The Main Cause and Treatment Cure for High Blood Pressure

Roughly 60 million American adults (23%) take blood pressure medications. Under new guidelines, rather than 1 in 3 U.S. adults having high blood pressure with the previous definition, the new guidelines will result in nearly half of the U.S. adult population (46 percent) having high blood pressure or hypertension.

Note: this rate further increases with age (e.g., 79% of men and 85% of women over 75 now have hypertension, while 71% of men and 78% of women now meet the threshold to start blood pressure medications). Now, why would that be? There is a reason that cardiologists know but do not want to know, and that is atherosclerosis worsens with age, and a considerable percentage, even of younger populations who are obese, have metabolic syndrome, and diabetes, are experiencing worsening conditions on their vascular walls decreasing the volume of the arteries that the blood has to pass through.

Approximately 25% of hypertension diagnoses
are due to inaccurate measurements.

Modern cardiology states that high blood pressure, left unmanaged, will lead to cardiovascular disease, which is characterized by an increased risk of stroke, heart attack, and even heart failure. Many factors, including poor diet, stress, physical inactivity, alcohol, and tobacco use, increase the risk of developing hypertension. Notice this word unmanaged. This says it all about blood pressure medications. They do nothing to cure the condition. They just manage it. These same factors are evident in atherosclerosis, which blood pressure medications do not address.

A Complete Paradigm Change in Cardiology

It looks like doctors have it backward. It is time to consider that cardiovascular disease is the cause of high blood pressure. Specifically, higher blood pressure would be the first sign of atherosclerotic plaques building up in the blood vessels. This process progresses through many decades before it is diagnosed as atherosclerosis, which is at the heart of cardiovascular disease. Impaired circulation causes blood pressure to rise, not vice versa.

Plaque build-up in the vessels narrows them, forcing the heart to pump into a tighter, increasingly blocked vascular space. If this is true, then cardiologists are being remiss in treating just a symptom of the underlying condition.

A Midwestern Doctor writes, “Most cases of high blood pressure (90-95% of them) are what is known as “essential hypertension” or “primary hypertension” which is a fancy (and rarely questioned) way of saying “elevated blood pressure without a known cause.” More importantly, the fact there is no known cause for most cases of elevated blood pressure has been a widespread belief in medicine for decades. Typically, the only cause we hear about is “eating salt,” despite the fact that the most detailed review of this subject found that drastic salt reduction typically results in less than a 1% reduction in blood pressure.” He asks, “Does rising blood pressure damage arteries, or does damage to the circulation raise blood pressure?” The answer is probably both, but the primal cause is narrowing arteries.

“The cause of hypertension is unknown for over 90% of patients.”

This anonymous doctor continues, “If the blood at a set pressure tries to move through a tube, as the tube shrinks, the pressure it creates (e.g., on the walls of the tube) will increase. As plaque accumulates and the vessel walls harden, the vessels narrow and become less elastic. Blood pressure is thus a product of the constriction or relaxation of the arteries and how much plaque has narrowed the arteries.” Part of the process is calcification, which stiffens them, increasing blood pressure, as they can no longer expand as effectively and release the pressure within them.

Therefore, we need to find a way to clean out the vessel walls as the first line of treatment and use blood pressure medications until the plaque diminishes to the point where enough vascular space is opened to lower the blood pressure. Various healthcare providers prescribe antihypertensive drugs, including primary care physicians, cardiologists, Nephrologists, and endocrinologists. However, none have the best, most convenient medicine to reverse atherosclerosis in their medical bags. (See Below)

Increased blood pressure is thus a compensatory mechanism to counteract the fact that the heart cannot get enough blood to where it is needed. Blood flow is crucial to get oxygen to where it is required. The lack of flow causes hypoxia in certain areas, which can lead to cancer. The how and why of arterial plaque build-up is another subject, but having the cart before the horse leads to ineffective and potentially dangerous treatments.

One of the reasons that modern medicine cannot wrap its head around this subject is that blood pressure is too easy to measure, and blood pressure medication usually shows immediate relief of the pressure but not the condition itself. The other reason is that doctors do not have decent, safe, and effective medicines to clean the blood vessels of plaque. The best they hope for is to stabilize the plaque and prevent clots from forming. Blood clots hold the potential to kill the patient or cause strokes.

At the Mayo Clinic they say, “High blood pressure generally develops over many years, and it affects nearly everyone eventually. Fortunately, high blood pressure can be easily detected. And once you know you have high blood pressure, you can work with your doctor to control it.” Blood pressure is easily detected, but the build-up of blood plaque and the hardening of arteries is not.

