All about High Blood Pressure

RESPeRATE has just launched a new blog that includes interesting information and news about hypertension. The first categories include Hypertension Facts and Hypertension News. Check back often as new content continues to be posted. As with the Ask Dr. Rowena blog, be sure to share your knowledge and thoughts by posting comments.

#4: Increase potassium (54! non-drug ways to lower blood pressure)

Written by: collin_carbno | Posted: Jan 28 2010

#4. Increase Potassium (more banana, potatoes, fruits)

I suggest at least 2 bananas a day, at least 1 potato, and at least one other fruit ( apple, or orange). Vegetables are even more important than fruit from a nutritional point of view.

I know that some folks are hard on potatoes – thinking that people should cut them out of their diets. Some argue that potatoes can raise insulin levels and are relatively high in calories. However, I think that one must also consider the benefits of a food. On the plus side, potatoes contain important vitamins and minerals, and are an excellent source of potassium. Potassium is known to be important in the regulation of blood pressure. I happen to love potatoes, and I’ve tried to reach a compromise– instead of eating 4 or 5 potatoes at a meal I like to hold myself now to one or two medium sized potatoes (the size of one’s fist). A further advantage is that potatoes are relatively cheap, and compared to bread, I think that potatoes are a healthier choice. (I still eat bread too — but I also limit it to reasonable amounts). A potato is about 100 calories which is similar to a slice of bread. Calorie for calorie, I think that potato wins over bread.

Click here for more info about potassium to lower blood pressure (Harvard Health)

#3: Walk! (54! non-drug ways to lower blood pressure)

Written by: collin_carbno | Posted: Jan 21 2010

#3. Walk daily for at least 30 minutes

About 15 years ago, I made a really wise choice. I use to take the bus to work everyday. I live about a 45 minute walk from work. So, it’s about 3 miles or 5 km. I thought for a long time, that this was just too far to walk. Our Saskatchewan (Canada) weather varies from-40C to +40C (-40 F to 104 F) so it can be challenge. My brother in law who is 10 years younger than me was walking to work, and although his walk was 20 minutes shorter, he kept encouraging me to try.

My weight was edging up and in desperation I thought I needed to do something. I decided to start walking home. I remember the first day I did it: I walked really slowly, and it took me over an hour and 15 minutes. When I got home I was so hot and tired, I had to lay down for 20 minutes to recover. I had this enormous thermal burn feeling, much like I remembered experiencing in my 20s when I played sports hard for a couple of hours.

For a month, I kept at it, walking home from work each day. I was often tempted by the bus, but I continued to keep at it, walking the distance. Then, we had a bus strike. I really had no other way to get to work, so I decided if I could walk home, I might as well also walk to work. So, I started to walk to work. The strike ended, and I continued to walk both ways.

Now 10+ years later, I don’t experience the thermal burn and think nothing of walking both ways. I even try running it in nice weather, and have done the distance in 30 minutes. It has becomea special time for me; to watch nature, trees, and to think about life. I happened to be blessed in that about half of my walk goes through a bird sanctuary, with a nice lake. I’ve been blessed with arctic terns, muskrats, squirrels, gulls, geese, cornets and rabbits. In winter, when it becomes pitch black, I’m often walking in almost total darkness, and it’s fun to see the rabbits that scamper along in the park.

Many days, I decide on courses of action on the way to work. My walks have become a time that I put my mind to different problems that are facing me, and a time to talk to myself, and to strategize new ideas.

The impact on my health was amazing. First, I dropped 30 pounds in weight, from 180 pounds to 150 pounds. Then, my legs really hardened up with nice solid muscles. I felt so much better. I now really miss the walk, if for some reason I can’t do it.

I still take the bus if the temperature goes above 37C (98 F) or if drops below -37C (-34 F). I also won’t walk in thunderstorms with lighting. Over the course of the year, there are usually just 5 or 6 days that I end up taking the bus one way or the other.

I have noticed that half an hour after a vigorous walk of 45 minutes,my blood pressure usually drops 5 or so points. Of course, it is only a temporary drop, but studies seem to indicate that walking is an excellent endeavor.

