INDEX [media.mercola.com]

INDEX

The Surprising Cause of High Blood Pressure (Hypertension) ......................................................... 1 The Importance of Diet and Insulin Sensitivity ................................................................................ 2 The Sugar Connection ............................................................................................................... 3 How Magnesium Figures Into the Sugar Connection and Insulin Resistance ......................................... 3 Healthy Blood Pressure is Within Your Control ................................................................................ 4 What do the Numbers Mean? ...................................................................................................... 5 Getting an Accurate Blood Pressure Reading ................................................................................. 6 Hypertension: When Your Blood Pressure Is Too High ..................................................................... 8 Blood Pressure and Big Pharma .................................................................................................. 9 Prescription Drugs Are Not Your Best Choice ................................................................................. 10 Blood Pressure Guidelines Are Designed to Create New Patients and More Prescriptions ....................... 11 Normalize Your Blood Pressure Naturally, for Life ........................................................................... 11 Eliminate Grains and Sugars From Your Diet Right Now ................................................................... 12 Other Dietary Considerations .................................................................................................... 13 Normalize Your Weight ............................................................................................................... 15 Learn to Manage Your Emotional Stress ........................................................................................ 16 Managing Stress With Your Breath, Mindfulness and EFT ................................................................. 17 Use Exercise as a Drug .............................................................................................................. 18 Get a Daily Dose of Sunshine ...................................................................................................... 19 A Word About Vitamin D Supplements .......................................................................................... 20 Other Supplements and Non-Drug Alternatives ............................................................................... 20 Additional Information ................................................................................................................ 23 Lifestyle Changes Are the Key to Naturally Lowering Your Blood Pressure ........................................... 23 References .............................................................................................................................. 24

The Surprising Cause of High Blood Pressure (Hypertension)

If you are not already among the 1 in 3 adults with high blood pressure in the U.S. -- or about 75 million people1 -- the odds are that without intervention, you will have high blood pressure at some point in your life.

In fact, if you're middle-aged (55 to 65), the risk of becoming hypertensive over your lifetime is about 90 percent,2 and statistics show that 64.9 percent of adults in the U.S. age 60 and over do have high blood pressure.3 Also, when you become hypertensive, statistics also show that there is a 50 percent chance that you'll be among those with uncontrolled high blood pressure, which increases your risk for a number of serious health problems, including:4

? Heart disease ? Stroke ? Kidney disease ? Vision problems ? Cognitive decline and dementia

The medical term for high blood pressure is hypertension. Unfortunately, many confuse this word as being related to feelings of anxiety or nervous tension. While such feelings certainly can cause high blood pressure in some people, anxiety is not the only cause of this condition.

In reality, a number of other factors have been identified as contributing to high blood pressure, including, but not limited to:

? Insulin and leptin resistance. As your insulin and leptin levels rise, it causes your blood pressure to increase5,6

? Metabolic syndrome. Identified as a group of risk factors that put you at risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke,7 metabolic syndrome is now also recognized as a contributor to high blood pressure8

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? Elevated uric acid levels are also significantly associated with hypertension,9 so any program adopted to address high blood pressure needs to normalize your uric acid level as well

? Poor nutrition in childhood has been shown to raise the risk of high blood pressure in adulthood10

? Lead exposure11 ? Pollution. Air pollution affects blood pressure by causing inflammation, while noise

pollution asserts an effect via your nervous and hormonal systems. Air pollution has been shown to increase your risk of high blood pressure to the same degree as having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 30.12

Living in an environment plagued by constant noise pollution can also raise blood pressure13

With all of these factors playing in to your everyday life, it's no surprise that hypertension is on the rise. What may be surprising, however, is how easily you can control one of the major contributors to high blood pressure -- insulin and leptin resistance -- through diet alone.

The Importance of Diet and Insulin Sensitivity

Groundbreaking research published in 2001 in the journal Hypertension, featuring a prospective cohort study of 12,550 adults, reported the development of diabetes was almost 2.5 times as likely in persons with hypertension.14 A few years earlier, a 1998 article in the same journal showed that 58 percent of study subjects with hypertension were also insulin resistant.15

This crucial connection between insulin resistance and hypertension is yet another example of how wide-ranging the debilitating effects of high insulin, leptin and blood glucose levels can be on your body.

The bottom line is if you have hypertension, chances are you also have poorly controlled blood sugar levels. And if your hypertension is the direct result of an out-of-control blood sugar level, then getting your blood sugars normalized will also bring your blood pressure readings into a healthy range.

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The Sugar Connection

Research now shows that consuming excessive fructose (sugar) can not only cause metabolic syndrome -- a precursor of diabetes -- but also lead to an increase in blood pressure of about 7 mmHg/5 mmHg,16 which is greater than what is typically seen with sodium (4 mmHg/2 mmHg). And in fact, a study in the journal Open Heart argues that sugar consumption may be more directly associated with high blood pressure than sodium.17

One of the primary sources of excess sugar in your diet (as well as sodium) is processed food. According to , added sugars hide in 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names!18

When you consider that Americans consume 66 pounds of added sugar each year, it's easy to understand why, as your insulin and leptin levels rise, your blood pressure increases and, besides having high blood pressure, you may eventually become insulin and/or leptin resistant.

How Magnesium Figures Into the Sugar Connection and Insulin Resistance

Magnesium is a mineral important to the health of every cell and organ in your body, especially your heart, kidneys and muscles. Symptoms of a magnesium deficiency include unexplained fatigue or muscle weakness, abnormal heart rhythms, eye twitches and muscle spasms.

Magnesium has a direct effect on the relaxation of vascular smooth muscle and the regulation of ions important to blood pressure control, and a meta-analysis done at the Indiana University School of Medicine Strategic Research Initiative shows a direct link between magnesium deficiency and hypertension.19

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