Omega 3 Protects Us Part 4

Are you one of the millions of people who have high blood pressure (hypertension)? If so, you should be on an omega 3 supplement. Omega 3 has shown a moderate improvement in blood pressure. This seems to be somewhat dose related in that the higher the dose of omega 3, the more the benefit to the blood pressure.

Control Your Health Part 3

Today I'm going to talk about hypertension or high blood pressure. It's estimated that over 70 million Americans have this disease. Some are being treated and there are a great many who have no idea that their blood pressure is elevated. First and foremost, get it checked, know what your numbers are.

Then you can begin to manage it. Even if you don't know your numbers, assume that you have it and begin to take care of yourself. First thing is to reduce your salt intake. The end of June I did a series on salt. Go back and take a look at those posts for more information. Avoid the prepared or processed foods as well as foods that are just naturally salty.

Reduce the saturated and trans fats in your diet. the trans fats are mostly in processed foods.

Avoid excessive alcohol which elevates the blood pressure.

Manage your stress through exercise, meditation, better sleep. Ask for support from your family and friends.

Lastly, but should be the first thing that you do is to control your weight. Losing just 5% of our body weight can have a significant impact on the blood pressure. Eat lots of greens, fruits and vegetables. Specific foods that are helpful for blood pressure include avocados, cantaloupe, broccoli and kidney beans.

Salt

Most Americans who don't read food labels and keep the salt shaker handy consume upwards of 4,000 milligrams of salt a day. So how much salt should we be getting. According to the American Heart Association dietary guidelines, adults should be getting about 2,300n milligrams a day. This is about a teaspoon of salt.

Just because you can't taste the salt doesn't mean that it is not there. Read that package label and see just how much salt is in those packaged foods. You'll be amazed.

Studies indicate that if you can keep you salt intake to about 1,000 milligrams a day, there is less heart disease and less high blood pressure. Obviously eating more fresh fruits and vegetables also helps in decreasing heart disease and keeping the blood pressure lower.

Over the next few days I'll be giving you some tips on lowering salt intake in your diet.

Blood Pressure

I've talked about exercise and blood pressure before, but here is a little different slant to it. A study out of Italy demonstrated that listening to rhythmic music such as classical, Celtic, or Indian for 30 minutes a day while concentrating on breathing was beneficial to lowering the blood pressure.

Interestingly enough, I have been doing a thing I call bounce and shake for weight loss. It follows along the lines of native American dancing. I don't have a problem with high blood pressure, but I feel confident now that I likely never will.

Back to the breathing part and music, try that as a way to unwind at the end of the day. Listen to a classical piece of music and meditate. The research indicates that the music helps you slow down and deepen your breathing.

Protecting Your Brain Health #2

Another way to protect your brain health is whatever you are doing to protect you heart health. Anything that you do to help the blood vessels in your heart will also help the blood vessels in your head.

This can include things like controlling your blood pressure. Watching what you eat, like cutting down on sugar and other foods related to causing inflammation.

Little Things That Can Imporve Heart Health #3

Now you've started to exercise which will help lower things like cholesterol. But more importantly, the exercise will increase the strength of your heart and take away some weight which is adding stress to the heart.

The heart needs lots of oxygen to stay well. So now before you take your 10 minute walk or lift your weights, take 2 minutes to deep breath slowly. This will help prepare you for your walk or to lift the weights. At night before you go to bed or as you are going to bed, sit and take 10 slow deep breaths. This will relax you and take the stress away from your heart. Deep breathing can also help you lower your blood pressure.

More tomorrow.

Sodium Intake

How much salt should you actually be getting? That's a common question that I get asked frequently. The normal, healthy adult (no know medical problems) should eat no more than 2300 milligrams of salt a day. This is about 1 teaspoon of salt. Now that is not just what you add at the table. Read the label of any processed food such as canned soup and you will see that you are probably way beyond your daily amount with one serving.

Most of the sodium that we get in our diets today comes from eating in restaurants and eating processed foods. Be sure to read the labels on any food you purchase. Many restaurants now will tell you the sodium content of their foods. You can always ask for a low-sodium entree, just ask the waiter.

Your best choice is to pick fresh fruits and vegetables.

If you are at risk for or have heart disease, stroke or high blood pressure your daily salt intake should be no more than 1500 milligrams a day.

Vegetable Juice

One of the juices that is good for you is Low sodium V8 juice. Be careful not to get the regular V8 juice as it has way too much sodium in it. The low sodium V8 can actually help your blood pressure, while the regular V8 may make your blood pressure go up as a result of the sodium content.