Click here for more about walking to improve blood pressure

#2: Lower your salt intake (54! non-drug ways to lower blood pressure)

Written by: collin_carbno | Posted: Aug 28 2009

#2. Lower Your Salt Intake

Get your salt (sodium) intake down below 1000 mg per day. (The actual number seems to be somewhat in debate– 1000 mg might be too low, and different individuals may need to hit different values to have an effect). My point here is mostly to cut down on your salt. Most prepared foods have some salt, so you have to be careful when trying to add up the amounts – it’s easy to miss substantial amounts of salt. Of course, the body has a need for salt, so I wouldn’t suggest that anyone go on an ultra low salt diet. Be warned that many types of bread have 100 mg per slice, some cheeses have 400 mg of salt or more per slice, and some canned goods contain up to 95 0mg per tin.

Salt has been a somewhat controversial issue — is it the salt itself or is it other ingredients in the salty foods associated with higher blood pressure? Many highly processed foods have a high salt content and low nutritional value. So, perhaps it isn’t the salt reduction itself, maybe the nutritional improvement from substituting other healthier foods is what makes the difference. Nevertheless, there is a theory that excess salt damages the cardiovascular system over time. Studies show that in about half of the cases of hypertension, the reduction of salt in the diet proved to be helpful. The elderly and African Americans are the most likely to benefit from restricted salt intake.

My personal observation is that ingesting a high dosage of salt (2000 mg+ per day), if I have several back-to-back meals that are loaded with salt, my blood pressure will rise 20/20 points and stay up for 3 days. On the other hand, if I get my salt down to a more reasonable level, I haven’t found any improvement from dropping it further. I do feel that salt is somehow hard on the body and it probably does put stress on the cardiovascular system. It seems from reading the medical literature that if you follow a low salt diet for extended periods of time, like years, that there is a kind of accumulative health benefit. Again, the bulk of the benefit may come from the fact that low salt foods tend to be healthier as a whole, rather than the negative impact of the salt itself. My personal thought is that both effects are operating, salt itself is harmful in some way, and the healthy food - less processed, less chemicals of low salt food, also improves overall health.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2288755

#1: Use RESPeRATE (54! non-drug ways to lower blood pressure)

Written by: collin_carbno | Posted: Jun 20 2009

#1. Use RESPeRATE (Rr)

My impression from the studies is that the majority of folks (more than half) get a positive response from using RESPeRATE. That aside, it’s highly possible that there are folks that do not get any benefit from using the Rr. The most likely cause in these cases is that they have some cause not effectively managed by Rr and not that they are incorrectly using the machine. Still, when I first started using the machine, I didn’t notice any benefit for the first 3 weeks. I took my blood pressure before and after each session, and sometimes BP went down, sometimes it went up, and sometimes it stayed the same, but an hour later my blood pressure seemed unchanged.

Sometime in the 3rd week, however, I began to relax and I didn’t try to perfect the process. I simply began to relax, enjoy it, and I didn’t worry so much about keeping in perfect time with the machine. Presto — after each session my blood pressure dropped sharply. Then, when I had high blood pressure, I would do a session and drop the blood pressure. If it still wasn’t down enough I’d do another session, and drop it a bit more, and if I had time, I’d even do a third session and drop it further. This gave me a kind of positive feedback loop. I began to feel that I could do something to control my blood pressure value. I then started to notice that my readings an hour later were lower, and over the next few weeks began to see my daily readings dropping. Currently, I try to do one 10 minute session per day. On holidays, and weekends, I try to get in two sessions.

What is the connection between stress, salt and hypertension?

Written by: bgavish | Posted: Jun 16 2009

Stress has a greater effect on the blood pressure of people whose blood pressure is sensitive to salt intake.

Mental stress has become an inseparable part of the competitive lifestyle of our modern society that relies on technology rather than physical exercise, and has a deleterious effect on our cardiovascular system.

Some people display elevated blood pressure when consuming more salt (containing sodium). This genetically-inherited “salt-sensitivity” was found to cause greater blood pressure elevation in response to mental stress, even in people with normal blood pressure, suggesting that stress reduction is of special significance in this population.

Scientific references:

Stress, hypertension and the metabolic syndrome

Psychophysiological reactivity of salt-sensitive normotensive subjects.

