Reduce Blood Pressure Naturally: A Complete Approach for Mind, Body, and Spirit

Reduce Blood

Pressure Naturally

The Most Complete Self-Help Guide Available for Cardiovascular Health

A Complete Approach for

Mind, Body, and Spirit

Michael Arluck Scheinbaum, M.S.

Natural Health Practitioner

David J. Getoff,

Traditional Naturopath and Board Certified

Clinical Nutritionist

Copyright © 2005 by Michael Arluck Scheinbaum, M.S.

Library of Congress Number:      2003097623

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader

How To Use This Book

Introduction

Part I

High Blood Pressure Description

Chapter One

Part II

The Spirit

Chapter Two

Transcendental Meditation

Chapter Three

The Healing Power of Prayer

Part III

The Mind

Chapter Four

Visualization Exercises

Chapter Five

Take Your Blood Pressure Without Fear

Chapter Six

Bach Flower Remedies

Chapter Seven

Healing Through Self Love

Chapter Eight

The Art Of Being Present

Chapter Nine

Daily Awareness Techniques

Part IV

The Body

Chapter Ten

Herbs, Vitamins and Minerals

Chapter Eleven

Diet, Digestion and Hypertension

Chapter Twelve

Exercise and Breathing Techniques

Chapter Thirteen

A Taoist Breathing Exercise to

Balance the Parasymphatetic

Nervous System

Chapter Fourteen

Energy Healing Techniques

Chapter Fifteen

Acupressure and Reflexology Points

Chapter Sixteen

Acupuncture – The Art

of Chinese Medicine

Chapter Seventeen

Chiropractic for Anxiety

and Hypertension

Chapter Eighteen

Growth Concepts and Summary

Part V

The Politics of Health Care

Chapter Nineteen

The Health Care System and

How it Affects You

Endnotes

Bibliography

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks to my family for their deep love and

support. I thank all my editors whose insight, organizational skills, and dedication have made this book possible. I am so grateful to my cousin Eileen Mandell for her time and expertise in proof reading. I am very appreciative to my artistic team for their time and dedication and offer special thanks to Judith Hans-Price. I offer special thanks and appreciation to David J. Getoff, my nutritional consultant, whose information and corrections have greatly increased the value of this work. I also thank all the researchers and practitioners of natural health systems that enable patients to heal naturally. My thanks to Exlibris, my publisher, for all their help and dedication to make this book possible.

The Kingdom of Healing is Within

In a sense this book is a biography,

the biography

of the infinite healing intelligence

within every cell of your body.

A wise Healer uses what works

regardless of what other authorities

may say to the contrary

Dear Reader

This book is intended to give you the knowledge to take

responsibility for your health. Taking responsibility for your health is where healing begins and any disclaimer invalidates the purpose of this book. This concept leads us to a junction that allows for the integration of natural and western medicine. It is advisable to consult with a qualified health professional to ascertain the actual condition and cause, so you can treat it effectively. Once you know this, you can create an effective program that involves the best of both systems. I wish you perfect health, happiness and love on your journey.

However, this book cannot be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The authors and publisher disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects from the use or application of the information contained in this book.

How To Use This Book

There are many ways to use this book. The information,

concepts, and healing modalities presented can be overwhelming. First of all, just simply read the book. Do not put any pressure on yourself to start memorizing and doing.

A suggested approach is to just read and enjoy the information, and allow the concepts to flow through your awareness. This process will enliven and structure your motivation and understanding of how to balance your blood pressure. Thus you avoid the intensity of trying to learn too much and getting frustrated. Do your best to read the whole book in chapter sequence, since each chapter builds on prior ones.

With this approach you can then go back and start with a chapter or health system that attracts your attention.

It is important that this information is enjoyable and rewarding for you. The book is arranged in sections: a description of hypertension, the spirit, the mind, the body, and the politics of health. There is a summary section at the end of the supplement chapter for quick reference. The index is another tool to help you find out specific information that you need to know.

Enjoy

Introduction

Start of a Discovery

Great health discoveries give us a new appreciation for the

natural laws of healing. Through these laws, health is created, maintained and restored.

Eric Butterworth, a famous Unity Church minister and healer, states that we can be healed because we are already whole.1 In fact, the word health comes from the root meaning whole, and healing, coming from the same root, means, to make whole. Health signifies physical and mental well-being. At the minimum, it is a state of freedom from defect, pain or disease; in other words, a state of wholeness.

