What is your mental status. Are you happy? Do you hate your job? Did you know that most heart attacks occur about 9 am on Monday mornings so linked is this disease to discontent and stress in the job world. Do you do fulfilling interesting things. Do you get 9 to 10 hours of sleep in a totally blacked out room with no sound every day. There is a book on this topic call LIGHTS OUT that is very informative on the effect light or the absence of it has on health. Do you spend time under too much artificial light. Full-spectrum light is essential to health. High blood pressure is not a disease it is a symptom that all is not right. That you are getting too much of something you dont need and not enough of stuff you do need. Your electrolytes must be balanced. You need potassioum, magnesium, and calcium in ther right balance for veinious tonicity to be right and for the heart to beat right. Most drugs treat high blood pressure in dangerous ways. The are either diuretics and are trying to make the BP go down by lowering fluid volume, but this often raises BP as the bodies feedback mechanisms try to keep things in balance. Long term used of diuretics destroys the kidneys and when they go the blood pressure skyrockets. Beta-blcokcers and calcium channel blockers work by making the heart contract weaker. The theory being that if the heart does not beat so hard the pressure will go down. That leads to heart failure long term and impotence and feeling too tired to care if you live or die. The idea behind blood thinners is that if the pressure is too high because there are blockages, well, lets thing the blood so it can get past the blockages easier. These are all stop-gap measures that only reate symptosm and do not resolve underlyig causes. In the long term all these drugs lead to even greater problems like the need for heart transplants or other severe interventions. If you get on heart friendly nutrients and resolve what other problems you have that BP will drop all on its own. COQ10 can help the minerals I suggested, cleaning up any bad things in your diet, drinking more water. Getting more vitamin C, if you have high cholesterol take up to 10 or 20 grams a day of C. Did you know that the symptoms of classic heart disease and the classic symptoms of Scurvy are nearly identical, scurvy being vitamin C deficiency. Death from scurvy was usually from a garden variety Myocardial Infarction. In scurvy the arteries rapidly clog up. Experiments have been done with rabbits in feeding this vegetarian animal a high fat diet to give it a sort of artery clogging condition. But that was the control group, rabbits on the same diet that were given high doses of vitamin C did not get artery clogging. Clogged arteries can be cleaned out. Hi doses of all vitamins can do it. If it has to be done very quickly chelation with the artificial amino acid EDTA can do it. Cayeene pepper can do it. But lowering BP without removing the cause is like mopping the floor without fixing a leak. You want to find and treat underlying causes, not symptoms. I could go on. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of circulatory problems from years of researching them for self and family. How old are you Roger? What is your cholesterol? Are your overweight? Sedentary? Smoke? Drink? Have a sweet tooth? Diabetes history in family or self? Take an over the counter things. Live in a polluted area. Drink tap water that might have nickel cadmium in it. Nickel cadmium in city drinking water is a hidden source of high blood pressure causes. Drinking more water from that source would not be too helpful. You may need a good water filter. When all else fails, There is a qigong posture that researchers have found will lower high BP when all else fails. You stand in what is called the horse posture with feet about 18 inches apart and knees slightly bent. You then hold your arms out and assumed a position as if you were holding an imaginary beachball on your tummy. You close your eyes and breathe deep and relaxed as possible and try to imagine a warm rain is falling on you wheil you do this. You hold this posture for as long as you can just beforeyou go to bed. Start with 2 minutes and work up to half an hour if possible. Some qigong masters can hold this pose for 8 hours or more and do it to develop chi. So Roger, what do you think is causing your high BP.?
Regards, Barb Michael Lee Finney [email protected] [email protected] -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
