May the 17th is World Hypertension Day, but don’t let that stress you out (too much).
Twenty-first century medicine delights in diagnosing diseases where there are none and then using expensive, new-fangled medicines to treat them. These medicines have side effects that rake in even more profits than the original medicine did.
In order to achieve this, research has to be carefully designed (sometimes faked) to prove a bogus hypothesis and then to confirm the efficacy of the medication while hiding the long term side effects from the regulatory authorities. Stocking the regulatory authorities with industry insiders also helps smooth over some rough patches. It is called the “revolving door”, as executives serve as advisors to regulatory authorities and vice versa.
Welcome to Big Pharma. Where may we deposit your cheque? Kindly sign these documents, will you?
The marketing playbook is always the same:
1. Take an existing disease with vague diagnostic criteria.
2. Tighten or widen the diagnostic criteria to include many otherwise healthy people.
3. Blow the lethal dangers of the disease out of proportion.
4. Pay the media to repeat this health warning ad nauseum.
5. Remove / Criminalise / Demonise natural or low-cost solutions.
6. Train a rep force to promote the latest criteria and the newest solution to the medical profession.
7. Collect profits.
8. Rinse and repeat.
See? You, too, could become a Big Pharma executive. Where may we deposit your cheque?
Hypertension is one such trumped-up disease, joining the ranks of childhood diseases, high cholesterol, diabetes, attention deficit, cancer, COVID-19, obesity and others.
Make no mistake: In each case, the original disease had lethal potential. Hypertension is no exception. Millions of people have died from the complications of high blood pressure. The real questions we should be asking ourselves, however, are:
* Where does hypertension come from?
* Is there a natural way to treat hypertension?
Regarding the first question, the media has done a great job of convincing us that stress is the single biggest cause of high blood pressure. It is easy to prove: If you put a rat in a tub of water and it is in fear of drowning, its blood pressure rises. When you take it out of the water, the blood pressure normalises quickly. QED.
Here is your prescription with 6 repeats. Come see me again in half a year. Next please.
The truth is that the kind of hypertension that is dangerous to your heart is mostly caused by factors other than stress. Factors you can control in the comfort of your own home. No prescription required.
Does this mean that all hypertension can be managed naturally? Sadly, no, but roughly 90% of currently diagnosed hypertensive patients can either bring their hypertension under complete control, or significantly reduce the number and doses of medications required through lifestyle alone.
The real problem
When an elephant steps on a garden hose, the hose is under pressure. Giving medication to the garden hose will not remove the elephant. It may relieve the pressure for a short while, though.
The vast majority of people with high blood pressure have an elephant inside. If you look carefully, you can even see it. It’s hiding right there, between the chest and the pelvis. The grand word for this elephant is “visceral fat”, but we usually just call it “belly fat” or “organ fat”.
Finding Your Inner Elephant
Finding your inner elephant is actually easy. If your waist circumference (at the belly button level) exceeds your hip circumference, you have too much belly fat. Every time the heart pumps, a significant portion of the blood leaving the heart has to pass through the abdominal organs (liver, pancreas, spleen, gut and kidneys). If these organs are covered in fat or filled with fat (liver), then the pressure with which the heart needs to pump to increase. Medication may relieve the pressure, but it does not remove the elephant.
Bidding Your Inner Elephant Adieu
There is an old joke:
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
When dealing with elephants, you need lots of patience. Your inner elephant arrived one bite at a time. It has to leave one NON-bite at a time. Lack of self-discipline invited the elephant in. Self-discipline is needed to invite it out again.
Self-discipline? No wonder the world prefers medication. Popping a pill is so much easier.
Here is your prescription with 6 repeats. Come see me again in half a year. Next please.
The Pachyderm Two-Step
To get rid of belly fat, you need to do two things:
1. Eliminate sugar from your life.
2. Fast.
Sweet Sorrow
Sugar is not the only culprit, but it’s the biggest culprit. Focus here first. Sugar contains something called “fructose”. Fructose turns into liver fat inside the body. It is the single biggest contributor to your inner elephant.
Cutting all sugar is hard. To sweeten the break-up, you may use xylitol or raw honey as sweeteners on that one cheat day of the week when you’re not fasting. In the bigger scheme of things, your tongue needs to be retrained NOT to expect sweet tastes.