Hippocrates was the first physician in the Western world to assert that the pattern of wholeness is present in an unmanifest form even while the illness rages. The healing process simply reveals the wholeness, the truth of who you really are — if only you can remember. When this memory is lost, disease results.

Barbara Brennen, the best selling author of Hands of Light and Light Emerging, describes healing as simply helping yourself to connect with the truth of your being. Remembering who you really are brings back your original connection to your deeper self when you go through the healing process.2 This state of being unites different members or parts into the wholeness of your true self, which creates health on all levels.

My High Blood Pressure Experience

In July of 1994 my company moved to Colorado Springs, a large city on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. From anywhere in the city, you can see Pikes Peak against the azure sky. The peak is so tall (14,000 feet) it sometimes disappears into the clouds.

After settling my family into our new home, I fell again into the regular routine of taking my blood pressure, which had been rising steadily since the move. While relaxing after work one evening, it dawned on me that the biofeedback effect of watching the pressure with the intention of lowering it, which had worked during a previous episode of high pressure, was not working. The current level of 171 over 113 was far beyond the pressure of 115 over 75 I had before we moved. Fearing my blood pressure would also disappear into the clouds, I knew something more had to be done. In my practice as a holistic healer and counselor, I had never seen clients with high blood pressure and could not think of an immediate solution. Would I have to resort to blood pressure medication?

Most medical authorities, including the Joint National Committee on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure, consider alternatives to drug therapy before prescribing drugs. Alternative treatments for borderline or mild hypertension include meditation and stress management.

I figured there must be a natural way to heal my high blood pressure. Drawing on years of experience as an energy healer and an array of books on natural healing, I designed a powerful, natural program. This book contains the concepts behind the techniques I successfully used to lower my own blood pressure. At that time it dropped even below my goal of 110 over 70, to 106 over 67, but the best news is it continues to stay low. In this book, you will learn to apply all of the techniques I used.

A few years ago I started teaching these techniques to others. In one workshop a man wanted to see if my program could lower his blood pressure during the class. His morning pressure was 160 over 100. By afternoon, after learning a few of the techniques, it had decreased to 149 over 97. He was happy, and I was surprised because my own pressure had come down very slowly. In addition to benefiting from the techniques, you will begin to experience the healing power of your own mind and body. This healing power is your birthright. You deserve to be healed in mind, body, and spirit. If you put your attention on healing and health, then that is what will grow in your life. You will find that the universe responds to your vibration of health by reflecting the same vibration back to you.

How This Natural Program Works

You may ask, How can I believe this program works when drugs and other modern medical approaches are only moderately effective? The explanation is simple. Healing is much more than suppressing symptoms. Every procedure in this book is based on scientific investigation, but these investigations have begun with the premise that the cure will come only when we treat the cause of the disease.

The truth is often not visible to science because the correct question has not been asked. For example, the germ theory of communicable diseases was conclusively supported at the Pasteur Institute in France in 1858. Did germs exist in 1857, 1420, or 1500 B.C.? Of course they did, but the right scientific questions had not been asked.

Another example of this concept is Einstein’s theory that gravity bends light. Experimental verification came in 1918, when Sir Arthur Eddington proved the validity of this theory during a solar eclipse. Upon hearing the news, a student asked Einstein, What would you have said if there was no confirmation? Einstein replied, Then I would have to pity the dear Lord. The theory is correct anyway.3 He knew, because he understood and intuitively appreciated the laws of nature beyond what science had revealed. Einstein also stated, Long before I formulated the theory I knew it was true. In the same way, the program presented in this book works on the level of the laws of nature that uphold health and wholeness. Whether you know it or not, these are always at work in your mind/body.

Medical science is limited in its ability to prove anything. Spontaneous remissions from cancer are not yet understood, but remissions happen all the time. When my Uncle Aaron went to the hospital with stomach cancer, he was given two days to live. The family flew to Florida to bid him farewell. A few days later, he awoke feeling fine. A subsequent examination showed no cancer, and he left the hospital. What happened to his cancer?

