blood pressure

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Does anyone have anything to take to help lower my blood presure? I just went to get physical and had high blood going back in one month to see if lower. Dr. didn't give me any med. wanted to use diet first since I am over weight. But I would like to help it along with something natual. I've heard garlic does but what kind and how much??

Thanks Sandy

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003

Answers

Hi Sandy! Good to see ya!

Adequate calcium is very important to good BP; most folks don't get enough, and when they do, often aren't metabolizing it well anyway. Most calcium supplements are useless, end up with about 1 to 10% absorption! If you can afford it, get some coral calcium. It's reportedly 90% assimilable, perfectly balanced with magnesium, which you also need to help metabolize the calcium, so even though it costs more, it's worth it cuz you're not paying for stuff your body wastes anyway. Carbonate is the worst stuff, and the most common. Citrate is better.

Many people who eat dairy frequently think they're getting enough calcium, but if their systems aren't processing correctly, they may not be getting the benefits. People who suspect they have trouble processing dairy often find improvement by always taking some little lactase enzyme pills whenever they eat dairy. This, along with dark green veggies, are the natural ways to get calcium.

CoEnzyme Q10 is also recommended for high blood pressure, or any other circulatory problems. It's expensive though. Also hawthorn berries, which is pretty cheap.

As to how much garlic to take, I would suggest getting some good quality softgels that contain 5,000 mg, and taking one twice a day. Some folks don't like to take them in the morning cuz it scares people away! (Puritan's Pride garlic is very reasonable; you can buy it over the internet if you like)

Stop eating sugar, cut down on all starches. Many people find low carb diets not only great for losing weight, but maintaining healthy BP. And, of course, exercise! Meditation is helpful too, if done almost every day.

Good luck!

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003


All of my herb books are packed and in storage, but I think that garlic is more for cholesterol than high blood pressure. Do you feel like you're retaining water? Dandelion leaf is a very nice and gentle dieuretic. Chemical dieuretics like Lasix (sp?) make your body lose potassium along with the water so you have to take a potassium suppliment. Dandelion leaf is naturally high in potassium so you don't need to suppliment.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003

Garlic is very effective in lowering BP. It's one of nature's wonder drugs; good for many many things that ail humans.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003

barberry, black cohosh, buchu, celery seed, dandelion,dill, elecampane,fenugreek, garlic, ginger, ginko, horehound, juniper,, motherwort,nettle, parsley, saffron, sarsparilla,uva ursi,valarian are all described as possible herbal high blood pressure treatments. Any diuretic can help reduce high blood pressure. A daily water pill is often all some people use to lower their blood pressure. Before trying any herbal, check with your physician.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003

How about sitting with a cat or a lap dog and just petting it and relaxing?? Isn't that supposed to lower blood pressure :-)?

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003


Just walk 2or3 miles a day at a brisk pace. Thats what I do. I was a jogger when I was younger but my knees went bad. Walking or jogging is a sure fire way to keep the BP down.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003

"Before trying any herbal, check with your physician.

Doctors don't know jack about herbals, with very few exceptions. And what they DO know, and seldom emphasize, is that those "water pills" are more often than not accompanied by all manner of side effects: screwing up the electrolite balance, causing potassium deficiency is a common one, and often leads to death. It is no innocuous thing to suggest someone take one daily.

"Diuretics are much like laxatives in the sense that they give the person a feeling of weight loss. When taken, a person will only lose vital fluids and electrolytes. Within a day or two the body will react and start to retain water, which is usually what causes a person to use them repeatedly. Abuse of diuretics usually leads to dehydration which can cause kidney damage. Electrolyte imbalances can occur from repeated use which is very serious. Your body's electrolytes need to be in balance in order for your organs, such as the heart, kidney and liver, to function properly. Once the electrolytes go out of balance, the person is at a very high risk for heart failure and sudden death. Diuretics do not cause weight loss, but repeated use can cause serious medical complications."

from Canada Mirror

Likewise, just throwing out a long list of "possible herbal treatments" may be cute, but it's useless without details as to dosage, form and plant part.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003


EM, Most doctors I know have herbal PDRs in their reference libraries. I would rather trust the opinion of someone who is not only knowledgable in herbal components, but also knoweldable in the bodies reactions to combinations of those herbals and pharmaceuticals. Physicians now are more receptive to natural based medicines since the ineffectiveness that has developed to many pharmaceutically produced antibiotics and other medications through over prescribing. And due to the increased use of herbals and the lack of control perameters of supplements, most physcians are now training to at least be knowledgable on the toxicity potentials of herbal compounds.