What about other sweeteners? Don’t let internet gurus complicate your life. There are other sweeteners, some better than xylitol, most of them worse. Xylitol is a great middle-of-the-road choice. When in doubt, stick with raw honey, but no more than one teaspoon per week.
And fruit? Until you reach your target weight, limit yourself to three fist-sized portions of fruit per week.
Fast, But Slowly
“Fast” does not refer to speed. It refers to not eating (Eeeek!). Specifically, we are referring to a “water fast”, meaning you only drink water, tea or coffee during the fasting window.
There are many ways to fast. The simplest and easiest fast is called Intermittent Fasting (IF). Typically, it has a 16:8 ratio, meaning you fast for 16 hours and eat your meals during the 8 hour window.
Practically, it looks like this:
* Choose your smallest meal (breakfast or supper).
* Skip your smallest meal for six days of the week.
* Only drink water, tea or coffee during the fasting window.
* Rinse and repeat until your waist circumference no longer exceeds your hip circumference.
Do not let internet gurus spoil the simplicity of 16:8 fasting for you. Yes, it is slow, but it gets you there with minimal effort. And by doing it on six days of the week only, you don’t feel deprived. That seventh “cheat” day is like a pat on the shoulder for sticking to your “diet” on the other six days.
Only consider longer fasting windows when you’re completely at ease with the 16:8 fasting window.
Every time you eat / snack, your pancreas secretes insulin. Every time. By limiting the eating window, you limit the number of insulin shots. Insulin is the hormone that tells your organs to hold onto belly fat. Less insulin = less fat retention. This is how fasting works.
Say, “Hi there buddies!” to your toes while you’re at it.
What About Exercise?
Hey! What happened to exercise?
Study after study shows that exercise is as effective as medication in lowering blood pressure. However, if you don’t do the Pachyderm Two-Step, the benefits of exercise will be limited.
If you really want to exercise to lower blood pressure, then walking for 15-30 minutes for three to five times a week will bring much benefit in the blood pressure department.
Stressed Out?
Does all this mean that stress has no role to play? No, stress does play an important role, but not as you may think.
Nobody can escape stress. In fact, without stress, we would not live very long. We need stress to build our immune systems, our nervous systems and our muscles and bones. Astronauts removed from the stress of gravity find their bones turning into jelly. Avoiding stress is not the answer.
The kind of stress that is bad for us is punctuated stress, not chronic stress. In other words, your stressful work situation is not as bad for you as the regular interruptions at work. Every time your train of thought is derailed, you experience punctuated stress, a sudden jolt of cortisol. Too many of these in a day and your systolic blood pressure starts creeping up. “Systolic blood pressure” refers to the upper reading. Preferably, this reading should be below 130 mmHg most of the time.
We modern humans all carry Mobile Stress Inducers with us all the time. Every time your cell phone alerts you to an incoming message, you experience stress at a brain level, even if you do not perceive it as emotional stress. How many hundred pings do you hear in a day? Each one disturbs your mental equilibrium. Each one is linked with a little shot of cortisol.
Cortisol triggers more than just an increase in blood pressure. It also raises blood glucose levels. Raised blood glucose leads to raised insulin. Raised insulin leads to inflammation and belly fat deposits.
If stress is severe and unrelenting, there are still ways of dealing with it non-medically. Identifying the exact stressors and finding ways of dealing with them is better than medicine. If nothing can be done about the stress, you may need help with coping mechanisms, like breathing techniques, vagal exercises, CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) or meditation.
The Mobile Two-Step
Cell phone addiction and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) are real. If you don’t believe this, switch off your phone for 24 hours and feel the withdrawal effects setting in. Gaining control over your phone habits requires immense self-discipline. This isn’t an elephant – it is a dragon with a long tail. Cell phone addiction does not let go gently. Expect a fight, but don’t give up. Victory is worth it.
1. Turn off all notifications on your phone / desktop.
2. Keep your phone away from you and check it at fixed times.
Every person lives by a different schedule, so we cannot make hard rules in this area. However, do what you can to fight back. Your life literally depends on your success.