Studies show that we constantly recreate our bodies. Disease is maintained by the energy of our thoughts and emotions. Disease, even cancer and AIDS, is not an insurmountable monster. We heal as we grow beyond the place in ourselves that causes the disease. We need to understand that the physical matter that makes up our bodies is not as concrete as it seems. It is in its essence, consciousness, which is expressed as intelligence and energy. As our conscious awareness changes, these aspects of our being become livelier and thus change our physical body. Medical evidence for this can be found when we study people with multiple personalities. In one personality he/she may be a diabetic, and in another he/she can eat sugar all day without problems. What happened to the diabetes?

This example supports the concept that we are more than our thoughts, emotions, and physical bodies. Although emotions and thoughts affect our biochemistry, we are more than that. Because we are having those thoughts and emotions we can heal them, including their effects on our bodies.

Another story told by Eric Butterworth is that of Marconi, who invented the wireless telegraph. When Marconi was a little boy he said he would invent the wireless. Years after his invention people remembered what he had said and asked, How did you know you would be the one when top scientists were already hard at work on it? Marconi said, They were trying to find a way to overcome the resistance of the air in sending wireless messages. I already knew there was no resistance to overcome.4 Marconi did not accept the mental framework that prevented these scientists from seeing other possibilities, so he was ahead of them before he even began. As we will see, modern medicine suffers from the same kind of limitation.

Health and Vibrational Compatibility

Unlike modern medicine, this program is not based on fighting disease. Fighting disease is ultimately fighting the fear of death. Only by creating wellness can you live a longer and healthier life. You will learn how to send the message of balance to the mind/body, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. High blood pressure is not a disease to conquer. It is a symptom of a deeper underlying imbalance that simply manifests as high blood pressure. Your constant preoccupation with disease by allocating more energy, time, and money in an effort to exclude it from your life only creates the opposite effect.

Throwing too much attention, energy, and money at disease aligns your energy to vibrationally match it. By fighting disease, you actually include it in your life. The solution is to put your attention and energy on health and wholeness. As you align your energy with health and create a vibrational compatibility with it the universe will deliver it to you. This is what is meant in the old proverb like attracts like.

The medical and pharmaceutical industry is obsessed with obliterating or killing disease. You cannot become healthy by killing disease because disease only exists in the absence of health. You will succeed in being healthy by creating balance in your mind/body.

In a range of cycles lasting from one day up to seven years, the cells in your body are constantly renewing themselves. Thus, you create new physical bodies many times during one life without even trying! Knowing this, you are more prepared to see that you can create health simply by putting greater attention on it.

Later in the book, we will discuss the Bach Flower Remedies and how harmony is the basis of a real recovery. Gregory Vlamis gives a brief introduction to this concept in his book Flowers To The Rescue.5 He explains that Dr. Bach, the originator of this system, emphasized again and again that to return to health, you must expect change. Direct fighting cannot conquer disease. The way to remove darkness is by bringing light, not by creating greater darkness. Significant changes in your personality, such as substituting acceptance for intolerance, may be necessary as you learn to replace your weaknesses with strengths.

Unfortunately, many approaches used in modern medicine are creating even more darkness. Using drugs to suppress symptoms is like trying to conquer an enemy by force. Unless you can make the enemy your friend, there will never be an end to the enmity. Your enemy will always find another way to strike. An example of this is the negative side effects of drugs, which occur because drugs create new imbalances in the body.

You will often hear expressions like winning the war on heart disease. In truth, there can be no war on heart disease because the symptoms of heart disease arise from imbalances in the body and behavior. Heart disease may be accurately described as a civil war, but the only way to win this war is to end it.

Imbalances arise in the mind/body because the innate intelligence is not flowing effortlessly. As we will see later, information flows through biochemical messenger molecules. When information does not flow correctly the body gets wrong signals and makes mistakes, sometimes creating high blood pressure. Usually stress is the basis of this type of imbalance.

The constant preoccupation of the medical profession with waging war on disease leads us further away from finding real cures. If you put more attention on disease, you only draw closer to it. This war/disease thinking simply perpetuates the misleading view of the doctor as the general and drugs as the army and gives power to the pharmaceutical companies who create the army to fight wars that in reality do not exist. In essence, this model says that you have to be an occupied territory to control your blood pressure or to ward off any other disease. Like an occupied country, you will fight for independence and establish your own government as soon as possible. As soon as you stop taking many drugs, your body will assert its independence and return to an even higher blood pressure in revolt. Even if you feel like you are fighting a war, let courage be your shield and let faith be your sword.

