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7 Causes and Natural Remedies For Blood Pressure Issues
Dr Livingood
Did you know that 105 million Americans are on blood pressure medications that they take on a monthly basis? It’s a pretty staggering number, and if you’re one of those people, you may be wondering what your other options are.
There are many natural ways to fix and prevent high blood pressure. In this blog, I’ll share some of my favorite remedies, and help you understand what could be causing them.
Natural Remedies for Blood Pressure Issues
1. Balance Your Nervous System
The central nervous system controls everything in your body. Your brain uses this to send messages to your heart, and it’s split into two different pathways. The sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system.
Sympathetic Nervous System
This is your stress response system which increases blood flow and raises your blood pressure.
Parasympathetic Nervous System
This system supports your blood pressure and is used for reproducing, sleeping, and digesting.
Our parasympathetic nervous system doesn’t get enough stimulation because we’re so stressed all the time, leaving it weakened and underused. The best thing we can do is strengthen it. One way to do that is to do breathing exercises; the following is one of my go-tos:
Paced Breathing
- 5-second deep breath in
- 5-second deep breath out
Do this rhythmically for about a minute to support your blood pressure and strengthen your parasympathetic nervous system.
2. Take Hawthorn
Ace inhibitors are the drugs that are typically given to support blood pressure. Hawthorn does this naturally because it is an ace inhibitor, beta blocker, and calcium channel blocker.
If you’re on a medication that does any of those three, hawthorn could be a perfect alternative for you.
Hawthorn is full of bioflavonoids (phenol parts of plants), which contain powerful medicinal properties. It also makes a significant impact when it comes to lowering blood pressure and triglyceride levels.
Hawthorn powder is a great choice if you’re suffering from high blood pressure, even if you’re on medication. If you’re regularly measuring your blood pressure, you can even start to talk to your doctor about getting you off of those drugs.
3. Eat Pomegranate
Pomegranate is very high in tannins, which are antioxidants that help the damaged blood vessels that may be raising blood pressure. Eating pomegranate each day has been shown to support your blood pressure by up to 5%.
Just by eating a fruit or taking it through powder, pomegranate rivals blood pressure medication in its ability to support blood pressure.
4. Reduce Water Retention
Too much water retention can cause blood pressure to go higher because blood pressure is connected to your kidneys.
A natural diuretic is needed to help flush the water out of your body and support blood pressure.
Taurine is a natural diuretic, and ace inhibitor, and contains high amounts of sulfur. Taurine is like a battery charger for your body. It fires up your cells and forces toxins and water out of the body.
5. Increase Nitric Oxide
Nitric oxide helps relax blood vessels that get too constricted. You can increase the amount of nitric oxide in your body through magnesium.
Most Americans are deficient in magnesium. A dose of anywhere from 200-400 milligrams a day can support your top number by 5-6 points, and your low number by 2-3 points.
Try using a magnesium supplement in your diet or eating more magnesium-rich food, like spinach or black beans, to see your blood pressure start to drop.
6. Increase Antioxidants
Antioxidants like alpha lipoic acid optimize your body’s “street sweepers,” like glutathione, which help suck up toxins in your blood.
So, if we can get more of these in our system, we’ll see our blood pressure come down because we are handling free radical stress better.
7. Reduce Sugar Consumption
Sugar is the ultimate cause of fat. The more fat that you have, the more blood vessels you have, which increases how hard your heart has to work.
Cutting back on sugar will help unclog your arteries and reduce oxidative stress in the arteries, while simultaneously cutting belly fat.
A lot of sugar and insulin resistance is created by overeating carbs and sugars, which leads to metabolic syndrome, which causes high blood pressure.
Summary
In order to help you, I’ve put together an entire training on how you get your blood pressure under control in as little as a week.
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