Measure It To Move It
When it comes to measuring, you get two kinds of people:
1. Those who get stressed out by measurements, since they fear failure.
2. Those who are motivated by measurements, since they love challenges.
The reality is that we cannot win a health battle without measuring outcomes. If you find yourself in the first class, you may reduce measuring to once a month, but you have to do it at least once a month. If even that sounds too stressful to you, get someone else to do the measurements and chart the numbers, without telling you what they are. One day, you can look back at the numbers and see that you were actually doing quite well, despite your darkest fears.
What To Measure
1. Blood pressure (once weekly, upon rising)
2. Body weight (once monthly)
3. Waist and hip circumference (once monthly).
Write the numbers down to keep a record over time. This can be a source of encouragement as you see the numbers improving over time. Don’t be in a rush. It took decades to feed your inner elephant to its current size. It will take a year or two to get your elephant to leave.
Your Target Body Weight
If you follow the above guidelines, body weight should drop by about 0.5 – 1 kg per week. Sometimes, it may take some time for weight loss to be noticeable, but the waist-to-hip ratio will still come down, which is great.
If you are a man or a post-menopausal woman, your target weight in kilograms is your length in centimetres minus 100. For example, if your height is 176 cm, your target weight is 76 kg.
If you are a pre-menopausal woman, your target weight in kilograms is your height in centimetres minus 105. For example, if your height is 165 cm, your target weight is 60 kg.
These are rules of thumb only, not exact figures. Every person is slightly different, but these guidelines will help you keep it simple. When you get near your target weight, adjustments to the final target weight may be necessary. However, if you reach your target weight, your waist-to-hip ratio ought to be close to 1:1. Your blood pressure will be (close to) normal and other metabolic markers (fasting blood glucose and HbA1c) will look much better, too.
What About The 10%?
Above, we said that “roughly 90% of currently diagnosed hypertensive patients” can resolve their condition by lifestyle alone. As you know, 90% of all statistics are made up on the spot (including this one). What we meant was “the vast majority”. The remaining 10% represent a “small minority”. That minority may still benefit from some changes.
* Genetic factors: Relatively rare.
* Inborn errors of metabolism: Rare
* Chronic kidney disease: More common, often due to auto-immune diseases
*Mineral deficiencies: Magnesium, potassium and silica deficiency may all contribute.
* Anxiety: Fairly common among the 10%.
Note: Anxiety is not the same as stress, although anxiety leads to stress. Constant anxiety / nervousness about life in general can lead to a high blood pressure that is difficult to control, even with medication. The answer is not a benzo or a z-drug, but a natural calming agent. There are several to choose from:
Take It With A Pinch Of Salt
You’ve been told that high salt intake leads to high blood pressure. This is partially true. If you eat more than five teaspoons of salt daily, your blood pressure is likely to rise. Few people eat this much salt daily, so it is a red herring.
The anti-salt campaign is deliberately designed to distract you from the true culprits. Salt in processed foods is always joined by sugar and unsaturated oils (seed oils) or hydrogenated fats. These are the true causes of metabolic havoc. If it weren’t for the added salt, you’d find these foods repugnant. Now we blame salt for being in bad company.
Very few people know that low salt intake (less than half a teaspoon a day) is more dangerous to health than high salt intake. If you wish to reduce your lifespan by one or two decades, go on a salt-free diet.
Based on science, the sweet spot for salt intake hovers between one and two teaspoons daily. This is less than what you would get out of processed foods, but much more than what you would get on a diet rich in unprocessed or minimally processed foods. If you’re not adding some salt to your food, you’re not opting for optimal health.
Can Supplements Help?
