What really is high blood pressure?
Blood pressure has become a very scary and common topic amongst people today, as well as a common health condition. But has your doctor explained to you what is really going on and how you might be able to get to the bottom of it naturally?
What is high blood pressure?
Are you familiar with aldosterone? This is the primary mineral corticoid that is produced in the adrenal cortex. When aldosterone is produced, it acts on the kidneys to help reabsorb sodium, water, and potassium. But what really happens - this causes the kidneys to retain sodium. This is where the low sodium diet came from, and where it has led us wrong. See, eating too much processed table salt has never been good for us or our kidneys. But eating unprocessed, unrefined celtic mineral sea salt never caused high blood pressure. In fact, a diet high in unrefined salt is one of the best things we can do for our health. If salt was that bad for us, why is it when you get admitted in the hospital for high blood pressure, they pump you with extremely high levels of an IV saline solution? Instead, we have high stress, poor circulation, fatty build up in the arteries from a diet high in processed foods, lack of exercise, and poor detoxification - to blame for high blood pressure. When aldosterone increases, it results in increased blood pressure and blood volume.
When the body perceives a stress response, cortisol and aldosterone are produced in the adrenal cortex, aldosterone acts on the kidneys causing them to retain sodium, and water retention increases. This causes blood pressure and blood volume to rise to ensure that the blood is getting delivered to the organs that need it most. In other words, your body is doing its job when it percieves a threat, by doing whatever it takes to get blood to essential organs.
To recap - a stress response causes vasoconstriction of the blood vessels and an increase in fluid retention, which increases blood pressure. Imagine trying to squirt water through a tiny tube. There would be a bottle neck making it very hard to get the water to where you want it to go. Same thing applies to blood going through the vessels. The body is trying to push a large volume of blood to the organs. When your heart beats, you vessels should expand, but instead they do not under stress. It is important to note that stress does not just mean mental weight, stress on the body includes poor diet, physical injury, poor sleep cycles, emotional trauma, moderate exercise routines as opposed to high intensity, short-term training, etc. Anything that causes stress on the body, will result in vasoconstricted blood vessels and an increase in aldosterone resulting in increased blood pressure. The longer this goes on, the bigger the problem. If blood pressure increases and you have fluid retention from stress, the more fluid there is and more pressure builds up from increased aldosterone production. It is a never ending cycle that must be broken with proper stress management, diet, herbs for circulation and relaxation, and a proper and consistent exercise routine.
So what do I do?
Traditionally, the medical model focuses on symptoms such as high blood pressure. In our practice, we focus on what causes high blood pressure. And blood pressure is nothing more than a symptom, a sign that your body needs help on a much deeper level. Want to fix high blood pressure, manage your stress levels with adaptogenic herbs, balance cortisol and hormone levels as well as blood sugar throughout the day by eating within 30 minutes of waking up and balanced meals. Eat enough protein at every meal, switch to unrefined sea salt, clean up your diet, exercise with a smart routine that quickly increases blood pressure without putting stress on the body.
If you struggle with high blood pressure and don’t want to take medication, book a free consultation with me to see if my program would be a good fit for you!