More on Juices

I just read an article on juicing, and while I agree that you can drink a lot of healthy nutrients in the juice, the raw fruit or vegetable may be better for you. One the vegetables that you may not be aware of is celery. Most of us think of celery as "rabbit food" or "diet food". But there are some really good benefits to celery.

You can juice it, but you will want to mix some raw fruit that you juice with it to take away some of the bitter flavor. The good news about celery is that it can help decrease you blood pressure. Celery contains a compound which helps relax the smooth muscle in the walls of the arteries. The vessels dilate and this effectively lowers the pressure within the arteries. Hence your blood pressure lowers. The compound responsible for this 3-n-butyl-phthalide.

Pulmonary Hypertension

Yesterday I mentioned the disease pulmonary hypertension. Today I want to explain a little about this complex disease. Pulmonary hypertension is basically a high blood pressure in the pulmonary system vasculature. It can be in the arteries, veins or capillary beds or a combination of these. Like the high blood pressure that we are all familiar with, this high blood pressure is in the lungs. This makes it difficult for oxygen to get into the blood stream and CO2 to get out of the blood stream. Hence you may become short of breath because your oxygen saturation levels will drop.

These high pressures in the lungs will put high pressures on the heart and result in a heart that fails. But these pressures don't just affect the heart, they also affect the liver and can result in liver failure as well.

While we do have earlier detection these days and we can closely monitor someone with this disease, the survival rate is not great beyond 3 years from the time of the diagnosis.

So if you end up with this disease as a result of a weight loss drug, is it worth losing a few pounds to the total detriment of your health?

Weight Loss Drugs Drawbacks

Lastly, I want to talk about Phenteramine (Adipex, Ionamin). This is one of the more dangerous drugs in terms of the side effects. While it can cause things like an increase in blood pressure, increase in heart rate, diarrhea, anxiety or restlessness, these are not the things to be mostly concerned about. The bigger risk here is the development of a disease called pulmonary hypertension. This is an insideous disease that comes on without any symptoms. Once we discover that it is present, we have very few things we can do to treat it.

This is a lethal complication for you and while losing weight is important, this drug can actually totally rob you of your future health and your future. The risk with this drug is just way too high to even consider using it.

More on the Weight Loss Drugs

The next drug which is fairly familiar out there is Meridia (sibutramine). While this drugs has a slightly higher weight loss average as compared to orlistat, the side effects are much more dangerous to your health.

First and foremost, if you are on this drug be sure that you are watching your blood pressure. Meridia not raises your blood pressure, but it can also increase the heart rate, compounding the problem with the blood pressure. You should never be using this drug if you already have high blood pressure or a problem with heart rate.

Additionally, this drug can cause nausea, constipation, dry mouth, or insomnia.

Having done some the clinical trials with this drug, I can tell you that the weight loss was fairly minimal at best.

High Blood Pressure

You may be surprised to learn that in 2007, the American Medical Association indicated that 30% of US adults have hypertension or high blood pressure. I believe that number is quite a bit higher today. The interesting part is that they also reported the 70% of people with high blood pressure do not have it under control.

While medicine may be necessary to get your blood pressure under control, there are somethings you can do to get it under control without medication. Cut down on the amount of salt in your food and certainly remove the salt shaker from the table. Get on a good balanced diet that will help you attain your appropriate weight. There are a lot of extra miles of blood vessels for every pound of extra weight that you are carrying. Start exercising on a regular basis. If you can find a hundred excuses why not to exercise, go pick up my free ebook and making exercise simple.

More on Massage

Massage can help some chronic illness problems that you may have. One of the most common in our society today is hypertension or high blood pressure. Before all of the drugs to treat hypertension, the way that hypertension was treated was by putting someone to bed. Putting you at rest will decrease your blood pressure naturally. In our society today, that is usually not an option.

Stress is usually at the root of hypertension and although you may not feel stressed, there are many more things that come at us today to stress our systems. Massage puts you at rest for an hour which can really make a difference for you. Taking away the stress for an hour so that you become relaxed can be a huge boost to your wellness.

Know Your Sodium Limit

Sodium is becoming more and more of a problem within our society. This is because we have a large portion of the population with high blood pressure, heart disease, and/or stroke. People at risk for these diseases are anyone over 40 years of age, African Americans, and anyone with high blood pressure. Almost 70% of the US population is at risk.

So how much sodium should you be getting each day. Most of the federal and nutritional guidelines indicate that 2300 mg of sodium each day is the right amount, as long as you are a healthy, normal adult without heart disease, stroke or hypertension. If you have high blood pressure, then you need to decrease the amount of sodium intake each day to 1500 mg.