“White Coat Hypertension,” a name derived from the fact stress is one of the things that commonly elevates blood pressure. Since visiting a doctor is a stressful experience, many patients hence have temporarily elevated blood pressure when it is measured. Because of this, it is suggested that patients who are diagnosed with hypertension need to have multiple measurements to confirm it (preferably with home blood pressure monitoring). Unfortunately, this often does not happen in practice; thus, patients are put on pressure medications for life.

There are many ways to control one’s blood pressure, with the worst being depending on pharmaceutical prescriptions alone and even worse would be in conjunction with Statin drugs. Those who take that route end up on more than one drug eventually because they do not work to address the root cause of high blood pressure. Magnesium should be put high on the list for hypertense populations, for it is the ultimate heart medicine, but, unfortunately, it is not the ultimate anti-plaque medication. (See below for that.)

In 2007, an Israeli study was conducted that found that discontinuing an average of 2.8 drugs per elderly cardiac patient reduced their 1-year death rate from 45% to 21% and hospitalization rate from 30% to 11.8%. There is no end to the problems of high blood pressure meds.

Treating The Cause of High Blood Pressure

If one wants to get to the cause, one must ignore much of what your doctor will tell you because they do not know the best way to reverse atherosclerosis, the primal cause of high blood pressure. Few doctors know of Cavadex. Cyclodextrins are the only FDA-approved but not patentable drug that can be safely administered at home via liquid suppositories. It works by stripping plaque of the cholesterol, and it works fast. In a month, it can bring a person from the brink of major heart surgery or the implanting of stents. In a year, it could remove the need for blood pressure medications as the health of the vessels is restored.

It’s probably a good idea to tell people to monitor blood pressure if they use Cavadex with blood pressure-lowering medications. It’s not too common, but some users get dizzy because they had cleared blockages but were still on the blood pressure medication, so their pressure dropped too low. It’s always a good idea to monitor one’s blood pressure.

There are 92 million people on Statin drugs, and all of them should be taking Cavadex.

Finally, Safe and Effective Answers to Arterial Plaque and Cholesterol.

My early books, HeartHealth and Magnesium: The Ultimate Heart Medicine, provide the foundations for this new book in progress, Natural Cardiology. Though this volume focuses on the physical aspects of the heart and vascular system, it will also cover the practice of spiritual and emotional medicine in addition to dealing thoroughly with the problems of the body.

Effective Treatments, Not Cures

The most potent, direct, and safe treatment is breathing retraining. Nothing is more powerful in terms of health than getting a hold of your breathing because it affects your body’s physiology, mind, emotions, and spirit. Nothing is more important than your next breath because you are a dead duck in minutes if you do not take it. Breathing speed very much determines carbon dioxide levels in the blood. Higher breathing rates reduce CO2 in the blood, which causes vasoconstriction. However, correct breathing will not reduce blood plaque once it has formed.

Managing CO₂ levels can be necessary for stabilizing blood pressure and ensuring adequate perfusion to vital organs. Hypocapnia, which refers to a state of reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels in the blood, can significantly affect blood pressure and overall cardiovascular health.

During slow breathing, the increased venous return during inspiration leads to higher stroke volume and cardiac output, initially raising the heart rate. However, this is counterbalanced by decreased arterial blood pressure due to enhanced vagal activity and reduced sympathetic activity. The synchronization of respiratory rhythms with heartbeats can buffer hemodynamic fluctuations, contributing to overall cardiovascular stability.

Knowing your blood pressure numbers is important, even when feeling fine. Simultaneously, one should know one’s breathing rate because the faster one breathes, the higher the pressure.

Medical Marijuana

Blood pressure drugs do help and are often necessary. However, if one’s pressure is not extremely high before one turns to pharmaceuticals, know that marijuana can be the perfect drug for lowering blood pressure on demand. Just a few puffs and bam, down it goes. But even this natural medicine does not get at the cause of blood plaque, and long-term use can itself irritate and injure the blood vessel walls like cigarette smoke is known to do.

Sodium Bicarbonate

Sodium bicarbonate appears to have a favorable profile concerning blood pressure management, particularly in hypertensive individuals and those with chronic kidney disease. It causes less elevation in blood pressure compared to sodium chloride and may even contribute to improved cardiovascular health by correcting metabolic acidosis without adversely affecting blood pressure levels.

A diet low in sodium but high in potassium and bicarbonates may be more effective for managing blood pressure than simply reducing sodium intake alone. This dietary approach could help mitigate the hypertensive effects of high sodium chloride intake while providing beneficial alkalinizing effects from bicarbonates.

In patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), sodium bicarbonate supplementation has not significantly increased blood pressure. A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials suggested that sodium bicarbonate does not adversely affect systolic blood pressure in CKD patients and may even reduce the need for antihypertensive medications.

Magnesium

Many of the chapters of Natural Cardiology are on magnesium, so here I’ll only mention that every heart patient, every person with diabetes, or patient with metabolic syndrome should be taking magnesium.