RESPeRATE — How it all began

Written by: jchodirker | Posted: Jun 15 2009

In the late 1980’s, Dr. Benjamin Gavish (”Beny”), a biophysicist (and part-time ballroom dance teacher) began researching a biological phenomenon known as vasomotion - the slow and rhythmic oscillation of small blood vessels within the body, which is of vital importance. While research had shown that vasomotion was reduced in those with vascular diseases, Beny was also intrigued by the fact that vasomotion was altered when a person smoked a cigarette or told a lie and he became interested in how vasomotion was affected by stress levels. It was this curiosity that led him to develop a technique to better study vasomotion quantitatively. Two bigger questions began to dawn on him: Could one amplify the blood vessels’ vasomotion in a controlled manner? And if so, would such a change be beneficial to health?

Little did Beny know that his breakthrough would come when his wife, Dr. Leah Gavish (biologist and part-time dance teacher), was complaining of a headache. She happened to visit him at the lab while he was in the middle of a vasomotion experiment. On a whim, he mounted sensors on her fingers and observed that she was experiencing a normal vasomotion rhythm of 6-per-minute. Thinking back to his dancing hobby, Beny recalled people’s natural tendency to follow musical rhythms. He turned on a sound synthesizer that could create tones based on a selected rhythm and played a pattern for Leah. What happened next was amazing. Her breathing pattern “locked” on the sound pattern for 10 minutes and her vasomotion increased considerably. Beny’s visualization of the “blood vessel dance” which he had just created was interrupted by Leah announcing that her headache was gone!

This was only the beginning…
Dr. Gavish began experimenting with guided breathing in a gym in Jerusalem. With the help of a gifted group of experts in digital music, he was able to measure people’s response to changes in a musical rhythm. Beny and Leah tested the ability to guide people’s breathing from a normal rate to as-slow-as-possible-but-still-comfortable levels using enjoyable sound patterns.

The results of the experiments were striking! People who listened to the changing rhythm displayed blood pressure reductions within ten minutes accompanied by frequent sensations of “floating,” “weightlessness,” and “deep relaxation.” Those that attempted to relax simply by listening to pre-recorded, commercial music did not show the same results.

Having faith that he was onto a major finding, Beny set up a “garage-operation” and began to develop the first prototype of what would later become RESPeRATE, a completely unique device. This non-drug solution is now clinically validated by 10 published clinical trials, has received regulatory clearance in major markets around the world, and is currently in use by over 100,000 people. It is safely and effectively lowering their blood pressure through device-guided breathing.

54! non-drug ways to lower blood pressure

Written by: collin_carbno | Posted: May 29 2009

I currently have a list of 54 different suggestions (non-drug) to lower blood pressure. As part of this blog, I want to work my way through the list and give you my impressions and thoughts on this list. My list was composed roughly in the order that I found them. Many of these points have the potential, on average, to lower blood pressure by 2 to 5 points. My idea here is that although each one might have a small effect, combinations of 7 or more of them may allow for substantial reductions in blood pressure. I tried to include only items on the list for which at least one scientific study has found evidence of an improvement in blood pressure. The advantage of having many suggested possibilities to lower blood pressure is that it provides variety in the approach. If one set of possibilities doesn’t work, you can try others.

I once read that a medical researcher suspected that there were up to about 20 different causes of high blood pressure. If so, then it isn’t surprising that some drugs and some treatments don’t work for all folks.

1. Use RESPeRATE (Rr)
My impression from the studies is that the majority of folks (more than half) get a positive response from using RESPeRATE. That aside, it’s highly possible that there are folks that do not get any benefit from using the Rr. The most likely cause in these cases is that they have some cause not effectively managed by Rr and not that they are incorrectly using the machine. Still, when I first started using the machine, I didn’t notice any benefit for the first 3 weeks. I took my blood pressure before and after each session, and sometimes BP went down, sometimes it went up, and sometimes it stayed the same, but an hour later my blood pressure seemed unchanged.

Sometime in the 3rd week, however, I began to relax and I didn’t try to perfect the process. I simply began to relax, enjoy it, and I didn’t worry so much about keeping in perfect time with the machine. Presto — after each session my blood pressure dropped sharply. Then, when I had high blood pressure, I would do a session and drop the blood pressure. If it still wasn’t down enough I’d do another session, and drop it a bit more, and if I had time, I’d even do a third session and drop it further. This gave me a kind of positive feedback loop. I began to feel that I could do something to control my blood pressure value. I then started to notice that my readings an hour later were lower, and over the next few weeks began to see my daily readings dropping. Currently, I try to do one 10 minute session per day. On holidays, and weekends, I try to get in two sessions.

