High blood pressure is a symptom of many diseases.  While it is not the disease itself, the pressure itself can become a life-threatening problem.  Our blood vessels can only handle so much pressure before things start messing up.  The main concerns are bursting blood vessels, particularly in the eye and brain, and blood clot formation from the high turbulence created with the increasing pressure. 

So what is a normal blood pressure?  From 110/70 to 120/80 is considered normal.  The first number is the amount of pressure created by your heart when it contracts and squeezes the blood into the arteries.  The second number, the one on the bottom, is the amount of constant pressure in the blood system as a whole.  The top number goes up normally when you pump out adrenaline in response to fear or excitement.  The bottom number is more a measure of your resistance to blood flow due to tension in the muscles and constriction in the muscular coat around the vessels.

If you go into the doctor's office and your top number is a little high, they generally don't worry about it.  It generally indicates that you are nervous in the doctor's office.  They call this "white coat hypertension".  It is better to take your blood pressure several times a day for several days and get an average to find out what your real blood pressure is.

Numbers above 130-140/90 are signs that there is a problem somewhere and the body is showing the stress in the blood pressure system.  A good doctor will start looking for the cause, but many won't because blood pressure drugs are so easy to prescribe and the cause generally involves lifestyle issues that are hard to get people to change.  Sometimes there is a serious disease process behind the blood pressure problem such as an underlying kidney disease or lung disease, but usually not.  They call this essential hypertension and 95% of hypertension is this type.  I joke that they call it essential hypertension because essentially they don't care what the cause is.

Hypertension - high blood pressure is dangerous.  Your blood vessels are designed to work at a particular pressure and when you exceed that pressure damage occurs.  When vessel damage occurs, the tissues those vessels go to do not get enough blood and they die.  Maybe this is a muscle bundle in your calf, in which case you probably won't notice anything other than a pain for a short while.  If it happens in your brain you won't feel any pain, but your mental abilities will diminish.  Any place blood flow stops is bad news, but you don't always know it has happened, especially if it is happening in the small vessels.  This is a progressive problem and as it happens more and more you eventually develop disabilities.  If this happens in a large vessel, they may call it a stroke or a heart attack.

I say this to hopefully provide a sense of importance to resolving the causes of high blood pressure.  Medicine avoids the true causes and gives medication that acts to reduce the blood pressure generally by reducing cardiac output.  What that means is that they give you a heart poison to decrease the functioning of your heart so it can't pump as hard.  To my mind, this is not the best answer.  I would rather find out why the heart has to pump harder and fix that reason.

Why do hearts start to pump harder?  The answer is pretty simple - somewhere down the supply line some tissue is saying that it is not getting enough blood and telling the heart to pump harder to force more blood to that area.  The most sensitive tissues to poor blood flow are the kidneys.  They produce a hormone that tells the heart to pump more if they are not getting just the right amount of blood flow.

So why would an area in the body not get enough blood?  The most common reason is blood vessel disease - hardening of the arteries.  Blood vessels are built to be stretchy.  As the heart contracts and the blood pressure goes up, the blood vessels are designed to expand to accept the extra blood.  Between heart beats the muscle coating around the blood vessel contracts and squeezes the burst of blood forward keeping the blood moving in the right direction.  But if the vessel wall gets hard and inflexible then this doesn't happen and the blood flow diminishes.

What keeps the blood vessel walls flexible?  A tiny chemical called nitric oxide.  If your body does not form enough nitric oxide, your blood vessel walls do not stay relaxed and flexible.  A simple way to increase your nitric oxide production is to lie in the sun.  Exposure to the ultraviolet rays from sunshine significantly reduces blood pressure by increasing nitric oxide production.  A recent study in England concluded that the benefits of sun exposure far outweigh the risks from skin cancer since 80 times more people die from blood pressure problems than skin cancer.  In the office we use an even more powerful nitric oxide producer called Nitric Balance.  It not only relaxes the blood vessels, but fights inflammation in the vessel walls.

