There are about 1 billion adults, which is about 25% of the adult population in the world, that has hypertension. By 2025, it’s going to be closer to almost 30% of the world’s adult population. And it’s also considered one of the leading causes of mortality. About 75 million Americans have hypertension. That’s 1 in 3. And an additional 1 in 3 have what we call pre-hypertensive condition. They have pre-high blood pressure.
Research is finding that even lower blood pressure is better for most adults. What are the consequences of high blood pressure? It has been called a silent killer, you don’t know you have it.
Result of Having High Blood Pressure
It’s one of the leading causes of heart disease. That’s considered heart attacks, congestive heart failure, arrhythmias, which is the abnormal electrical activity in your heart that can lead to heart disease.
It causes end-stage renal disease or kidney failure, stroke, blindness, and can lead to dementia because of its effects on the vascular system in the brain. And also affects sexual function it can definitely result in erectile dysfunction.
Only 14 million out of those 50 to 75 million are treated for high blood pressure. The treatment is primarily medication which is not always effective and has lots of side effects. But it is very important to understand that if you have high blood pressure, you need to treat it.
You Should Monitor
We recommend that you get a blood pressure machine and you can monitor your blood pressure. You need to measure in order to know if you are getting better or worse and if the treatment is working. It will also help your doctor understand better your patterns and how to treat you.
Causes of Hypertension
Traditional medicine calls it essential hypertension which means essentially we have no idea what’s causing it, but functional medicine we know that’s not true. Everything has a cause, nothing is just random.
Two of the major causes of high blood pressure are insulin resistance and sleep apnea. We have 1 in 2 Americans are pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, 75% are overweight, 42% are obese. And they all have some degree of trouble regulating their blood sugar, which causes them to get belly fat. And that belly fat is such a big factor in driving all sorts of diseases, everything from high blood pressure to cancer to heart disease to diabetes to dementia to depression and insulin resistance drives inflammation.
Those belly fat cells drive hormonal and immune changes. They cause oxidative stress, which is like rusting. It’s like your arteries and your pipes are rusting and stiffening, called hardening the arteries as a result of this inflammation and oxidative stress.
Sleep apnea is under diagnosed. There are about 25 million Americans that have sleep apnea. It is not just a disease of people that are overweight. Most people think about obstructive sleep apnea being related to being overweight. But you also can have upper respiratory anatomy and muscular relaxation problems that can lead to obstructive sleep apnea.
If you have sleep apnea, that means you’re just not getting enough oxygen to your body, particularly your brain, and blood vessels. This leads your cortisol levels to rise leading to the inflammatory cycle, which is an oxidative stress cycle, which can lead to hardening of the arteries.
Sleep apnea can cause weight gain independent of what you’re eating. Weight gain leads to insulin resistance.
Another cause of hypertension is nutritional deficiencies, having a deficiency can cause high blood pressure, like magnesium. Studies show that a very large percentage of people in our country have low magnesium, about 45% of people have low magnesium.
When we replace magnesium in patients we see blood pressure come down. We see them being able to sleep better. We see muscle twitching and cramping go away. We see their mood improve. Magnesium has a very important role in the body and certainly plays a big role in lowering blood pressure.
Another nutrient that is important is omega-3 fats and fish oil because it helps relax your blood vessels, it helps make them more pliable.
Another cause that we also see, is environmental toxins. Heavy metals, in particular, lead and mercury are really common. They’re under diagnosed and can be tested via a challenge test, where we give people a drug to pull out the metals, a chelator. And then we check their urine and see how many toxins come out if they have high levels, that’s often a big factor as well.
Treatments
Find the nutritional deficiencies, start eating better and repairing the gut microbiota. Work on stress levels, and lose weight, for every two pounds you lose, you drop your blood pressure by a millimeter of mercury. Find out if you could have sleep apnea, reduce insulin resistance by decreasing ultra processed foods and eat a more plant based diet and remove any environmental or metal toxins.
Insulin resistance, sleep apnea, low magnesium, low omega-3 fats, which about 90% of Americans have. You have heavy metals, environmental toxins and we now are learning that the gut microbiota, the microbiome in the gut, if it’s altered through our bad processed diet and all the nasty drugs we take, it actually causes inflammation throughout the body that drives high blood pressure. Anything that causes inflammation or oxidative stress will cause high blood pressure.
Low potassium can be another reason why you can have high blood pressure. And that speaks to where you get potassium. You get it from green, leafy vegetables. So, having a vegetable-based diet is very.
Most people think, “High blood pressure? Salt.” But what’s the deal with salt and high blood pressure? Is this something we should worry about? There are certain populations that are more salt-sensitive than others. The SAD (Standard American Diet) is loaded with salt. We should all worry about the amounts of salt, processed fats and sugar in our diet.
Takeaways
Make sure to lower your insulin resistance with better nutrition, have your doctor check for sleep apnea. Reverse nutritional deficiencies: correcting your omega-3 levels means better hair, skin, nails, overall well-being and mood. Vitamin D helps your immune system. Magnesium helps you be more relaxed and less anxious and sleep better and have better bowel movements. Basically get all these nice side effects by fixing these problems.