2. Lower Your Salt Intake
Get your salt (sodium) intake down below 1000 mg per day. (The actual number seems to be somewhat in debate– 1000 mg might be too low, and different individuals may need to hit different values to have an effect). My point here is mostly to cut down on your salt. Most prepared foods have some salt, so you have to be careful when trying to add up the amounts – it’s easy to miss substantial amounts of salt. Of course, the body has a need for salt, so I wouldn’t suggest that anyone go on an ultra low salt diet. Be warned that many types of bread have 100 mg per slice, some cheeses have 400 mg of salt or more per slice, and some canned goods contain up to 95 0mg per tin.

Salt has been a somewhat controversial issue — is it the salt itself or is it other ingredients in the salty foods associated with higher blood pressure? Many highly processed foods have a high salt content and low nutritional value. So, perhaps it isn’t the salt reduction itself, maybe the nutritional improvement from substituting other healthier foods is what makes the difference. Nevertheless, there is a theory that excess salt damages the cardiovascular system over time. Studies show that in about half of the cases of hypertension, the reduction of salt in the diet proved to be helpful. The elderly and African Americans are the most likely to benefit from restricted salt intake.

My personal observation is that ingesting a high dosage of salt (2000 mg+ per day), if I have several back-to-back meals that are loaded with salt, my blood pressure will rise 20/20 points and stay up for 3 days. On the other hand, if I get my salt down to a more reasonable level, I haven’t found any improvement from dropping it further. I do feel that salt is somehow hard on the body and it probably does put stress on the cardiovascular system. It seems from reading the medical literature that if you follow a low salt diet for extended periods of time, like years, that there is a kind of accumulative health benefit. Again, the bulk of the benefit may come from the fact that low salt foods tend to be healthier as a whole, rather than the negative impact of the salt itself. My personal thought is that both effects are operating, salt itself is harmful in some way, and the healthy food - less processed, less chemicals of low salt food, also improves overall health.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2288755

Medication: Tekturna/ aliskiren (Renin inhibitor)

Written by: jchodirker | Posted: Apr 27 2009

HowTekturna Reduces Blood Pressure

Tekturna (aliskiren) is the first drug in a new class of pharmaceuticals that are used primarily in the treatment of hypertension. It is a renin inhibitor or inhibitors of renin, an enzyme in the kidney, that starts a number of reactions that ultimately increase blood pressure.

Tekturna works by decreasing the ability of renin to start the processes that ultimately narrow blood vessels and raise blood pressure.

Although these medications are beneficial, many times they are not enough to control your blood pressure.

Click here for additional information including side effects.

Medication: Ziac (Combination)

Written by: jchodirker | Posted: Apr 27 2009

How Ziac Reduces Blood Pressure

Ziac is a combination drug composed of hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) and bisoprolol.

Hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) a thiazide diuretic (water pill) decreases the amount of fluid in your body by increasing the amount of salt and water you lose in your urine.

Bisprolol is one of a class of blood pressure medication called Beta-Adrenergic Blocking Agent or more commonly known as Beta Blockers.

Beta blockers are a class of drugs that block beta-adrenergic substances such as adrenaline. By blocking the action of the involuntary nervous system on the heart, beta blockers relieve stress on the heart.

Ziac slows the heart beat, lessens the force with which the heart muscle contracts and reduces blood vessel contraction in the heart, brain, and throughout the body, thus lowering blood pressure.

The combination of these two drugs forms Zestoretic which is used to treat blood pressure.

Although these medications are beneficial, many times they are not enough to control your blood pressure.

Click here for additional information including side effects.

Medication: Zestril/ lisinopril (ACE)

Written by: jchodirker | Posted: Apr 27 2009

How Zestril Reduces Blood Pressure

Zestril (lisinopril) is one of a class of blood pressure medication called Angiotestin Converting Enzyme Inhibitors or more commonly known as ACE Inhibitors.

Angiotensin II is a chemical that causes the muscles surrounding the blood vessels to contract (tighten). This in turn narrows the blood vessels. This narrowing increases the pressure within the blood vessels and can cause high blood pressure (hypertension).

Zestril slows (inhibits) the activity of the enzyme, which decreases the production of angiotensin II. As a result, the blood vessels enlarge or dilate, and the blood pressure is reduced.

Other ACE Inhibitors include Altace, Accupril, Lotensin and Mavik.

Although these medications are beneficial, many times they are not enough to control your blood pressure.

Click here for additional information including side effects.