Three Things to Lower Blood Pressure Naturally
Do you suffer from high blood pressure? Are you searching for natural alternatives to medication? In this video, Dr. Hayden and Dr. Horsley discuss three things you can do to help to lower blood pressure naturally.
Stay tuned over the next few days as we continue to send out short videos to help inform and inspire you to take control of your health during this time of uncertainty.
Transcript From Video:
Dr. Horsley: We’re from the Hayden Institute and a big question that we get in the office is how do I lower my blood pressure naturally? I don’t want to go on medications, my doctor has asked me to go on medications, I would prefer to do it a natural way, is there anything you can do to help? So, today, we wanted to talk about three things that you can do to kick start this process and see if we can get your blood pressure moving in the right direction. So, Dr Hayden, what would be the first thing you would do to help someone get their blood pressure moving in the right direction?
Dr. Hayden: I know I say it a lot, but the very first place I would look is our diet. We will often, in our office, talk about removing inflammatory foods from the diet. Inflammatory foods might be alcohol for some, gluten and bread for other people, and recreational drug activity for others. So its weird to see how each person might react in a different way with different foods, but definitely an inflammatory diet has a tendency to things like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, things like that. So the very first thing I would do, if someone asked for assistance there, is to remove inflammatory foods, specifically looking at gluten and removing that from their diet. There’s a really interesting book about the cardiovascular system in general called Wheat Belly, by Dr. William Davis. So Wheat Belly is a really good book by a cardiologist up in New York. Before he does any cardiac surgeries on individuals with high blood pressure or high cholesterol, he sticks them on a gluten free diet and says they will start there, unless it is an emergency situation. He has them start there and watch your body get better as we remove these inflammatory foods. So I follow that same recommendation in my office with my patients.
Dr. Horsley: So another question that we often get is: what is normal blood pressure, because we’re always taught it is 120/80, but there are other opinions out there on what is truly high or low blood pressure. What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Hayden: I like to keep people around 120/80 or 115/75, which is what I was taught in school, since everyone wants to keep it lower. Definitely under 130/90 is what I’m try to get to with individuals.
Dr. Horsley: So what would you do as the second thing?
Dr. Hayden: So for the second thing, I would look at specific supplementation. I like herb supplementation when I am supporting people with blood pressure related concerns. Two of the biggest thing I use would be Dan Shen and CoQ10. CoQ10 is a portion of the B vitamin complex that goes right along with statin medications. So if you’re ever put on cholesterol lowering medications you want to be on CoQ10 in your life – it’s on the FDA recommendation. Also, CoQ10 has a way of helping blood pressure, and the effectiveness of the way that the heart beats, so that blood pressure has a potential for going down. Dan Shen is a Chinese herb that is used in traditional Chinese medicine that acts in ways like a beta blocker. So there is a lot of research behind Dan Shen along with CoQ10 together to help lower blood pressure with someone who’s modifying their diet like we mentioned already.
Dr. Horsley: So those are a couple of big things that we would want to do first – modify your diet and to take in some different herb or specific supplements. I would highly encourage you to find a medical provider to do this along with you, so you’re not going in blind. But if you are still not seeing results after changing your diet, and adding in supplements recommended to you by a medical practitioner.
Dr. Horsley: If you’re still not moving in the right direction and are wondering what you should do, I would recommend trying something like chiropractic or acupuncture to help in those realms. Those therapies are going to help with your nervous system because your heart function is controlled by your nervous system. How does everything function in your body? How do you heal? How does digestion happen? Reproduction? All of these things occur from your nervous system. So if there are imbalances there, or specifically in the segmental regions that have the nerves that supply the heart, this may play a big factor in increased blood pressure. So that would be a big factor that I would look into.
Dr. Horsley: Similar thing with acupuncture, there have been several studies that have shown a reduction in blood pressure with acupuncture treatments. We’ve actually seen that in our office as well. We have had several patients that have come in with chronic high blood pressure that we have checked their blood pressure prior to treatment with acupuncture and after their treatment with acupuncture and have seen a reduction in their blood pressure readings and overall trending of lowering as well. Often with our patients we do chiropractic or acupuncture as well as changing diet and herbs at the same time to give that full holistic perspective.
Dr. Hayden: Definitely. The way I often explain it to patients is that chiropractic and acupuncture work like resetting the breaker box in your home. If you plug your 17 hair dryers into one outlet in your bathroom, the lights will go out and the plugs will stop working. It doesn’t matter how many times you flip the switch, it won’t fix the problem. If we can remove that stress and reduce the strain on the breaker, then we can go in there and reset something, whether manually through a chiropractic adjustment or through acupuncture with specific needling techniques- it allows the body to reset and go back to its new normal, which is going to be in a healthier place – through diet, through supplementation, through chiropractic and acupuncture.
Dr. Horsley: Awesome, we just wanted to help to give you three different tips that you can start to incorporate today to help you to lower your blood pressure naturally. So we talked about changing our diets, specifically taking out gluten (found in wheat, barley, rye..), or if that ‘s still not working for you, or in conjunction trying Dan Shen, as well as CoQ10 have been shown to help with blood pressure lowering things- as well as trying some chiropractic or acupuncture. So add some of these things to your regimen and see if that can get you moving in the right direction. Don’t hesitate to get someone on your side that can help from a more medical perspective as well. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time!