Natural Hypertension Treatment - Yes, It's Possible to Lower Blood Pressure Without Drugs By Dr. Wayne Sodano

With cardiovascular disease remaining the number one killer in the United States, an estimated 50 million or more Americans are at risk of heart attacks and strokes because of high blood pressure. What gets less publicity is the fact that your high blood pressure can often safely and naturally be reversed.

Hypertension = High Blood Pressure

Physicians distinguish between two forms of hypertension. Primary Hypertension is when there is no obvious cause of elevated blood pressure, although genetics, nutrition, environmental factors, lack of exercise, tobacco use, and stress contribute to it. Secondary Hypertension occurs as a predictable result of some other disease, such as kidney disease or diabetes, among others.

Many times, Hypertension has no visible symptoms and is detected only through a routine blood pressure check at the doctor's office.

Over the last quarter century, mainstream medicine has focused on drug treatments rather than prevention. However, by finding the underlying cause of a particular patient's hypertension and using natural therapies, practitioners can help lower a person's blood pressure to the point where this resolves the problem.

Alternatives to Drugs

Because of the potential side effects of traditional medications used for Hypertension, if your high blood pressure is not at an advanced stage, it makes sense to begin with a conservative natural approach. Sometimes all it takes is a little investigative work to identify and then remove the cause of the problem.

Many drugs and over-the-counter substances are known to raise blood pressure. These include steroids, oral contraceptives, NSAIDS (such as ibuprofin and aspirin), appetite suppressants, nasal decongestants, and certain antidepressants.

Nutritional deficiencies of magnesium, calcium and other essential nutrients are also linked to hypertension, and these can be remedied through supplements. Diuretic drugs cause nutrient losses of important minerals that help to regulate the electrical activity of the heart.

Stress causes an increase of adrenal hormones, which can lead to Hypertension, so lifestyle changes that reduce or manage stress can lower blood pressure.

Lifestyle Changes That Work

A change to a healthier diet, drinking adequate amounts of water, an increase in regular exercise, and learning stress management techniques are excellent tools with profound effects in lowering blood pressure. If you smoke, it is essential to stop.
Practicing Yoga or Tai Chi, and having acupuncture or massage treatments are excellent stress reducers and often help resolve Hypertension.

Where to Find Help?

Functional Medicine practitioners, who may have the professional health care identity of a chiropractor, naturopath, acupuncturist, nutritionist or medical doctor, are trained as medical detectives. They track down the cause of an individual's symptoms rather than assuming that similar symptoms in two different people should be treated in the same way. Also, they tend to help patients with natural, science-based treatments besides drugs.

Dr. Wayne Sodano, D.C., is a chiropractic internist and a faculty member of Functional Medicine University, a training program for medical professionals. He also sits on the Advisory Board of YourMedicalDetective.com, a site that helps the general public understand the root causes of medical conditions - including high blood pressure and a broad range of other health problems

The Link Between Drinking Water and Managing Your Hypertension By Robert Reddin

There may be no cure for hypertension, but there are things we sufferers can do to manage our condition effectively. One simple step we can take is to ensure that we drink sufficient water, for there is a link between our high blood pressure and the amount of water we drink each day.

Water is the natural cleanser for our bodies. That means it is the most effective way of flushing toxins out of our bodies. Whilst those toxins do not directly cause our hypertension, they can contribute to it by causing to other conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, which often goes hand in hand with our condition.

In addition, drinking plenty of water each day helps to eliminate excess levels of sodium. We need some salt in our diet. However, our modern Western diet is high in processed foods, fat and salt. We are consuming far too much sodium without even realizing it. The effect of this is to skyrocket our blood pressure to levels that would be dangerously high if they were to be maintained. Yet, by the nature of our diet and modern sedentary lifestyle, that is exactly what we are doing. Drinking adequate amounts of water each day helps to flush out the excess sodium through our kidneys and lower those all-important readings.

Keeping our bodies properly hydrated is important for our overall health. It helps our bodies to function more efficiently. One advantage of proper hydration is that it helps to keep our blood vessels elastic. Our hearts need to pump blood at higher pressures when our blood vessels lose their elasticity. Our blood vessels lose their elasticity as we grow older, which is one reason why older people tend to have higher blood pressure than do younger people. Drinking plenty of water can help alleviate this.

An indirect benefit of drinking plenty of water is that it makes us feel fuller for longer. This can be a useful aid to a healthy diet as it reduces the temptation to eat between meals and can contribute towards weight loss. As high blood pressure is often associated with obesity, losing weight is beneficial to our condition.

There is another beneficial side effect of drinking adequate amounts of water each day. That is, the more water we drink, the more we need to pass water. Our bodies try to maintain a natural balance. Part of which is balancing the volume of blood in our bodies, thus helping to maintain normal levels of blood pressure. In a way, drinking plenty of water is a natural diuretic, but without some of the side effects.

What, then, is an adequate amount of water? It is easy to become over enthusiastic and treat this method of managing our condition as a panacea. It is not. Most doctors and dieticians agree that our bodies need at least two litres of water a day to function efficiently, but there are health risks in drinking too much water too quickly.

We should aim to drink between six and eight glasses of cold water spaced out throughout the day. That will keep us properly hydrated. If we drink too much water or drink too much too quickly, while increasing the elimination of salt and water from our bodies, we may also be robbing ourselves of valuable minerals such as potassium and magnesium. This can leave us weak and confused.

Drinking an adequate amount of water each day may not be a panacea, but it is a very effective and simple way of helping us to manage our hypertension.

Reducing our hypertension does not necessarily mean that we have to take drugs to normalize our BP readings.

Natural Ways to Lower Blood Pressure - The Top 3 By John M Anthony

There are many natural ways to lower blood pressure, and most, if not all of them hold some merit. Getting rid of Hypertension however, is not a sprint, but a marathon. In addition to this, it's often best to combine the efforts of a few natural ways to reduce BP readings to gain the best results. The goal of course is to always avoid taking Pills. Once you start taking pills, you can expect to feel significantly worse in many departments. This article will rate three different natural means of lowering your systolic and diastolic readings, and hopefully be of some use to hypertension sufferers.

3: Change your diet!

One of the most tried and true natural ways to lower blood pressure is of course to make changes to your diet. We all know that eating healthy has a huge overall effect on our well-being, and to lower BP, it's essential to be eating the right foods. Some kinds of foods that help with hypertension are high potassium foods (spinach, tomatoes, apricots etc) foods high in calcium, and garlic. Diet is a great start to lowering blood pressure, but probably has the least sizeable impact.

2: Increase your cardiovascular Health
Another of the natural ways to lower blood pressure that people often groan when they hear is to actually exercise and attempt to improve their cardiovascular health. Despite it being one of the toughest and most laborious ways to improve your BP readings, it is indeed a very important and effective method. Going for a 30 minute jog daily is enough, and will have you dropping a few points both systolic and diastolic in no time.

1: Slow Breathing Techniques
Interestingly, the most powerful and easiest natural way to cure hypertension is to practice slow breathing techniques. It's been known for a long time by experts that daily use of slow breathing techniques can have a huge positive effect on your BP, yet the information has never really hit the mainstream in any real way. It really is a great way to reduce stress and indeed take points off your BP Readings.

If done correctly, to a proper system, slow breathing has been known to reduce blood pressure by up to 40 Points systolic and 15 points diastolic - not bad results!