High Blood Pressure Be Gone

Archive for the ‘Introduction’ Category

If you’ve got an open mind and are interesting in learning about new approaches and cures to common ailments then you’ll want to take a look at 12 Medical Breakthroughs put together by Health Guru Joe Barton in collaboration with myself.

In it you’ll find some startling discoveries regarding:

• Hypertension
• Acid Reflux
• Erectile Dysfunction
• Diabetes
• Herpes
• Lyme disease
• and others

Grab your copy below by right clicking on the book cover below  and select “save target as” or “save as” or “save link as” (depending on the internet browser your using). Remember what file you’re saving it to so can open it and read.

You’ll need Adobe Reader to view it but virtually all Windows and Mac operating systems come with it already installed. If not you can download and install it for free. Just click on this link: Adobe Reader download.

Read and enjoy.

Any problems? Send me an email at: simon@highbloodpressurebegone.com

How to lower your blood pressure without using drugs

There are three main ways to reduce your blood pressure permanently without taking medications. Get all the details in How to Lower Your Blood Pressure

Click here to download

Published in January  2010, this report has all the latest information. It details all the alternative methods to reduce blood pressure.

Inside you’ll find out:

• why the dangers of high blood pressure are often exaggerated
• why you need to take control of your blood pressure yourself
• why blood pressure readings change from time to time
• the links between the pharmaceutical industry and the modern medical establishment
• the many causes of high blood pressure and why so many people suffer from hypertension
• why natural remedies are better in the longterm than the medication approach
• the 3 main methods to reduce high blood pressure naturally

This report is for everyone – whether you:

• suffer from high blood pressure now,
• suffer from hypertension medication side-effects,
• want to avoid developing high blood pressure

To get the report click here

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a growing concern in among people in Western industrialized countries. The instance of hypertension has been steadily on the increase for years. Given that it is associated with heart attack, stroke and premature death it’s easy to understand why people are seeking high blood pressure control.

Controlling blood pressure with medications

The common medical practice is to prescribe anti-hypertension medication for high blood pressure. Although medications can be successful in high blood pressure control it also has its drawbacks. Many of these medications have side effects such as headaches, dizziness, coughing, impotence, kidney damage, and depression. Another drawback is that even those these medications can control high blood pressure they don’t actually cure it. If you stop taking the medications you are at risk of your pressure going straight back up to former levels. This means that if you want achieve healthy BP levels by medication alone you are condemned to taking them for the rest of your life.

Alternative High Blood Pressure Cures

Thankfully there are a number ways to achieve high blood pressure control without the use of medications. These alternative methods may require you to adopt a more healthy lifestyle – but they don’t cost a lot of money, anyone can do them, and you feel much better for it in the long run. Below are a list of seven alternative methods to reduce BP and avoid the pharmaceutical merry-go-round.

1. Losing some weigh can help bring your BP down. Too much weight causes a strain on your heart which raises your blood pressure. Lose a few pounds, and you will drop a few blood pressure points.

2. Take Vitamin C supplements everyday. Several studies have shown a drop in BP when vitamin C intake is boosted – although it’s not completely understood why vitamin C has this effect on lowering blood pressure. Use a high quality Vitamin C supplement is safe to take and has other benefits than just a reduction in BP.

3. Get Your Sodium/Potassium Ratio balanced. When potassium and sodium (salt) are in harmony, blood pressure levels are OK. A healthy ratio of potassium to sodium is quoted as 5 parts potassium to 1 part sodium. Many of us in the Western world have a potassium to sodium ratio of 1 to 2 – which is the opposite of what it should be. Using too much table salt and eating too much processed foods is at the root of the problem. We need to add more fruits and vegatables to our diet to increase our potassium levels. Use natural sea salt in moderation and try to eat less (or none) of processed foods that have high sodium (salt) levels. In short, more potassium and less salt equals lower blood pressure.

4. Get sufficient doses of Vitamin D which helps regulate blood pressure. The good news is that Vitamin D is absorbed by the skin when exposed to sunshine. So get out there and catch some rays. Mind you, many of us who live up north don’t get enough sunshine / Vitamin D, especially in winter. In place we can take vitamin D3 which is the form of vitamin D that is easiest to absorb.

5. Physical exercise can do wonders for your sense of well-being as well as a powerful method for high blood pressure control. If your not used to doing any exercise start with a walk around the block at least once a day. In time maybe you could move it up to long walks or even jogging. Anything that gets your heart beating and your blood circulating is good for your overall health and will result in a reduction of blood pressure.

6. Too much stress in your life can cause hypertension. Stress releases cortisol which can cause weight gain, immune suppression, and high blood pressure. Consider stress reducing activities as an effective method of high blood pressure control. There are a number of ways to help you reduce stress such as yoga, meditation, aromatherapy and slow breathing exercises. Laughter is also know as a stress busting activity so go see a comedy now and then. High blood pressure? Just laugh it off.