Drugs cause side effects because they force your body to function in a way that is not in accord with the laws governing optimum health. The inner intelligence of your body directs an orderly sequence of adaptive mechanisms that maintains the optimum balance of all systems. When a drug confuses the intelligence, then these adaptive mechanisms make mistakes, and negative side effects are created. Why say yes to drugs when your body can heal itself given the chance to create optimal balance. As you continue your exploration of how to reduce blood pressure naturally, it will become clear that balance is the key.

In the game of telephone, the final message is a misrepresentation of the original. The chronic disease game is similar. Stress and improper lifestyle create imbalances that lead the body to send incorrect messages to itself. When an organ, gland or other system receives these messages, the body will make mistakes such as creating high blood pressure. In this civil war your body is both the protecting army and the enemy, which really does not make sense. However, some patients buy into this war concept. A part of them aligns itself with the concept of being at war with their own body! This is like a house divided against itself. The whole concept of war is inadequate to solve world or individual health problems. In both cases you give away your personal power for healing. Just as most international conflicts can be dealt with successfully, without violence and fear, there are ways to deal with disease without bringing in the heavy artillery of drugs and invasive procedures.

The next question is Is there an enemy at all? The causes of high blood pressure are many and are often difficult to pinpoint. Ultimately, however, imbalance is the cause, and balance needs to be restored. When you walk into a dark room, you do not do battle with the darkness. You just turn on the light. Working from the level of the symptom, as modern medicine often does, you can never heal high blood pressure. At best you will suppress it.

A symptom is how the body tells you something is out of balance. If you suppress your self-expression it leads to frustration, anger, resentment and more. You would never do that to a friend. Your body is your friend, not your enemy! Your body can think and feel. In a manner of speaking, every part of your body knows what every other part is thinking. Your body does not talk in English, but communicates with biochemical messengers such as hormones, neuropeptides and neurotransmitters. Suppressing the symptom ultimately leads to wrong messages and even greater imbalances that will cause more symptoms in the form of side effects. How does this happen?

Messenger Molecules

Your body communicates within itself through messenger molecules such as neuropeptides. These are protein-like molecules that are not only manufactured in the brain, but all over the body. Likewise there are receptor sites for these molecules throughout the body. We know for sure that the body never shuts up. It talks to itself constantly. The exchange of information from one system or organ to another through these messengers never ceases. Therefore, if you are happy, your heart is happy, your liver is happy, your arteries and veins are happy, etc.

There are times, however, when incorrect messages are sent. This can be due directly to stress, obesity, alcohol consumption, smoking, poor diet, or other aspects of an unhealthy lifestyle. Decades of research have connected essential hypertension to unhealthy lifestyles. Approximately ninety-five percent of hypertension is idiopathic, meaning that the cause is unknown. Why would your brain send an incorrect message to the coronary artery, causing it to constrict and produce the pain of angina? Obviously the message sent is a mistake because previously your brain did not send this type of signal. Imbalance can only be corrected through balance. So take a guess now how modern medicine responds to this situation.

Fragmented Therapy

You guessed correctly if you said drugs. Beta-blockers are used to ensure the heart does not respond as strongly to your body’s own stress signals such as the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline). Calcium channel blockers are used to stop coronary artery spasms. However, the problem with drugs is that the brain is still sending the message to constrict the coronary arteries.

If a calcium channel blocker prevents angina pain this creates a problem because the mistake in the mind/body balance that is causing the pain to begin with is not being addressed. In other words, you may still have a problem with your coronary artery or blood pressure regulation even if your blood pressure readings are reduced with drugs.

Try not taking your medication for one day. One man I knew went from approximately 140 over 80 to 205 over 130 in one day! That was one day without high blood pressure medication. Incidentally, before he started on blood pressure medication his pressure was 140 over 90; the drugs made it worse. This is not always the case, as with people who wean themselves off hypertensive medication whose blood pressure stays low. The real issue is that medication, as a solution, does not work because it does not address the underlying cause. Insular vision creates fragmented therapies.

Hypertensive drugs make your blood pressure worse by drugs lying to the body by making the body think that there is no problem, and therefore the body fails to self-correct. Having high blood pressure while taking medication makes sense if you understand the concept that until the underlying cause is corrected the disease still exists even if there are no symptoms. You should always aim to treat the cause not the effect, but if the effect is dangerous or life threatening, the effect should be addressed until you can safely treat the cause.