Yes, supplements can help deal with various aspects of hypertension. Here are some options:
1. Reducing liver fat
The following supplements have been shown to reduce liver fat:
* Vitamin D (1,000 – 4,000 IU/day) (Link)
* Vitamin E (800 IU daily)
* Delta-tocotrienol (a subtype of Vitamin E) (Link)
* Omega 3 fatty acids (2-4 g/day) (Link & Link)
* Co-enzyme Q10 (100 – 300 mg daily) (Link)
* Zinc (Link)
* Choline
* Inositol (Link)
* N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC)
* Berberine (500 mg three times daily)
* Silymarin (140 – 800 mg daily)
* Curcumin (500 – 3,000 mg daily)
* Green tea extract (EGCG) (500 – 1,000 mg daily)
* Resveratrol
* Lecithin
* Aged garlic extract
* Gut microbes (Link)
* Artichoke extract
* Spirulina (Link)
2. Lowering blood pressure
* Magnesium (300 – 600 mg daily) (Link)
* Potassium (2,000 – 3,000 mg daily)
* Selenium
* Silica (Link)
* Co-enzyme Q10 (100 – 300 mg daily) (Link)
* Vitamin D (2,000 – 5,000 IU daily) (Link)
* Vitamin C (500 – 1,000 mg daily) (Link)
* Folic acid (Link)
* Melatonin (2 – 5 mg at night)
* Resveratrol
* L-Arginine (4 – 24g daily)
* L-Citruline (3 – 6g daily)
* Taurine (1,000 – 3,000 mg daily)
* Beetroot extract (400 – 500 mg daily)
* Aged garlic extract (600 – 1200 mg daily)
* Olive leaf extract (500 – 1,000 mg daily)
* Hibiscus extract (250 mg daily)
* Green tea extract (EGCG) (400 – 1,000 mg daily)
* Berberine (500 mg three times daily)
* Curcumin
* Grape seed extract (150 – 300 mg daily)
* Omega-3 fatty acids (2,000 – 4,000 mg daily) (Link & Link)
3. Anxiety and Stress
The following supplements can help relieve symptoms of stress and anxiety:
* Ashwagandha extract (300 – 600 mg daily)
* Rhodiola (200 – 600 mg daily)
* Korean ginseng extract (200 – 400 mg daily)
* Tulsi / Holy basil extract (300 – 600 mg daily)
* Chamomile extract (220 – 1,500 mg daily)
* Lemon balm extract (300 – 900 mg daily)
* Lion’s mane mushroom extract (500 – 3,000 mg daily)
* L-Theanine (100 – 400 mg daily)
* L-Tryptophan (500 – 2,000 mg daily)
* 5-HTP (50 – 300 mg daily)
* Magnesium-L-threonate (1,000 – 4,000 mg daily) (Link)
* Vitamin D (2,000 – 5,000 IU daily) (Link)
* B vitamins (B1, B3, B6 & B12) (Link)
* Inositol (12 – 18g daily) (Link)
* Zinc (15 – 30 mg daily) (Link)
* Gut microbes (Link)
* CBD oil (25 – 300 mg daily) (Link)
The following African traditional remedies have been used for centuries to treat anxiety and related symptoms:
* Kanna (Sceletium tortuosum) (150 – 500 mg daily) (Link)
* Sutherlandia (Cancer Bush) (500 – 2,000 mg daily) (Link)
Although not a supplement, the Elexoma Medic is very good at putting the mind into a relaxed state within minutes. (Link)
Prescription Medications To Consider
If you fall in the category that needs prescription medication, ask your doctor to consider prescribing telmisartan. It has very few side effects compared to other anti-hypertensives and is often effective as a single agent in patients with moderate hypertension.
If you suffer from anxiety-mediated hypertension, ask your doctor to consider prescribing carvedilol as part of your options. This is the beta-blocker with the least nasty side effects of the beta blocker class and it will help relieve anxiety, too.
Doctors love to prescribe diuretics (“water pills”) as a first-line treatment for hypertension, but these disturb the electrolyte balance in the blood, leading to many unwanted side effects over time.
When To Stop Using Medication
Short answer: Only when your prescribing doctor agrees. Do not do this alone. Prescription medication for hypertension needs to be phased out, not stopped abruptly. Without guidance from your doctor, you will endanger your health.
When you’ve been following the above guidelines for two months, you can make an appointment with your prescribing doctor. Show him/her your measurements and ask for a re-evaluation of your medication and dosages. Follow his/her advice.
Repeat this visit every two to three months until your blood pressure is within the normal range without medication.
There is no need to get stressed out about hypertension. World Hypertension Day can be the first day of your new journey to health freedom!
To your (stress-free) health!
The Team at Integrow Health