High Blood pressure Control – It’s your choice

The important thing to remember is that when it comes to high blood pressure control you have choices. You can take prescription medications accepting the potential negative side effects or you can introduce alternative methods outlined above to get your blood pressure back to normal levels. If you are currently taking anti-hypertension medications you may want to consider introducing alternative methods to reduce blood pressure and slowly reducing or even eliminating your medications – in consultation with your doctor, of course.

To get started using alternative methods to reduce your blood pressure download the report How to Lower Your Blood Pressure Without Drugs

Click here to download

Published on January 1, 2010 this report presents facts about hypertension and natural blood pressure reduction in a simple and easy to understand report. It explanis how you can achieve healthy blood pressure levels without the need to be on medications.

Inside you’ll find out:

• why the dangers of high blood pressure are often over-stated
• how to take back control from the medical establishment
• why blood pressure readings change so often
• the links between the pharmaceutical industry and modern medical practice
• the real causes of high blood pressure
• why natural cures are better than taking medications
• the three main methods of natural cures for hypertension

This report is for everyone – whether you:

• currently have high blood pressure,
• suffer from hypertension medication side-effects,
• would like to know how to avoid developing high blood pressure later on.

To get the report click here

If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure at the doctor’s office then you should be concerned but don’t jump to the conclusion that you have life threatening hypertension. Having a high blood pressure reading on one occasion does not mean you suffer from high levels all the time.

Having extraordinarily high blood pressure readings at a doctor’s office is quite common. So common they even have a name for it – “White Coat Syndrome”. Simply being in the doctor’s office can raise our blood pressure above our normal range.

The funny thing is that White Coat Syndrome can affect you even if you don’t consciously feel tense at the doctor’s. I always felt calm at the doctor’s but blood pressure readings would routinely be some 20 points higher there than at home.

The only way to get a true picture of your blood pressure condition is to get your own monitor and take readings from time to time. There are a number of benefits of getting your own monitor.

First, you’ll get to know what your blood pressure is outside of the doctor’s office. That’s the blood pressure that counts. If it’s still way to high you need to start treating it.

Secondly, having your own blood pressure monitor allows you to tell what is working for you to bring your blood pressure down. It allows you to experiment, choose the best methods, and stick with it till your blood pressure is where you want it.

Perhaps most importantly, having your own blood pressure puts you back in the driver’s seat. This is where you want to be if your are serious about getting your blood pressure down and restore your health.

I purchased a blood pressure monitor online from Lloyds Pharmacy last winter for just under £15. Of course I could have spent a lot more but the BP II seemed the best price for a decent battery-operated monitor with arm cuff. It reads systolic, diastolic, and pulse rate. It has worked properly without complaint. It includes a memory so you can check back on the previous 60 readings. I’ve yet to change the 4 AA batteries.

I ordered online and it was delivered to my door the next day. Here’s a link to Lloyds:

LloydsPharmacy
or Boots if you prefer.

For a wider selection check out:

amazon.co.uk/blood-pressure-monitors for the UK, or
amazon.com/blood-pressure-monitors for the US

Getting your own blood pressure is a vital first step getting a handle on your blood pressure and herding it in to the safely coral.

(Emma, who works in a pharmacy and seems to be ‘in the know’, says “don’t buy a wrist monitor – they’re not that accurate”)

The best way to lower your blood pressure and get your body back in balance is through diet and exercise. It’s really as simple as that.

The worst way, in my opinion, is also the most common – taking prescription medication to artificially lower your blood pressure while not changing the factors that led to high blood pressure in the first place.

So what causes high blood pressure?

Some people might object saying that high blood pressure is caused by genetic factors outside if their control.

I would agree that a lot of blood pressure problems can be ascribed to genetic factors. But that’s not the same as saying there is nothing can be done about it – or saying  prescription medication is the only solution.

Some people, like myself, seem to be genetically predisposed to high blood pressure. It runs in my family apparently. My mother had high blood pressure and my father who is still alive regularly takes half a dozen pills a day for this and that including high blood pressure.

I have taken another path. Instead of resigning myself to a lifetime on pills I have made an effort to re-regulate my blood pressure through diet and exercise.

What is considered high blood pressure / hypertension?

The old rule of thumb was 100 plus your age was an acceptable blood pressure given that it was accepted that blood pressure naturally rises with age. The new regime says that everyone should be at or below 120/80. This has been a great boon to international pharmaceutical corporations given that virtually everyone above the age of forty is now eligible to be prescribed a lifetime of daily pills. If I sound cynical it’s because I am.

Lowering my blood pressure through diet and exercise hasn’t been instant. But my blood pressure has kept down over the months to an acceptable level. No, I’ll probably never enjoy blood pressure consistently below 120/80 -  it’s not in my genes. But as long as I consistently remain below 140/105 (usually in the 130/90 range) I figure that’s OK for me. I’m not in a high risk category for heart disease or stroke. And I feel better and more fit than I have for many years.