We will learn in this book that simple minerals can correct hypertension for some people, because one cause of this disease is mineral deficiencies. The mineral magnesium, for example, is more effective than calcium channel-blockers, has no known side effects, and has benefits beyond relaxing the arterial walls. Some cases of hypertension presumed to be caused by high sodium are really due to a calcium, magnesium, and potassium deficit.

When the intelligence that runs your mind and body becomes distorted or imbalanced it makes mistakes, and the result is more imbalances that can cause more disease. With the proper understanding and natural techniques you can correct these mistakes by using techniques that restore the memory of your body’s innate intelligence to self-heal and self-correct. This is what my program is all about.

The Healing Laws of Nature are on Your Side

Eric Butterworth says, With all the laws of nature on your side for health and healing, the miracle is that you ever get sick in the first place.6 Since you are an integral part of the universe, the universe is on your side, the side of health and healing. However, it is up to you to exercise your birthright.

These laws of nature can be considered impulses of intelligence. How can you understand the body’s intelligence in a practical way? If a scientist conducts a chemical experiment, different chemicals are taken from the shelf and mixed to get a specific result. Your body also mixes chemicals to produce reactions or other chemicals that are needed for health and balance. The difference is that in your body there is no shelf and no scientist in the experiment. Your body actually manufactures the molecules that it needs from basic substances obtained in the diet. That is intelligence! You’re in pain? Your body chemistry dishes up an order of endorphins with a side order of enkephalins, and the pain is killed. How does your body produce stronger pain medication than the pharmaceutical industry with no side effects? The healing and balancing laws of nature in your mind/body are a part of your inner intelligence. When the mind/body is in balance, this knowledge translates into an active intelligence for healing and maintaining wholeness or health.

The big secret is that your high blood pressure can be greatly lowered and controlled using simple and safe techniques that are natural and effective. The key is balance. Every cell in your body is in need of your leadership, coherence, and love. All the universal laws of healing are on your side just waiting for your command.

Part I

High Blood Pressure Description

Chapter One

What Is High Blood Pressure?

Over 50 million Americans have high blood pressure, and it is

the number one reason for office visits. The percentage of people with high blood pressure generally increases with age. For instance, about 30% of the baby boomers from age 45 to 54 have high blood pressure: for people age 55 to 65, it jumps to 44%. These are the estimated figures for the year 2000 according to the American Heart Association. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that 90% of Americans may develop high blood pressure in their lives.7 The information in this book is invaluable to prevent and treat hypertension.

High blood pressure can lead to hardening of the arteries, kidney damage, enlarged heart muscle, heart failure, heart attack, stroke, vessel weakness, and angina pectoris. The medical profession considers essential hypertension an incurable disease of unknown causes, and therefore drug therapy is prescribed for life. However, much research has shown essential hypertension to be caused by an unhealthy lifestyle.

High blood pressure, also called hypertension, has been named the silent killer because unless blood pressure is extremely high, there usually are no overt symptoms. Heart attacks are also more likely to be fatal when accompanied by high blood pressure. High blood pressure adds to the workload of your heart and arteries. Because your heart must work harder than normal for a long time, it tends to get bigger. A very enlarged heart is weaker and does not have reserves in case of a heart attack.

Not knowing your blood pressure can be detrimental to your health. Become familiar with your blood pressure. In addition to following your doctor’s advice, buy an inexpensive blood pressure cuff and track your blood pressure to alert yourself to any problems as well as help track your progress. You will learn how to do this in Chapter 5.

Blood pressure is essential for life. It is the force of the blood against the walls of the arteries as the heart pumps and relaxes. Blood pressure is the combination of the strength of the heartbeat and the resistance of the arteries and capillaries. The tiny arteries and capillaries contract and relax in rhythm with your heartbeat to greatly influence blood pressure. If they are not relaxing properly, the vessels have more resistance, which increases your blood pressure. Also, blockages in the smaller vessels called arterioles can cause the blood to exert excessive pressure against the vessel walls and increase blood pressure.

Blood pressure is categorized as low, normal, high normal, mild, moderate, severe, and very severe. Low blood pressure is of little concern when a person feels healthy. Varying levels of treatment address higher-than-normal blood pressure.

Blood pressure of 120/80 is considered normal. You pronounce 120/80 one twenty over eighty. The first number is called the systolic pressure. Systolic pressure is measured when the heart contracts to pump your blood. The second number, the diastolic, is measured when the heart relaxes and allows blood to flow into the heart.8 Even pressures as low as 90/60 are indicative of health or low cardiovascular disease risk. Athletes often have blood pressure lower than 120/80.

