According to CDC director Thomas Frieden high blood pressure is public healthy enemy No. 2. The CDC says 36 million people in the U.S. have uncontrolled high blood pressure, and of that number, 14 million don’t even know it.
Interestingly, 16 million Americans who are on blood pressure medication still don’t have their blood pressure under control – a fact that emphasizes the need for basic lifestyle changes in order to truly resolve this problem.
To bring awareness to high blood pressure concerns, the CDC has launched the Million Hearts health education program, which teams up pharmacists and pharmacies with patient care teams to educate patients on the need to control blood pressure.
It’s important to understand that uncontrolled high blood pressure is a very serious health concern that can lead to heart disease, and it also increases your risk of having a stroke.
The good news though is that following a healthy nutrition plan, along with exercising and implementing effective stress reduction techniques will normalize blood pressure in most people. It’s actually an easily treated condition, but one that can cause serious damage to your health if it’s ignored.
First, Evaluate Your Diet
Groundbreaking research published in 1998 in the journal Diabetes reported that nearly two-thirds of the test subjects who were insulin resistant also had high blood pressure, and insulin resistance is directly attributable to a high sugar, high grain diet along with insufficient amounts of exercise. So, chances are that if you have hypertension, you also have poorly controlled blood sugar levels, and most likely eat a diet high in grains and sugars, and low in healthful fats.
Why does insulin resistance promote hypertension?
As explained by Dr. Rosedale, insulin stores magnesium, which relaxes your muscles, but if your insulin receptors are blunted and your cells grow resistant to insulin, you can’t store magnesium. It simply passes out of your body through urination. If your magnesium level is too low, your blood vessels will constrict, which will raise your blood pressure and decrease your energy level. I actually wrote my first medical review paper on this in 1985.
Insulin also affects your blood pressure by causing your body to retain sodium. Sodium retention causes fluid retention. Fluid retention in turn causes high blood pressure. Another dietary mechanism responsible for driving up your blood pressure is directly and specifically related to your fructose consumption.
Fructose breaks down into a variety of waste products, one of which is uric acid. Uric acid drives up your blood pressure by inhibiting the nitric oxide in your blood vessels. Nitric oxide helps your vessels maintain their elasticity, so nitric oxide suppression leads to increases in blood pressure. In fact, 17 out of 17 studies demonstrate that elevated uric acid levels lead to hypertension.
According to the latest research in this area, the safest range of uric acid is between 3 and 5.5 milligrams per deciliter, and there appears to be a steady relationship between uric acid levels and blood pressure and cardiovascular risk, even down to the range of 3 to 4 mg/dl. The ideal uric acid level appears to be around 4 mg/dl for men and 3.5 mg/dl for women.
How to Take Control of Your Blood Pressure
If your hypertension is the direct result of an out-of-control blood sugar level, then normalizing your blood sugar levels will also bring your blood pressure readings into the healthy range. To accomplish that, the first thing you need to do is remove all grains and sugars, particularly fructose, from your diet until both your weight and your blood pressure have normalized.
Following my comprehensive nutrition plan (which has recently been revised and updated) can help you take control of your diet in an incremental manner. Following this plan will automatically help normalize your insulin levels. Not only will it help normalize your blood pressure but it will also radically reduce your risk of the two most common causes of death, heart disease and cancer, and also other major epidemics such as obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
To emphasize how important this one action can be, consider the following: According to a 2010 study5, those who consumed 74 grams or more per day of fructose (the equivalent of about 2.5 sugary drinks) had a 77 percent greater risk of having blood pressure levels of 160/100 mmHg. Consuming 74 grams or more of fructose daily also increased the risk of a 135/85 blood pressure reading by 26 percent, and 140/90 by 30 percent.
This is significant because the average American now consumes about 70 grams of fructose EVERY day! Worse yet, about 25 percent of all Americans consume over 134 grams of fructose a day, according to research by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the division of kidney disease and hypertension at the University of Colorado, and author of two books on the dangers of fructose, The Sugar Fix, and The Fat Switch.
As a standard recommendation, I strongly advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day. However, for most people – especially if you struggle with high blood pressure and insulin resistance – it would be wise to limit your fruit fructose to 15 grams or less, as it is virtually guaranteed that you will consume “hidden” sources of fructose from most beverages and just about any processed food you might eat.
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