So why do I shun hypertension medications? It’s not the cost. I could get them for free here in the UK. No, it’s because blood pressure lowering medications do not fix the problem. If they did, after your blood pressure was down you could stop taking them. But the pharmaceutical industry has yet to create a drug that can really fix blood pressure. Sure, their drugs artificially lower your blood pressure. But stop taking them and it shoots right back up.

Statistics show that more people die from heart disease and stroke while on blood pressure lowering medication. That’s not to say that these medications are causing heart disease or strokes. But if you think that your safer on them then think again.

And then there’s the side effects. My only experience with a blood pressure lowering medication was for 8 week with Rampril – an ACE inhibitor. For 8 weeks I had an irritating dry cough day and night while my blood pressure refused to come down from its 190+/120+ readings. I’ve read about even worse side effects with some other medications but have no experience to validate.

So .. the Rambril went in the bin and I embarked on a new regime of diet and exercise. Within one month my blood pressure was beginning to drop. Within 3 months my BP readings were consistently below 135/95 occasionally as low as 118/79 (rare but does happen).

Diets to control high blood pressure … or … recipes for hypertension

Blood pressure lowering diet means eating less of somethings and eating more of others. It’s not all about moving simply to a bland diet of ‘healthy foods’ that suck much of the culinary pleasures out of life. Not at all. My new diet included things like a glass of red wine and dark chocolate one a day. among other things.

My new diet also involves a bowl of oatmeal every morning and some vitamin supplements. Currently I take each morning calcium, vitamin C, multi vitamin (that includes magnesium – very important) , cod liver oil (in capsules), and Korean ginseng, and ginkgo extract. I also have 20 odd drops of Hawthorn tincture in a glass of water every day.  I make the tincture myself as we are blessed with many Hawthorn trees here growing up on the mountains.

Blood pressure lowering exercises involve walking more. For me it’s a 20 minute hike up the mountain when the weather is friendly. (I live part way up a mountain in Wales). When I get to my summit I eat an apple I usually take with me. Yep, that’s part of my diet.

Other exercises involve slowing you system down with breathing exercises and the like.  One exercise involves a kind of rhythmic walking which I’ll do indoors when the weather is miserable (like today).

I hope over the coming weeks to fill in all the details of my diet and exercise that has worked so remarkably well in lowering my blood pressure from dangerously high levels as a resource for others struggling with high blood pressure problems too.

If you have any questions and or suggestions please leave a comment. I will attempt to answer all feedback.

Take care, we’re all in this together.

P.S. If you suffer from high blood pressure and are considering alternative treatments being promoted on the web, be sure to check out my review pages (links on the right hand column). I’ve checked most of the popular ones out and give you an objective assessment – warts and all!

Last summer (2008) my father (whom I was visiting in eastern Canada at the time) badgered me to have a blood pressure test at the local pharmacy. I’d didn’t think much of it and went along with it. I got a reading of 158 / 95 which was on the high side but not critical.

So in response I cut down on my salt intake.  I continued on my single handed sailing journey up to Iceland and back down to Wales arriving back home in mid September. (You can check out my sailing blog here)

My girlfriend who worked at a pharmacy and nursed her ailing mother had a blood pressure monitor and  a few occasions that I was tested I was in the 155 / 100 region. Not too alarmed I cut down more on my salt intake and started eating garlic regularly. (I had read somewhere that it was effective in lowering blood pressure).

This winter I started feeling run down more often than usual. Mild headaches too frequent also. Then my heart when funny one night. After a romp in bed with my girlfriend my heart started pounding. Nothing unusual in that perhaps except it wouldn’t stop. It took half an hour of walking around and standing outside in the cold air before it finally settled down and the pounding in my ears receded. Yep, it had me worried.

When to the doctor that week and my blood pressure was reading 192 / 130. Not good. The doctor immediately subscribed Rampril 2.5 mg (ACE inhibitor) to be take once a day and blood test to be taken.

After one month of Rampril and two blood tests and ECG test my blood pressure remained over 190 / 130. I hadn’t improved one iota. That was three weeks ago and I have since been in search alternative treatments as the prescribed one has only given me a persistent dry cough.

I’m pleased to say that I’ve been experimenting with a few different approaches to reducing high blood pressure including mental and physical exercises, natural medicines, and diet.

After about 10 days trying an ‘alternative approach’ to lowering blood pressure I was monitored at 165  / 103. A major improvement. What a relief!

Still a way to go though.

I fill in the details of my ‘alternative method’ in my next blog post.

Most high blood pressure blogs and websites I’ve come across usually profess that “have the cure” and then try to sell you it.

My hope is that this blog becomes a community of people who can share their experiences to find out what really works and what doesn’t. I don’t have the ‘magic pill’ but i will share with you what seems to be working for me and hopefully if readers will be willing to post comments I’ll learn something too.

High Blood Pressure: we’re in this together.

Chat later,

Simon