Download High Blood Pressure

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE (BP) (HYPERTENSION)
Hypertension (HT), unequivocal when BP regularly excess 160/95, is relatively common in
industrialized societies - affecting about 20% of such population. However, BPs are
generally more favourable to health the lower they are, down to pressures like 90/60, unless
they drop suddenly or unexpectedly to these levels. The upper pressure is called the systolic
and the lower the diastolic and both are important - the upper one principally reflects how the
heart is pumping (and how stiff the arteries are into which it pumps) and the lower one the
resistance in the smaller arteries to blood flow, in a way that prevents the pressure from
dropping away between heart beats, allowing the maintenance of blood flow at all times.
If the pressures are too high, then tissues are damaged, including the arteries, and vital organs
like the heart (having to overwork), the kidneys, the eyes and the brain, along with liver
metabolism (with consequences for the whole body’s metabolism and the brain in particular).
A number of nutritional factors adversely affect BP:
(1)
Obesity especially abdominal obesity.
(2)
Alcohol, which put up BP with even the smallest amount of alcoholic beverage, is a
much overlooked cause of fluctuating high BP. eg The morning after binge drinking
the night before.
(3)
Sodium, especially from sodium chloride (NaCl), but also from sodium bicarbonate
(baking soda), MSG (monosodium glutamate) as in soy sauce and in various
medications (as in sodium ascorbate - a salt of vitamin C, commonly used as a
vitamin supplement). Actually, the sodium/potassium “molar ratio”, which should be
less than 1, is more predictive of high BP than sodium alone, especially with
advancing years. Hence, a low fat, high plant food, lean meat food pattern can help
keep BP down for a given sodium intake, especially in older people.
“molar ratio” is the ratio of the number of one kind of molecular to that of
another - in this case sodium to potassium.
(4)
Omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids, especially the long-chain ones from fish and fish oil
(DHA, docosa-hexa-enoic acid and EPA, eicosa-penta-enoic acid) can help lower BP.
(5)
A plant food orientation to eating, possible for various cumulative reasons, lowers BP
in contrast to a more meat orientation.
(6)
Dairy foods, together with plant foods also help lower BP, perhaps because of the
calcium content, the protein fragments ("caseopeptides") which can inhibit BP raising
enzymes like ACE (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme) or, for other reasons, may help.
This is most interesting, because one of the most commonly used drug classes in the
treatment of HT does the same thing as these ACE inhibitors from food.