My family physcian prefers prescribing herbal diuretics when possible as he feels they are less invassive to the electrolyte balances. He also uses herbals for migraine treatments when possible.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2003


Earthmama I went to the local heath store and she has tons of knowledge according to a friend I just met. Well went in to "see" what see knew and she took me to a product with all the ingredients you suggested!!! She explained to me and said I could take seperate or just take in this pill. She herself has high blood pressure and takes this. She showed me her chart that she takes with her to her Homepatic(sp?) Doctor and boy has it got her pressure down.So I'll gladly take the pill at each meal and stay away from the crap my father gets!!!LOL

Thanks everyone for the advice!!

Take care, Sandy

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2003


Jay, if your "family physcian prefers prescribing herbal diuretics ", then he is a rare bird indeed. Regardless of what we may like to believe, the vast majority of physicians do not know squat about herbals. In fact, they dont know squat about the interactions of the voluminous amounts of pharmaceutical crap they prescribe each and every day! And that's stuff they are actually trained in (med school, mainly financed by the drug industry)! If you think that ". Physicians now are more receptive to natural based medicines since the ineffectiveness that has developed to many pharmaceutically produced antibiotics and other medications through over prescribing", you don't get out much! A few anecdotes does not make a trend; yes, eventually this will be a true statement, since they will have no choice when mother nature comes home to roost, but it is most assuredly not the case as we speak. Most physicians are still hostile and ignorant to herbals, just as their good daddy-O's at the drug companies train them to be, and they know nothing about them and don;t care to know.

The handful that are breaking away, who have decided to think for themselves and listen to their patients, to spend their own time really studying alternatives, should be applauded and encouraged. But not too loud, because they are also increasingly being threatened by their peers when they make too much noise. I deal with this stuff every day; I'm not just pulling stuff out of my whatever.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2003



EM, Physicians are like anyone else. Some are openminded and receptive, while some are of a narrowed perspective and believe their way is the only way. It is our duty to find those that suit our needs. I am amazed at how many today no longer seek 2nd, third or fourth opinons when physicians give them the "long face" .

Yes, I am extremely glad that a wise physician showed me how to seek out the ones of widened perspective.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2003


Sandy, please post the manufacturer/brand and the "name" of the supplement? Several family members have BP issues, and I'd like to suggest it to them. If it's one thing that they can take, they might do it! ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2003

Joy the name is Blood Pressure Factors and it's by Michael's Naturopatic Programs. They have a web page it's.... http://www.michaelshealth.com

Hope they work to lower mine!! So far I've not gotten that flush feeling that comes when it's spiking up. I would get it if I get upset or someone pissed me off!!!! And I've gotten pissed off,how could I not I drive as a living so someone is bound to piss me off!!! LOL

Sandy

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2003


Oh dear, Sandy; you really need to take up meditation! You'll have a hard time normalizing your BP if you're gettin pissed off all the time! I think it will be helpful if you can find a way (you may be able to find a hypnotherapist or somesuch) to retrain your mind to look at these other drivers from a different perspective, to start seeing their foibles as humorous or pitiable instead of enraging. I know, I used to get furious at other drivers all the time! But I really have made vast improvement, so I know it can be done.

Many people find meditation tapes to be very helpful, at least at first. I still use them frequently. I have some I've made myself too. There are all kinds of them out there; sometimes called just relaxation tapes, and there are some geared towards christians, if that is more appealing to you than the more new agey stuff.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2003


Thanks Earthmama!! I used to listen to my Lord of the Dance tape while driving but I have another person that rides with me(I drive a school bus for the mentally handicapped and I have an attendant who likes NO music what-so-ever but Christain.) So just today I started humming to myself when a driver would really get on my nerves or my attendant and it works!! After I wrote that post I said I wonder if that's what makes my pressure go up and so today I started the humming thing and it works!! Thanks so very much!! Sandy

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2003


This of course is about a lot more than BP, but after all, peace starts with each individual..........

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April 26, 2003 The Monk in the Lab By TENZIN GYATSO

HARAMSALA, India

These are times when destructive emotions like anger, fear and hatred are giving rise to devastating problems throughout the world. While the daily news offers grim reminders of the destructive power of such emotions, the question we must ask is this: What can we do, person by person, to overcome them?

Of course such disturbing emotions have always been part of the human condition. Some — those who tend to believe nothing will "cure" our impulses to hate or oppress one another — might say that this is simply the price of being human. But this view can create apathy in the face of destructive emotions, leading us to conclude that destructiveness is beyond our control.

I believe that there are practical ways for us as individuals to curb our dangerous impulses — impulses that collectively can lead to war and mass violence. As evidence I have not only my spiritual practice and the understanding of human existence based on Buddhist teachings, but now also the work of scientists.

