Blood Pressure: Why it Goes Up and What to Do About it Without Drugs!
By: Dr. William Wong, ND, PhD.

Let's cut this intro. short.  By now you've all heard of things that can raise your blood pressure, like stress or high salt intake but has anyone every told you what made your blood pressure go up and stay up in the first place?  It wasn't the stress and it isn't the salt; those just make things worse.  What physiologically happened inside our bodies to bring our blood pressure up and not let it go down?  

There are two reasons for high blood pressure:

1. Encroaching glomerulosclerosis, and
2. Peripheral vascular resistance to blood flow.  

Let's look at each in turn.

Glomerulosclerosis is a condition where scar tissue builds up inside the kidney over the little filtering fingers called Glomeruli and decreases the surface area the kidneys have to filter through.  Blood is "pressed" against the inside of these filtering fingers and waste water and waste material go through the filtering tissues and into the interior of the kidney.  To get a better picture of it imagine a rubber glove with tiny holes in the fingers.  Now pump water into the inside of the glove and watch the it seep through the holes.  That's about the way it looks.  This scar tissue build up came about two reasons 1) it happens naturally as we age.  We build up scar tissue in all of our internal organs after the age of 27 or so.  This scar tissue decreases the size and function of the organ and sometimes leads to its failure in old age.  2) We make it worse by what we do, I'll explain.

The kidneys need a constant level of inflow and outflow of fluid to maintain their health.    Put a plug in your urine tube to create a blockage in the outflow (as stones can do), and you'll create kidney damage.  Cut back on the inflow to the kidney through dehydration, lack of drinking enough good water, high alcohol consumption or the use of drugs that cut back on kidney inflow and you also cause kidney damage.  What drugs are we talking about?  Every day ones such as: aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxin, relafin, Viox, Celebrex, and the entire class of Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs (both Cox I and Cox II), have as side effects kidney damage and kidney failure.  When damage is had scaring develops on the damaged site. When scaring is severe enough on a Glomeruli it dies.  When enough of these filtering fingers die that causes kidney failure and bang, you're dead!

It's interesting to note that the great killer of young athletes is the combination of Ibuprofen, aspirin, acetaminophen and dehydration.   In one New York marathon of the late 90's this combination clamed 4 lives, and many of the average 30 deaths a year in school age football players also happen from this combo.   Yearly upwards of 20,000 Americans die from the side effects of the NSAID class of over the counter and prescription drugs, mostly from kidney failure, the rest from liver toxicity or intestinal hemorrhage!   But let me get back to the point.

So each little bit of old age fibrosis joins the kidney damage scar tissue to build a fibrotic cover over these little filtering fingers.  What does the body do if it has to maintain the level of inflow near constant while the surface area it has to filter things through is decreased?  You can likely now figure this one out for your self.  To filter the same amount of liquid through a smaller filtering area the body needs to increase the pressure of the blood so as to force more liquid through the filter.  Simple hydro physics!  And whamo you have the first cause of high blood pressure.

The second cause of high blood pressure is Peripheral Vascular resistance.  In this condition the micro blood vessels in the arms and legs block with plugs of fibrin (scar tissue material).  This is the same stuff that creates the latticework for arteriosclerotic plaque that grows in the larger arteries.  As we age and decrease our physical activity many miles of these tiny blood vessels get plugged up.  We no longer need to bring as much blood in high volumes to all of the working areas of the arms and legs because the muscular demand is no longer there! There is just enough blood flow in and out to keep the area alive but not much else.   The ancient admonition to "Use it or lose it" is working in full force here.    Having the tiny micro circulation plugged up is like having only one water tap open in the house, the pressure of the water coming out of that tap is high.  But what happens if you open wide all the taps in the house?  That's right, the pressure at the first tap goes down!  

OK the problems have been stated.  Now you may ask; How do I know which problem is the cause of MY high blood pressure problems and what can I do about them?   Well here's the rub you don't know which is the cause of your particular problem, most times even your doc does not know.  Why because he / she hasn't bothered to delve deeply enough into your case to find out.  The general attitude is that it's all taken care of by the same drugs so who cares what the cause of it is!

Luckily we can apply the same caviler attitude in caring for the problems of high blood pressure naturally and what will work for fibrosis in the blood vessels will work for scaring in the kidney (only there the clearing effect will happen more slowly).  

Here's the plan:

1. Drink WATER, 6 to 8 full glasses a day.  There's no way of getting around the inflow and outflow thing so why fight it if it's going to hurt you to the point of shortening your life!   Soda, tea, coffee don't count.  Water, juice and nutritional drinks do.  
2. Exercise.  In the late 70's I had a client who was a trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange, was an Ex Marine DI and carried a flask of Johnny Walker scotch in his back pocket.  His blood pressure was 200+ over 100+; he was a water balloon ready to pop (or an aneurysm waiting to burst).  After just 8 weeks of weight training and short aerobic work done 3 times a week his blood pressure was a perfectly normal and average 120 over 70!  His problem were clogged peripheral blood vessels and the exercise had the effect of forcing blood through them clearing up the clogs and also making the body create miles and miles of new blood vessels to feed all the new muscle he was growing.  All the spigots were being opened.
3. Take highly fibrinolytic systemic enzymes, as these will eat away at both the fibrosis building up in the blood vessels (all of them from the tiny capillaries to the major arteries), and the scar tissue accruing on the Glomeruli.  
   Add garlic to the diet.  The equal of 2 whole cloves of either real garlic or the tablet equivalent will also help to open the blood vessels and keep the vascular walls strong.

The only cautions to this routine are these:
Find an exercise physiologist to help you with your exercise formulation.  These are college trained professionals, not people who gained a certification in "personal training" by reading moldy bodybuilding magazines and taking a meaningless exam.

If your kidneys already have substantial damage and you are holding water in your extremities, if you are on dialysis or; if your kidneys are damaged enough that your doc has you on "water pills" to help your kidneys to work, then don't drink any more water than your physician has allowed for you.
Also remember that if the kidney damage is extensive enough, the damaged tissue will die (just as parts of the heart can die inside of you after a heart attack).  In this instance removing the scar tissue from the filtering fingers will not restore the dead tissues life or function.  Increases in BP from this are not reversible.

If your wife, girl friend or significant other can't stand the smell of real garlic on your breath or sweat, change to the odor free tablets.

Bringing down blood pressure naturally is not as instantaneous as what can be had taking the BP drugs.  The good effects of the enzymes, the exercise, the garlic and the water take some weeks or even months to manifest themselves.  Once the good effects kick in, going natural allows you to avoid the side effects of the blood pressure drugs by lowering their need or helping to eliminate the need for them altogether. Also, in getting to the root cause of the problem instead of mearly treating the symptoms, we become healthier more able and will likely live longer.

 Not bad results for going natural I'd say!