This book is about a natural program that enables your mind/body to self-correct. When your mind/body self-corrects, it creates the balance needed to heal hypertension. Each chapter describes a modality for helping to heal hypertension naturally. Combined, this knowledge creates a complete program.

In October 1994, I developed high blood pressure. After following the program in this book for 8 months, my blood pressure went from 171/113 to 93/62 and once as low as 89/58. As I continued my program, my blood pressure became completely normal for my physiology. My blood pressure still fluctuates and averages about 115/79. It goes up and down as I continue to monitor it.

What pressure is correct for you? Only when your mind and body are balanced will you know. As you work toward balance using the modalities in this book your pressure will gradually become what is best for your physiology.

When the cardiovascular system and other risk factors are out of balance, hypertension can result. Optimal blood pressure is 120/80 mg Hg (systolic/diastolic) or less. Normal pressure is below 130/85; high normal is 130-139/85-89. When blood pressure is above 140/90, a person is considered hypertensive.

Hypertension is divided into four stages: mild 140-159/90-99; moderate 160-179/100-109; severe 180-209/110-119; and very severe is over 210/120. If there is a disparity between systolic and diastolic pressures, use the higher measurement to determine the appropriate category. If your systolic pressure is 165 (moderate) and diastolic is 92 (mild) you would fit into the moderate hypertensive category. A systolic reading, between 140-159, which is considered mild, can be a warning sign for more severe hypertension. This is true even if diastolic pressure is normal.

A child’s blood pressure is normally much lower than an adult’s. Children are at risk for hypertension if they exceed the following levels: 116/76 for ages 3-5; 122/78 for ages 6-9; 126/82 for ages 10-12 and 136/86 for ages 13-15.9

Generally speaking, blood pressure varies in a predictable way throughout the day. During work, blood pressure is usually highest. It drops slightly at home. During sleep pressure decreases to its lowest level, and suddenly increases when waking and getting up. People with severe high blood pressure are at the highest risk for heart attack and stroke when they wake up.10

In most cases, the medical profession diagnoses hypertension as essential hypertension, meaning that a specific cause cannot be identified. Essential hypertension, also known as primary hypertension, is by far the most common type of high blood pressure accounting for 90% of cases.11 The other 10% of hypertension cases have identifiable causes and are usually temporary.

Evidence demonstrates living a healthy lifestyle is more important than genetic risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease. Genetic predisposition to disease is not written in stone, as health and healing are always possible. You will learn the conventional medical concepts about genetic factors, and how to heal beyond them.

Some Causes

Genetic Factors

Several genetic factors may interact with environmental influences to produce essential high blood pressure.

Genetic abnormalities in the sympathetic nervous system may play a role in essential hypertension. The sympathetic nervous system controls, among other things, heart rate, blood pressure, and the diameter of blood vessels. One study demonstrates that students whose parents had high blood pressure show an increase in nerve activity governed by this system. Students whose parents had normal blood pressure do not have this increase in nerve activity.12

Angiotensin-renin, a hormone, system, influences all aspects of blood pressure control, including blood vessel contraction, salt and water balance, and cell development in the heart. A group of hormones make up the angiotensin-renin system. Genes that affect this system are being studied extensively. You will learn how to relax blood vessels and balance the angiotensin-renin system to help normalize blood pressure.

Secondary Hypertension

Secondary hypertension has recognizable causes, which are usually treatable or reversible. They include: pregnancy causing preeclampsia if untreated leading to eclampsia; hormone abnormalities; use of birth control pills; cirrhosis; kidney disease; tumors of the adrenal gland; sleep apnea; obesity; and Cushing’s Disease. Temporary high blood pressure readings can result from stress, exercise, and long-term consumption of large amounts of licorice and consumption of some food to which a person may be reactive.

A transient high spike of blood pressure during exercise may be a predictor of future heart problems, a topic of interest to many experts. Two recent studies came to opposite conclusions. People in both studies had systolic pressures that were temporarily elevated above 200 during exercise. The studies compared people who exhibited spiking blood pressures to those who did not, and over a two year period one study showed people who spiked having a lower mortality rate and less likely to have severe heart disease than people that had an elevated pressure, while the other study found the opposite to be true.13 We will have to wait for more conclusive research in this area.