For the last 15 years I have engaged in a series of conversations with Western scientists. We have exchanged views on topics ranging from quantum physics and cosmology to compassion and destructive emotions. I have found that while scientific findings offer a deeper understanding of such fields as cosmology, it seems that Buddhist explanations — particularly in the cognitive, biological and brain sciences — can sometimes give Western-trained scientists a new way to look at their own fields.

It may seem odd that a religious leader is so involved with science, but Buddhist teachings stress the importance of understanding reality, and so we should pay attention to what scientists have learned about our world through experimentation and measurement.

Similarly, Buddhists have a 2,500-year history of investigating the workings of the mind. Over the millenniums, many practitioners have carried out what we might call "experiments" in how to overcome our tendencies toward destructive emotions.

I have been encouraging scientists to examine advanced Tibetan spiritual practitioners, to see what benefits these practices might have for others, outside the religious context. The goal here is to increase our understanding of the world of the mind, of consciousness, and of our emotions.

It is for this reason that I visited the neuroscience laboratory of Dr. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin. Using imaging devices that show what occurs in the brain during meditation, Dr. Davidson has been able to study the effects of Buddhist practices for cultivating compassion, equanimity or mindfulness. For centuries Buddhists have believed that pursuing such practices seems to make people calmer, happier and more loving. At the same time they are less and less prone to destructive emotions.

According to Dr. Davidson, there is now science to underscore this belief. Dr. Davidson tells me that the emergence of positive emotions may be due to this: Mindfulness meditation strengthens the neurological circuits that calm a part of the brain that acts as a trigger for fear and anger. This raises the possibility that we have a way to create a kind of buffer between the brain's violent impulses and our actions.

Experiments have already been carried out that show some practitioners can achieve a state of inner peace, even when facing extremely disturbing circumstances. Dr. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco told me that jarring noises (one as loud as a gunshot) failed to startle the Buddhist monk he was testing. Dr. Ekman said he had never seen anyone stay so calm in the presence of such a disturbance.

Another monk, the abbot of one of our monasteries in India, was tested by Dr. Davidson using electroencephalographs to measure brain waves. According to Dr. Davidson, the abbot had the highest amount of activity in the brain centers associated with positive emotions that had ever been measured by his laboratory.

Of course, the benefits of these practices are not just for monks who spend months at a time in meditation retreat. Dr. Davidson told me about his research with people working in highly stressful jobs. These people — non-Buddhists — were taught mindfulness, a state of alertness in which the mind does not get caught up in thoughts or sensations, but lets them come and go, much like watching a river flow by. After eight weeks, Dr. Davidson found that in these people, the parts of their brains that help to form positive emotions became increasingly active.

The implications of all this are clear: the world today needs citizens and leaders who can work toward ensuring stability and engage in dialogue with the "enemy" — no matter what kind of aggression or assault they may have endured.

It's worth noting that these methods are not just useful, but inexpensive. You don't need a drug or an injection. You don't have to become a Buddhist, or adopt any particular religious faith. Everybody has the potential to lead a peaceful, meaningful life. We must explore as far as we can how that can be brought about.

I try to put these methods into effect in my own life. When I hear bad news, especially the tragic stories I often hear from my fellow Tibetans, naturally my own response is sadness. However, by placing it in context, I find I can cope reasonably well. And feelings of helpless anger, which simply poison the mind and embitter the heart, seldom arise, even following the worst news.

But reflection shows that in our lives much of our suffering is caused not by external causes but by such internal events as the arising of disturbing emotions. The best antidote to this disruption is enhancing our ability to handle these emotions.

If humanity is to survive, happiness and inner balance are crucial. Otherwise the lives of our children and their children are more likely to be unhappy, desperate and short. Material development certainly contributes to happiness — to some extent — and a comfortable way of life. But this is not sufficient. To achieve a deeper level of happiness we cannot neglect our inner development.

The calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind, not just to avoid feeding the flames of hatred, but to respond skillfully. We would do well to remember that the war against hatred and terror can be waged on this, the internal front, too.

Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama.



-- Anonymous, April 27, 2003


Here' more on meditation:

Health sense: Research is beginning to crack the mystery of meditation Judy Foreman Published April 27, 2003

For decades, open-minded Westerners -- patients and doctors alike -- have been touting the medical benefits of meditation, an ancient Eastern practice that comes in hundreds if not thousands of flavors but consists basically of quieting the mind through moment-to-moment nonjudgmental awareness.

