Are you aware that high blood pressure is not a medical illness but actually just a symptom (of some underlying problem)? Unfortunately, high blood pressure is being treated like it’s a disease. And as such, there’s always a corresponding medical treatment. The usual treatment to control high blood pressure is to take any of the different classes of anti-hypertensive meds. Nothing bad about that especially if it’s only given during times of extremely high blood pressure. These meds are sometimes taken indefinitely however, resulting in long-term side effects. Are you aware that a lot of nutrients can actually be depeted by chronic intake of these medications? Among them include vitamins B1, B6 and C, CoQ10, Magnesium, Calcium, Potassium, Zinc, and Sodium. Once people start having symptoms of nutritional deficiency, unfortunately they’re treated with more medications. It becomes a vicious cycle until eventually, the combination of medications cause damage to the liver and kidneys, among other things. Anyway, there a lot of underlying causes of high blood pressure. Treat the cause or causes and you resolve the underlying problem. Treat only the symptom and you’ll run into more problems. Among the possible causes of hypertension could include nutritional deficiencies (potassium and magnesium), toxicities (elevated tissue levels of lead and mercury), hormonal imbalance (low testosterone in men, evelated cortisol levels in both sexes, estrogen dominance in women), chronic inflammatory states, obesity, dehydration, stress in general, etc. These underlying conditions can be addressed by a nutritionally-minded doctor who can order tests such as a comprehensive nutritional profile, blood or salivary hormone panel, hair mineral analysis, autonomic nervous system analysis, skin carotenoid testing, body composition assessment, and genomic testing. In my practice, it’s not uncommon to get people off of synthetic medications once the root cause of the problem is addressed. Chronic conditions can be reversed by using what we call TLC or Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes. More to this TLC on subsequent blog entries. Have a great week everyone!
Got high BP?
August 8, 2016
Hot Tips, News and Trends for Healthy Aging By Dr. Joel Lopez, M.D. 
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