8 Natural Steps for Avoiding High Blood Pressure

A Blood Pressure Miracle

I had a patient come in the other day and tell me his visit to a health resort where they cook food for you and have all sorts of activities and teach you how to cook. The amazing thing, according to him, was that his high blood pressure of 20 years had dropped back to normal. After three weeks (a week of vacation and two weeks eating in a similar manner) he no longer needed blood pressure medications. Amazing. Except that’s not altogether a rare situation. I hear all sorts of stories about how people change what they eat and how it drops blood pressure back to normal in a couple of weeks. It doesn’t even take going to a resort to make that happen. (Unless you need a vacation, in which case, get out of here.)

The Skinny on High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure. 75 million people in America have it (about one third of the population).¹ For most people, it starts as a high blood pressure reading in their doctors office once in their 30’s, 40’s or 50’s. From there, it fluctuates and eventually keeps on creeping upwards until doc says it’s time to go on a high blood pressure med. Some people work on limiting salt to avoid medication, but while decreasing sodium can help with lowering blood pressure, stowing away the salt shaker often doesn’t lower blood pressure more than a few points.² Lowering blood pressure is really important because it decreases your risk of stroke and heart attack,³ but how do we keep it from going up to begin with?

Where does it come from?

To start out, let’s look at high blood pressure as a road sign. If I’m trying to go to Florida, and I start seeing signs for New York City, something is wrong. I’m headed the wrong way, and regardless of where I end up, chances are it isn’t going to be Orlando. As mentioned, high blood pressure is linked with stroke and heart attack. If I start seeing high blood pressure readings, I could end up with one of the related conditions because high blood pressure tells us our vascular system isn’t operating correctly. It’s a sign that we aren’t headed toward long-term health, but that we’re on a road toward cardiovascular dysfunction.

In most cases, high blood pressure happens when the arterioles (small arteries) that your blood flows constrict.⁴ This increases the resistance to the blood flowing through. The constriction is stimulated by the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), hormones (renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system), or endothelial cell (the cells along the arterioles) damage.⁴ There are a few other triggers that can contract the arterioles, but these are the big three. Knowing these three triggers can help us figure out which natural interventions will lower blood pressure.

So how do we go the right way—away from high blood pressure?

Firstly, stay away from outdated recommendations.

For a long time we’ve been told that less fat is heart healthy, but we’re seeing those recommendations shift over time. We know now that veggie oils and fried foods increase blood pressure, especially when oil gets reused.⁵ Other types of fats impact blood pressure less, and their impact depends on how healthy the patient is.⁵ What I see in practice is that increasing more natural types of fat (animal fat, whole-fat dairy, coconut oil etc) doesn’t raise blood pressure. These fats actually help cut sugar cravings–helpful because sugar does increase blood pressure.⁶

Salt has been vilified for a long time for its ability to raise blood pressure, but cutting salt actually makes less of a difference than cutting the sweets.⁷ If you notice cutting salt lowers your blood pressure significantly, make sure you’re getting enough potassium in your diet.⁸ Lower sodium intake is only half the story, since sodium and potassium both impact blood pressure hormones. If you don’t get enough potassium, higher amounts of sodium make a bigger impact on your blood pressure.⁹ If you have kidney disease, that can also make you more salt-sensitive and mean you need to restrict salt. That’s not the primary cause of high blood pressure though, and in that situation the kidney function needs to be addressed. 

Second, stop blaming your genes.

Yes heart disease or high blood pressure may run in your family, but lifestyle choices can go a long way making up for crappy genes. There’s a lot of research on the genes behind high blood pressure and absolutely nothing we can do about the genes. You can’t pick your family health, but you can pick your own future health.

8 Steps that can actually drop your blood pressure are:

1. Drop your sugar intake. Kate Shanahan’s book Deep Nutrition does a pretty good job of explaining how sugar changes arteriole linings if you want an in-depth explanation. One of the best ways to make this happen is avoiding sugary drinks.⁶
2. Avoid veggie oils and fried foods.⁵ These damage arteriole linings too.¹⁰
3. Eat lots of potassium.¹¹ Don’t just focus on bananas or potassium supplements. In fact, ask a health care professional before using potassium supplements. You can get a lot of potassium from food in the form of beans, potatoes, apricots, cocoa, tomatoes, yams, and (yes) bananas.¹²
4. Manage your stress. Your ability to manage everything going on in your life changes your blood pressure by impacting the sympathetic nervous system. We wear stress like a badge of honor—it says we are busy and productive people. But not handling your stress detracts from what you give to your family, it makes you a worse worker,¹³ and it raises your blood pressure.¹⁴ So take time to work through your stress.
   • Go on a walk (the extra vitamin D can lower blood pressure even more).¹⁵
   • Take 5-10 minutes just to be still and not listen to or watch anything. The Headspace App can be helpful for those of us who aren’t good at that kind of thing.
   • Be willing to say no.
   • Take the time to address the things that are creating the most stress in your life.
5. Go to bed! Sleep is your body’s time to repair for what life throws at you. Less sleep is linked to high blood pressure,¹⁶ and getting enough sleep can even protect against other risk factors like smoking.¹⁷ The big challenge with sleep is turning off the technology. TV, Netflix, Prime, and YouTube are more than happy to help us push back bedtime. Personally taking a week without screen time at night or setting limits on my watch time can do wonders for my mental health, not to mention being beneficial for my blood pressure.
6. Drop some extra weight. Obesity and high blood pressure often go hand in hand. Even with other contributing factors eliminated, extra weight raises blood pressure. This is probably because fatty tissue in the body makes inflammatory molecules¹⁸ that can affect the arteriole lining. Most people aren’t trying to hang on to extra weight, so I find that addressing food, food relationships, and stress makes more of an impact in both high blood pressure and in weight loss.
7. Put your cigarette down. If you’re reading this and actually concerned with lowering your blood pressure, you likely already know that.
8. Check with your doctor to make sure you don’t have kidney disease or hypothyroidism. Both of these can cause high blood pressure if uncontrolled. Working with a functional practitioner may be a good idea if you have a metabolic condition or hormone imbalance as these things can change normal physiologic responses.

Numbers 1, 2 and 4 are the hardest. Behavior change is a battle, but it’s the battle where health is won or lost. And that’s not to say that behavior change means choosing the hardest options. Healthy food can taste fantastic. More sleep is refreshing. The hard part is being willing to try something new, risk a few things you may not like, and make the effort to change what you’ve always done. That said, it’s best not to ignore the road signs that tell you you’re headed the wrong way. A few changes now can make all the difference in where you end up down the road.

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On May 31, 2018   /   Chronic Conditions, Uncategorized   /   Leave a comment