Inflammation is the other big cause of inflexible blood vessels.  Inflammation causes atherosclerosis - hardening of the arteries with plaque formation.  Basically your plumbing is getting clogged.  Foods form our diet form free radicals that attack the lining of the blood vessels and tear them.  When this happens, the body attracts a special type of cell to patch the tear that then attracts calcium and cholesterol to form a Band-Aid over the tear.  If this happens all the time, before long you have more Band-Aids than you have vessel wall and the arteries get clogged up with all the "bandages".  Now you have blockage and that means low blood flow.  The surrounding tissues cry out for more blood so the heart pumps harder trying to get blood to these blocked areas.

The number one foods that cause this problem are sugar and rancid fats.  The fructose in sugar increases your uric acid levels and uric acid causes high blood pressure.  Sugar also causes insulin resistance making your insulin levels rise.  As your insulin goes up so does your blood pressure.  Don't eat sugar, period. 

Rancid fats are highly toxic and they burn and tear your artery walls.  Any time you heat a vegetable oil it turns rancid (as in cooking it), or even keeping it at room temperature it turns rancid.  Essentially stay away from vegetable oils completely.  I am talking about soy, corn, canola, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, and so on.  The only safe liquid oils are avocado, coconut, and olive.  Be careful of olive oils right now, even the big well known brands have been found to be "watered" with the much cheaper vegetable oils to boost profits - it is a big scandal in Italy right now.

Adrenaline super burns your artery walls, so if you are stressed and your body is pumping out adrenaline because of too much stress, you are creating hardening of your arteries.  Decreasing stress is a major factor in reducing high blood pressure.  Plus the adrenaline increases blood pressure directly by speeding up the heart.  Another common adrenaline reaction is the jump it makes whenever your blood sugar drops - a common problem in people who eat too much sugar as their blood sugar regulation mechanism gets fouled up.  Getting enough exercise (but not too much) is a valuable method for decreasing stress and adrenal overload.  Other activities that promote relaxation like meditation, yoga, music, nature walks, loving service, all help with high blood pressure. 

Increasing your magnesium levels also helps to relax the vessels.  Most people are deficient in magnesium and would benefit by taking at least 400 mg every day.  Potassium also supports the relaxation side of the nervous system and the daily suggested levels were just raised.  I take MgKzyme from the office to cover both needs every day.  However eating enough green vegetables will also do the trick, as it is the magnesium in vegetables that makes them green.

So now you see why doctors don't want to deal with the causes of high blood pressure.  Most of the time high blood pressure is caused by our high stress and junk food lifestyle.  Telling patients to get off the sugary foods, starchy foods, and fried foods does not make you a popular guy.  Add in telling them to exercise more, meditate, eat lots of green vegetables, and drop the stressful lifestyle and the patient will blow you off as out of your gourd.  So instead you tell them "Here, take this heart poison and your blood pressure will come down.  Don't worry that it will make you feel tired because now all the areas of your body that are telling the heart to pump harder so they will get enough blood will slowly stop functioning.  As these areas start to fail we have drugs to cover that up also, so you will be fine.  You don't need to change your lifestyle at all."

Well as a doctor you don't actually say all that; you just say "take this blood pressure medication and you will be fine."  Fortunately I am not a medical doctor and I am not allowed to prescribe drugs.  So that leaves me in the unpopular position of telling you to change your lifestyle to address the actual causes of your high blood pressure.  Oh well, it is my burden to carry.

Take care,


David

Our office has kept our prices unchanged for the last 7 years.  In that time inflation has increased 19.2%.  Our dollars just are not stretching far enough any more, so we will be raising prices in two steps to compensate for inflation.  June 1st we will be increasing our fees by 10% and then next year another 10% to bring us up to current prices.  We are keeping Medicare prices the same right now.

Tuesdays and Fridays

Take care,

David            

Beetroot can lower blood pressure

The journal of Hypertension recently reported that drinking 8 ounces of beet root juice will cut blood pressure by an average of 10 points.  Beet root contains natural nitrates that help the blood vessels form the powerful blood vessel relaxant nitric oxide.  These natural nitrates are found in many green vegetables and tells us we would benefit by eating lots more of them.     

~  Anonymous

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Increase potassium and cut salt to reduce stroke risk  
 

~Arnold Bennett 

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100 day wool shirt

 "Hesitancy in judgment is the only true mark of the thinker. "

~ Dagobert D. Runes

About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

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