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Bad BP! I’m not talking about the company that spilled all this precious oil in the Gulf, although I should be talking about this topic in the future. I’m talking primarily about extremes in blood pressure. That’s high blood pressure as well as low blood pressure. High blood pressure is not an illness or disease although if you talk to other people, they’ll tell you it’s an illness that needs to be medicated. High blood pressure is usually a symptom of some underlying medical problem. Take care of that problem and your blood pressure goes down naturally or on it’s own. Hypertension (another name for high blood pressure), according to the medical literature, can be classified as either essential or secondary type. If you read their descriptions, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Essential hypertension, which comprises 90-95% of cases of hypertension, is said to be due to an idiopathic cause or “cause unknown”. In reality, there could be a lot of causes but these are not typically searched for in a typical practice. Secondary hypertension, on the other hand, could be due to overt underlying problems such as kidney, adrenal or metabolic dysfunction. Most people end up on medications long-term anyway, whether they have essential or secondary hypertension. Therefore, the distinction between these two types of hypertension is useless, to put it bluntly. Other causes of high blood pressure that aren’t normally addressed include nutritional deficiencies (potassium and magnesium), heavy metal toxicity (lead and mercury), stress (physical, mental, emotional), and allergies (food, drug, chemicals). It’s easy to correct most of these issues. In other cases, treatments such as chelation therapy for heavy metal toxicity and LDA (low dose antigen) therapy for allergies, may be warranted. Medications do have their place in the treatment of high blood pressure but I emphasize an integrative approach to any type of health challenge. One that involves the use of food, dietary supplements, and lifestyle changes such as moderate exercise, stress reduction and optimal sleep.
Hot Tips, News and Trends for Healthy Aging By Dr. Joel Lopez, M.D. 
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