High Blood Pressure

High Blood Pressure video

• Herbs that help
• What causes high blood pressure?
• Can people get better?

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- Richard Whelan

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Herbs that help

Herbs are fantastic at helping us to relax and I use a lot of herbs in the early stages of treating people with high blood pressure to get deeper and more restful sleep and to relax their muscles, including those that line the blood vessels.

I would definitely recommend you find a good herbalist to help you get the best herbs at the right dosages. The herbs that I have personally found the most useful in this regard are:

Motherwort relieves tension in the heart and blood vessels
Valerian deeply relaxes the physical body and nerves
Skullcap calms an overactive mind, helps achieve deep sleep
Cramp Bark relieves tension and cramp in the muscles

What causes high blood pressure?

90% of high blood pressure is called 'primary hypertension' and is commonly said to have no obvious cause.

10% of high blood pressure is known as 'secondary hypertension', and is known to be caused by such problems as kidney disease or hormonal imbalances.

Of course most people with high blood pressure are not satisfied with the 'no obvious cause' answer to their question as to what causes it. Various reasons are usually given such as genetic influences, diet (e.g. too much salt or fat) excess weight, sedentary lifestyle etc.

Most people end up seeing diet and lack of exercise as the real cause of primary hypertension. There are compelling reasons to do so. Populations of people living off the grid of modern civilisation have extremely low rates of high blood pressure.

When those same people come into the nurturing arms of modern civilisation and get cars, takeaways, phones, supermarkets etc. they very rapidly get all the diseases of modern civilisation too, i.e. diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.
So it is believed that it is the change from a whole foods and high activity lifestyle to a refined foods and sedentary lifestyle that is at the root of it.

I think this is certainly true for diabetes, and is often true for heart disease but I think interms of high blood pressure that for many people it has also been stress that comes with modern life. People quite literally get tenser, more alert, and more anxious when they move into our world from the old world. Not everyone does so well in the 'pressure cooker'.

Lifestyle and diet factors make things worse but that they are not the primary cause behind primary hypertension. It is simply stress, more specifically, I think it is tension and tiredness, our frequent and sometimes constant companions in modern life.

Many people control their blood pressure with powerful medications but do little or nothing else to change their lives or de-stress their lives.

However if excess tension and tiredness are what is really putting the system onto a slow boil then eventually, inevitably, the ‘stress’ has to find another outlet. That is most often the point that I meet with people with high blood pressure. They have been on blood pressure medications for years and in the meanwhile have gone on to develop 3 or 4 other health problems. It’s not an accident, or bad luck that things happen this way. This is the inescapable reality of life. If you do not treat the cause of a problem, it’s not just that it doesn’t really go away, it gets worse.

To know for sure if 'tension' is causing the hypertension a simple test often suffices. I take a person’s blood pressure and then talk them through some breathing and relaxation for a couple of minutes.

Then I take their blood pressure again. If it only drops 5 or 10 points then I think we have a different sort of challenge and want look more closely at those other factors such as diet and fitness.

However for many people there is a big, compelling drop. People whose blood pressure was really high can get the biggest changes. I commonly see a drop of 30, 40 or even 50 points. These kinds of numbers tell their own story as to what really needs to be looked at as the cause of high blood pressure.

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Can people get better?

Can someone get to a point where tension related blood pressure is cured and they do not need to take medication (including herbs) any longer?

Yes definitely, I know this to be true because I have seen in happen.

But it is essential to learn how to really relax and that can be much harder than it sounds. The biggest hurdle is not so much the process itself as people’s built up beliefs that they can’t do it, or don’t have time for it. Many people aleady know how to relax, reading, taking a walk, having a bath etc, but they hardly ever do it (and the tenser they are the less they do it).

The hardest part of relaxing is just doing it!

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