Hypertension and You.

This week we’re going to change the focus from breast health on to other areas that affect your health, specifically hypertension (or high blood pressure). 

Obviously, high blood pressure is not a good thing.

Let me help you understand why.  Think of your blood vessels as a garden hose.  When your heart pumps, there is a bolus (a large ball of fluid) that comes through your arteries every second or so. That whole big volume of blood that’s in the ventricle goes out almost at one time.  It’s kind of like the Tom and Jerry cartoons that you see where the mouse gets caught in the hose and there’s a bulge in the hose where he's hiding from the cat. That happens every time your heart pumps.  That bulge of fluid goes out through the arteries and it stretches them in the process.

It doesn’t take much of a thought process to figure out that as you increase the pressure it increases the stretching of the artery walls.  They are made of little elastic fibers.  As you stretch them too much those elastic fibers begin to break.  Then the body repairs it with a patch that we call cholesterol or plaque.  Cholesterol, calcium and other substances such as fibrin, are part of that patch.  That’s how that whole process of hardening of the arteries occurs.  You get too much stress, you get damage, and then you get the patch.  Now that patch doesn’t flex and the rest of the arterial wall has to flex even more.  It becomes a vicious cycle.  You can see how that creates a perpetual damage problem ongoing. 

So, we can see that keeping your blood pressure under control is important in order not to damage the arteries so that the arteries can function with their natural stretch properties every time that bolus of blood comes out of the ventricle.  It’s also important in order to not damage organs like your kidneys, your brain, etc. 

There are some natural things you can do to keep blood pressure under control.  The simplest one is stay out of stress.  I’ve already mentioned briefly that stress causes disease, and in fact chronic stress is a major cause of hypertension.  If you’re interested in supplements, magnesium has been shown to reduce blood pressure significantly.  There are a number of other natural things that have benefit.  Garlic is another supplement that can help prevent or treat hypertension. Even though garlic will make you smell, it could save your life.

The bottom line: keeping our blood pressure low is very important, especially for the cardiovascular system. I’ll be talking more about cardiovascular health in the coming weeks on this blog and on my podcasts, so stay tuned!