Considerable research suggests that regular meditation, or even just 10 to 20 minutes a day practicing the "relaxation response" long promoted by Dr. Herbert Benson, president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Chestnut Hill, Mass., can reverse many of the ill effects of stress.

Meditation, or the relaxation response, has been shown to lower blood pressure, heart rate and respiration; to reduce anxiety, anger, hostility and mild to moderate depression. It also can help alleviate insomnia, premenstrual syndrome, hot flashes and infertility, and can relieve some types of pain, most notably tension headaches.

What nobody, until now, has even come close to explaining is how meditation works. That is, what mechanisms within the brain might explain how changing mental focus can have such large effects on mood and metabolism. Nor, until now, has there been much collaboration between experts in meditation such as Buddhist monks and neuroscientists.

All that is changing -- fast.

A new study, accepted for publication soon in Psychosomatic Medicine, is a significant first step in understanding what goes on in the brain during meditation. The study was led by Richard Davidson, director of the laboratory for affective neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.

The underlying theory is that in people who are stressed, anxious or depressed, the right frontal cortex of the brain is overactive and the left frontal cortex is underactive. Such people also show heightened activation of the amygdala, a key center for processing fear.

By contrast, people who are habitually calm and happy typically show greater activity in the left frontal cortex relative to the right. These lucky folks pump out less of the stress hormone cortisol, recover faster from negative events and have higher levels of natural killer cells, a measure of immune system function.

A 'set point'

Each person has a natural "set point," a baseline frontal cortex activity level that is characteristically tipped left or right and around which daily fluctuations of mood swirl. What meditation may do is nudge this balance in the favorable direction.

To find out, stressed-out volunteers were recruited from the Promega Corp., a high-tech firm in Madison. At the outset, all volunteers were tested with electroencephalograph (EEG), which collects brain- wave information through electrodes placed on the scalp. The volunteers were randomly placed into one of two groups -- 25 into the meditation group and 16 into the control group.

The meditators took an eight-week course developed by Kabat-Zinn. At the end of eight weeks, both meditators and controls were again given EEG tests and flu shot. They also got blood tests to check for antibody response to the flu shots. Four months later, all got EEG tests again.

By the end of the study, the meditators' brains showed a pronounced shift toward the left frontal lobe, while the nonmeditators' brains did not, suggesting that meditation may have shifted the "set point" to the left. (The nonmeditators actually got slightly worse, perhaps because they were cranky from making several trips to the lab without the payoff of learning to meditate.) The meditators also had more robust responses to the flu shots. Indeed, the bigger the mood effect, the bigger the immune response.

The Wisconsin study fits with a smaller study published in May 2000 by Benson, Sara Lazar, a neurobiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and others who looked at five Sikh meditators. Using a scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers found a shift in blood flow in the brain during meditation.

The new meditation work also fits with data suggesting that certain drugs produce meditation-like effects on the brain, says Dr. Solomon Snyder, director of the department of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. It's reasonable to assume, he says, that meditation may increase serotonin, a calming neurotransmitter, in the brain.

West meets east

No one has been more fascinated by this kind of research than the Dalai Lama himself, the leader (in exile) of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Dalai Lama spent five days in March 2000 meeting with other Buddhist monks, philosophers and Western neuroscientists at a retreat in Daramsala, India that is chronicled in a new book called "Destructive Emotions" by Daniel Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence."

In addition to lots of esoteric debate, the conference had a practical outcome. One participant, Paul Ekman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, went on to study several monks in his California lab.

Ekman had developed a way to measure the facial expression of emotions and found that most people don't do well when asked to decipher rapid changes in facial expression. But the monks were near- perfect decoders of facial expression. And one meditator, a 60-year- old French intellectual who has been a monk for nearly 30 years, appeared able to suppress the startle reflex while meditating -- a stunning display of control over a basic, biological response.

None of this, of course, means that meditation is a cureall. As Barrie Cassileth, chief of the integrative medical service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, puts it, meditation is a wonderful tool, but it "cannot bring about levitation. It cannot control cellular activity in the sense of getting rid of disease." that's what HE thinks!

But it is, as Ekman says cautiously, "an exercise for the brain that could be of some benefit."

So, what does it all mean? Obviously, a few studies on several dozen amateur meditators and a few pros is not the final answer on how meditation acts on the brain to produce changes in mood and basic, biological functions.

But what the studies do suggest is that, at long last, the subtleties of mind long known subjectively to proficient meditators may prove capable of being understood objectively, as well.

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2003


EM, do you have links for those articles? I'd like to pass them on, but of course, I can't send folks in here to read this.

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2003

Sorry, Joy........meditation

dalai lama (new york times articles require one-time free registration)

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2003


Thanks!

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2003

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