I get emails all the time and alarmingly in increasing numbers from active, healthy people who tell me they suffer with regular bouts of high blood pressure. How can this be? These folks are in great shape; they exercise their bodies and their minds and follow a healthy diet. Yet they say they must constantly battle elevated blood pressure. It was a puzzle that bothered me.
The problem hit very close to home when a close friend of mine had a heart attack. This was a healthy guy, living an active, healthy lifestyle who went through periods of time with no signs of high blood pressure. He worked out regularly and ate a sensible, well balanced diet. How could he wind up having a heart attack?
He wound up suffering a heart attack because he allowed tension and anxiety to creep into an otherwise healthy lifestyle. When he got stressed or worked too long and too hard without relaxing from time to time, his blood pressure skyrocketed to obviously dangerous levels. Hard evidence that merely eating right and exercising is not necessarily enough to protect you from a heart attack and its consequences.
Despite all the labor saving devices in today’s ultra modern world, as individuals we’re working harder than ever before. Longer hours at work, bumper to bumper commutes, overwhelming responsibilities at home and work, social obligations to fit in; it’s little wonder so many feel the tension and anxiety our fast-paced life brings. Most of us wear an invisible overcoat of stress every day.
You may think stress is only a mental thing, but it manifests itself physically as well. Your heart will beat faster causing your blood pressure to rise, adrenaline and several other hormones are released and your muscles tense up. Digestion slows and your brain is firing orders to the rest of the body at turbospeed. If you spend a great deal of time worrying or feeling anxious, your body stays in this state of readiness for what it perceives is a threat to your life.
It should come as no surprise then, that after an extended period of time in this defensive mode, with your heart racing and your blood pumping wildly through your veins, muscles tensed, you’re increasing your odds of developing all kinds of health problems, including hypertension, the medical term for high blood pressure.
One of the biggest problems with hypertension is the way traditional medicine has dealt with it. You’re given pills to take everyday to help bring your blood pressure down to within normal limits and keep it there when a better alternative would be to remove the source.
Only about 30% of the people suffering with high blood pressure have it because of genetic predisposition. For the vast majority, their hypertension comes from factors they can change, usually diet, lifestyle or stress levels.
Because of what happened to my friend, and because so many are headed down that same path, I developed a blood pressure program that addresses not only your hypertension, but also what needs to be done to repair the damage that too much stress and tension have done to your body.