Now the first thing is how much is 2300 mg. In the form of salt because that is how we get most of our sodium, 1 teaspoon = 2300 mg approximately. If you have heart disease or hypertension, the 1500 mg is about 2/3 of a teaspoon of salt per day. Now this means total intake. This does not just mean you can add that much salt each day to the food you eat.

Read the labels. Especially processed food contains large amounts of sodium. Tune in tomorrow for some tips on deceasing sodium in your diet.

Meditation

Since I spoke about acupuncture yesterday, I' thinking it's a good time to talk about meditation. Many of you probably already meditate, but there are likely some of you who really don't know what it is. Meditation is a practice of concentrated focus on a sound, an object, a visualization, the breath, a movement or the attention itself in order to increase awareness of the present moment. Meditation also reduces stress, promotes relaxation and enhances personal and spiritual growth.

Meditation teaches you to block out distractions, creating calmer and more powerful brain patterns. One of my favorite CDs to begin meditating is by Wayne Dyer. Clicking on Wayne Dyer will take you to the CD. The brain waves of experienced practitioners of medication show slow, focused waves similar to those seen during sleep. There is also a synchronization of the waves from different areas of the brain.

Meditation has very positive effects on blood pressure, insulin, blood sugar, and heart health. Concentration is often improved and anxiety and stress are often helped.

Tai Chi

I have been talking about exercise recently and someone asked the question about Tai Chi. Tai Chi is a great form of exercise and is sometimes referred to moving meditation. Tai Chi is slow, rhythmic movements that are flowing, circular, and low impact combined with deep breathing. All of this helps balance the mind and the body.

For someone who has had a stroke, Tai Chi can be invaluable in helping these individuals regain some of their balance. This is especially true if the stroke victim is shifting weight, leaning or standing on a movable surface. If Tai Chi is done on a regular basis, it can reduce the risk of falls and injury. The great thing is that it improves circulation, posture, flexibility, blood pressure and heart rate. Tai Chi also reduces pain and stress, increases energy and prevents osteoporosis.

Economic Crunch and Your Health

Many are cutting back on things that may endanger your health because of the economy. While I understand this, don't endanger your health because of the economy. I know that if you are on a medication for high blood pressure or diabetes, the cost may prohibitive at this point in time, especially if you have lost or don't have insurance. Talk with your doctor about getting a medication that is less expensive than the one that you are on. There are likely generics or older medications that do work that will be less expensive.

Better yet do some healthful things to help lower your blood pressure or your blood sugar. There was a study in the UK where they fed people basically fruits and vegetables for 10 days. What they found was a highly significant drop in their blood pressures (all had high blood pressure) and also highly significant drops in blood cholesterol levels and more stable blood sugar levels. The participants ate 11 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables a day. That is a lot of fruits and vegetables, but can you imagine how healthy you would be. I'm not advocating becoming a vegetarian. But what I am saying is increase the number of fruits and vegetables you eat each day and decrease the simple carbs like bread and pasta. Get your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables so that you're really getting nutrition instead of just calories.

Best Diet Tips #3

You don't have to be skinny to be healthy. If weight is an issue for you, continue to cut calories. Even a small weight loss like 10 pounds can positively affect your health.

Just losing 10 pounds can help lower your blood pressure as well as lower your blood sugar levels. If you are watching cholesterol levels, a 10 pound weight loss will positively affect the good and bad cholesterol levels in the direction that you are shooting for.

Don't put so much emphasis on losing 25 or 50 or 100 pounds. Put your emphasis on decreasing the amount that you eat.

Instead of Crying, Laugh

Right now with the economy as it is, many of you may "feel like crying." But the healthier thing to do is to laugh. If you get what you think about, if your thoughts are sad and you're crying you will get more of it - or more reason to do it. If you are laughing and seeing the positive, you will get more of that too.

You don't need humor to laugh. How many times have you laughed because someone else was laughing. You may not even know why they are laughing, but you begin to laugh too. I'm sure you've heard the adage "Laugh until you pee your pants."

Scientific studies have shown that laughter on a regular basis lifts the mood, deceases stress, lowers blood pressure and lowers cholesterol. A 20 minute bout of laughter can actually lower the cholesterol by 6 points. This is better than what oatmeal can do for your cholesterol! The same 20 minutes can lower your blood pressure by 6 points as well. This is from a study done at Loma Linda University.

So just try saying HA, HA, HA thirty times. If you're not laughing, force it and say it 30 more times. Try it with a spouse or a friend, if one of you truly starts to laugh so will the other. Then look around and you will see more happiness around you.