Excessive stress can be bad for us and regular exercise and fruits and vegetables can be good for us. We all know this and have heard this many times. It’s interesting, though, to learn a little more about how and why these things are so important. Just as stress can wear out the adrenals and slow down the metabolism, it can also contribute to damaged blood vessels and hypertension (high blood pressure).
At the recent Restorative Medicine Conference in San Diego, Dr. Mark Houston, MD presented a fascinating lecture on the cause and treatment of hypertension. He holds many responsibilities (like Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine Vanderbilt University School of Medicine) and awards and is a leading expert on hypertension. He explained much of the following.
Hypertension is not the disease, it is a symptom of the disease. The disease that causes high blood pressure is Endothelial Dysfunction (which means that the inner lining of the blood vessels is not working correctly). Almost everything that goes into the body finds its way into the bloodstream. That means that the blood vessels are experiencing insults and injury and damage of all kinds on a regular basis. At the same time, the body’s repair systems are constantly working to repair those injuries. If those repair systems aren’t working as they should be (because we aren’t taking good enough care of ourselves, or for some other reason) then damage to the blood vessels can accumulate over years and decades.
This damage can make the endothelium (inner lining of the blood vessels) leaky, allowing inflammation and atherosclerosis to develop underneath that lining. This can lead to thickening of the walls of the vessels and narrowing of the blood passageway. This is when the blood pressure commonly rises. Under these circumstances, the blood pressure can shoot up pretty fast in response to just a little more stress (from the adrenaline and cortisol). On top of that, high blood pressure can add to the damage on the blood vessels, making the situation worse. So you see, bringing down the blood pressure with a medicine can be helpful but that’s only treating a symptom or a marker of disease. The real solution is to get rid of the Endothelial Dysfunction and vascular damage that’s causing the hypertension.
There are a couple of tests your doctor can do to see if you might be having trouble with your blood vessels. Finding albumin in your urine is a sign that your blood vessels might be damaged and leaky. When high levels of High Sensitivity C Reactive Protein (HSCRP) is found in the blood it is an indication that there is inflammation in the body. This inflammation can be very bad for your blood vessels and needs to be brought down. It’s good to have a high normal Red Cell Magnesium level to help prevent damage.
There is actually a lot known about the function of the lining of the blood vessels. At the center of the repair process is a substance called Nitric Oxide (NO). At the center of the damage process is a substance called Angiotensin II (AT II).
To turn the disease process around we want to increase NO and decrease AT II.
Here are some measures that can help in this regard.
- Regular exercise!!
- Fruits and vegetables
- Make sure your cholesterol, and triglycerides are in good shape
- avoid highly heated oil (deep fried)
- get plenty of omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil, flax seed oil)
- avoid MSG
- Get plenty of magnesium
- Enjoy dark chocolate
- Green tea extract
- Resveratrol
- Quercitin
- Flavonoids in red wine
It’s amazing what exercise and sleep and proper diet can do. If you think you’re too busy to start taking care of yourself, you might want to start thinking that you’re too busy to not start taking care of yourself (because you’re certainly not going to get any more done with worse health).
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