Insulin Resistance

Research has demonstrated family histories of high blood pressure coinciding with high levels of fibrinogen (a blood clotting factor), high blood glucose, high insulin, and insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs in half the people with hypertension due to metabolic abnormalities that inhibit insulin and glucose binding to receptor sites of cells. In this condition, the pancreas produces normal to high levels of insulin, but the body is unable to use the insulin to metabolize blood sugar in muscle cells or store it for energy. This causes hyperinsulinemia, high levels of insulin and glucose in the blood. The body compensates by increasing the level of insulin in the blood in order to lower blood glucose levels.

Many people with high blood pressure also have non-insulin dependent diabetes, also known as type II. Hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance are primary mechanisms in this condition. The condition of hyperinsulinemia creates high risk factors for coronary artery disease such as high levels of fat molecules, triglycerides, and low levels of HDL, the so-called good cholesterol.

While the actual events leading to hypertension are speculative, the above conditions are linked. Even if you have hyperinsulinemia and other risk factors, you may not have high blood pressure. The opposite is also true, people without these risk factors may have hypertension.14 We will learn later how to overcome some of the genetic factors that can cause and exacerbate hypertension.

Estrogen Dominance (Women Only)

Excessive estrogen and progestins have a detrimental effect on cell membranes. This effect increases the influx of sodium and water into the cells causing the loss of potassium and magnesium, and resulting in intracellular edema (water retention). Excessive estrogen, also known as estrogen dominance, is an imbalance that can have internal causes or can be caused by oral contraceptives. Estrogen dominance should always be considered a possible culprit for female hypertensive patients.15

When estrogen is responsible for water retention, it is the offender contributing to hypertension. Diuretics are not effective in this case because the water is within the body cells, not loose in the extracellular spaces. The solution is natural progesterone, which can be taken in the form of a cream. (See Chapter 10 for more details).

If you are on hypertensive medication and taking progesterone, be sure to monitor your blood pressure carefully. The progesterone normalizes many processes. Weight goes down and excess fluid is reduced, causing blood pressure to normalize.16

Progesterone taken properly enhances the burning of fats, and has anti-inflammatory effects. These both offer protection against coronary artery disease. Progesterone also helps control very important factors for cardiovascular health. Since it is a natural diuretic, it helps you get a better night’s sleep, and to deal more effectively with stress.

Medications and Hypertension

Certain prescription and over-the-counter drugs can cause temporary high blood pressure. These prescription medications include cortisone, prednisone, estrogen, and indomethacin. There are drugs that may interfere with the treatment of hypertension when used long-term, particularly with beta-blockers. Some drugs can cause hypertension, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, known as NSAIDs. Such drugs include aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, Rufen), indomethacin (Indocin), naproxen (Anaprox, Naprosyn, Aleve), piroxicam (Feldene), sulindac (Cinoril, Tolmetin), and many others. The least detrimental of these drugs appears to be aspirin, which seems to have no effect on blood pressure. Piroxicam seems to raise it the most.

Cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine have been found to raise blood pressure in hypertensive patients. Once blood pressure is under control, there should be no detrimental increase of blood pressure from these drugs.17

Alcohol Use and Hypertension

An estimated 10% of hypertension cases are caused by excessive alcohol intake. Higher levels of consumption of all types of alcoholic beverages are associated with a higher risk of hypertension for all race-gender strata.18 An analysis of a major study shows a correlation between the amount of alcohol consumed and hypertension. Those who consume more than three alcoholic drinks a day have higher blood pressure than those who don’t. Heavier drinkers have higher pressure.19 Heavy drinking and binge drinking increases the risk of stroke.20 Binge-drinkers have higher blood pressure than people who drink regularly do. Some research seems to indicate that mild to moderate consumption, from one to two drinks per day may exert some health benefits, including raising HDL cholesterol levels (the good kind), and reducing risk of heart disease.21 However, I do not recommend alcohol as a treatment for hypertension because it can contribute to many other diseases, such as cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis, pancreatitis, impaired memory, anemia, heart arrhythmias, and cancer.

Conventional Drug Treatment

Conventional drug treatment for hypertension consists of six basic categories. Although we will be discussing natural treatments, it may be useful to be aware of the approach that uses drugs. The conventional treatment approach is to recommend drugs if your hypertension does not respond to changes in life-style and diet within three to six months. As you explore many other approaches, you will