High blood pressure

“Physicians think they are doing something for you by labelling what you have a disease.” – Immanuel Kant

Continuing with the theme of water deficiency and salt shortages, how about high blood pressure? How many worldwide, do you imagine, suffer from this baleful condition? Many of you send in e-mails complaining you’ve been told you have to remain on blood pressure medication for life. Of course you do. You don’t think doctors’ kids go through private school overnight, do you?

Water expert F Batmanghelidj sheds a welcoming light on ‘essential’ hypertension, a term used when a doctor has no clue why you have high blood pressure.

‘High blood pressure (essential hypertension) is the result of an adaptive process to a gross body water deficiency.

The vessels of the body have been designed to cope with fluctuation of their blood volume and tissue requirements by opening and closing different vessels. When the body’s total fluid volume is decreased, the main vessels also have to decrease their aperture (close their lumina), otherwise there would not be enough fluid to fill all the space allocated to blood volume in the design of that particular body. Failing a capacity adjustment to the ‘water volume’ by the blood vessels, gases would separate from the blood and fill the space, causing ’gas locks’. This property of lumen regulation for fluid circulation is a most advanced design within the principle of hydraulics and after which the blood circulation of the body is modelled.’

Well, that makes sense. You’re dehydrated, so you have less blood volume. The arteries have to compensate for the net loss in volume by constricting to pick up the slack. With less water, your blood thickens as the red cells stack up like pennies (Rouleau). Higher viscosity requires more pressure to get the blood around the system and water into the cells. Arteries constrict further and the heart works harder. Grab your garden hose and bend it slightly to restrict flow and pressure will increase. Dr B goes on to state:

‘Essential hypertension should primarily be treated with an increase in daily water intake. The present way of treating hypertension is wrong to the point of scientific absurdity. The body is trying to retain its water volume, and we say to the design of nature in us: ‘No, you do not understand – you must take diuretics and get rid of water!’ It so happens tha, if we do not drink sufficient water, the only other way the body has to secure water is through the mechanism of keeping sodium in the body….

Water by itself is the best natural diuretic. If people who have hypertension, and produce adequate urine, increase their daily water intake, they will not need to take diuretics. If prolonged ‘hypertension producing dehydration’ has also caused heart failure complications, water intake should be increased gradually. In this way, one makes sure that fluid collection in the body is not excessive or unmanageable. The mechanism of sodium retention in these people is in overdrive mode. When water intake is increased gradually and more urine is being produced, the oedema fluid (swelling) that is full of toxic substances will be flushed out, and the heart will regain its strength.’

Other aspects to high blood pressure will be:

Stress: The fight or flight reaction to a threat or high workload will prepare you for combat and increase endocrine (hormone) output

Vitamin D deficiency: Dozens of studies show high blood pressure’s link to vitamin D deficiency

Vitamin C deficiency: produces atherosclerotic plaque deposits

Vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency: causes the body to produce more triglycerides and LDL cholesterol

Lack of omega-3 essential fats: impairs cell wall integrity and modulation of blood viscosity

Lack of exercise and heart-rate variability

Josh Rubin of the Chekinstitute states on his Facebook status; Did you know that 1 of the many ways (there are about 10 individualized reasons) one can get hypertension is by having a magnesium deficiency. Did you know that when you eat sugar (-ose) the body uses magnesium to help break it down. The more sugar you eat = the more mg you use = the less you have = Hypertension!

I have a lot of clients just handing themselves over to the medical system and going on medication without addressing the real cause of the hypertension, the more info’ I can get out there the better.

Phil Cordell

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I’d like to share an article with you which has the very basic principles of getting or staying healthy through diet. If you want to lose weight, or improve your health, whether you are exercising yourself, using a nutrition consultant or personal trainer, I would recommend that you follow these basic’s as a foundation to your personal nutritional rules.

We at Fit for You recommend that you get tested via the Metabolic Typing Diet program, whether you use that program or not, you will be on a good start adhering to these dietary tips.

Posted by: Dr. Mercola
November 03 2009

Earlier this year, Michael Pollan posted a request for reader’s rules about eating. Within days, he had received more than 2,500 responses. Here are Pollan’s 20 favorites:

1. Don’t eat egg salad from a vending machine.
2. Don’t eat anything that took more energy to ship than to grow.
3. If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry.
4. Eat foods in inverse proportion to how much its lobby spends to push it.
5. Avoid snack foods with the “oh” sound in their names: Doritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Ho Ho’s, etc.
6. No second helpings, no matter how scrumptious.
7. It’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor.
8. You may not leave the table until you finish your fruit.
9. You don’t get fat on food you pray over. (Meals prepared at home, served at the table and given thanks for are more appreciated and more healthful than food eaten on the run.)
10. Breakfast you should eat alone. Lunch you should share with a friend. Dinner, give to your enemy.
11. Never eat something that is pretending to be something else (artificial sweeteners, margarine, etc.)
12. Don’t yuck someone’s yum. There is someone out there who likes deep-fried sheep eyeballs and, well, more power to them.
13. Make and take your own lunch to work.
14. Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three-tenths for hunger.
15. I am living in Japan and following these simple rules in preparing each meal: GO HO – incorporate five different cooking methods, GO SHIKI – incorporate five colors, GO MI – incorporate five flavors.
16. One of my top rules for eating comes from economics. The law of diminishing marginal utility reminds me that each additional bite is generally less satisfying than the previous bite. This helps me slow down, savor the first bites, stop eating sooner.
17. Don’t eat anything you aren’t willing to kill yourself.
18. When drinking tea, just drink tea. I find this Zen teaching useful, given my inclination toward information absorption in the morning, when I’m also trying to eat breakfast, get the dog out, start the fire and organize my day.
19. When you’re eating, don’t talk about other past meals, whether better or worse. Focus on what’s in front of you.
20. After spending some time working with people with eating disorders, I came up with this rule: Don’t create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control.

Sources : New York Times October 11th 2009

Cancer Vaccines?

CANCER VACCINES

(A comment by Dr Mercola)

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just get a shot, or in the future just eat a plant that is reengineered to contain a vaccine that would rid of us cancer? Of course it would.

Unfortunately that is not the way our bodies were designed. Cancer prevention is not as simplistic as taking a cancer vaccination. Maintaining a high level of immune integrity is the key, and this is done through the basics of emotional balancing, optimized nutrition, avoidance of toxins, proper sleep, exercise and hydration. At Fit for You we advise on these areas and recommend Metabolic Typing.

This research is clearly another deceptive ploy by Merck to generate revenue for their vaccine division in exchange for the delusional hope that a vaccine will reduce the risk of cancer.

Nicholas Regush writes an excellent review on this topic, which he is quite familiar with as a result of his review of the literature on HHV6 for his worthwhile book The Virus Within.

Heart Surgeon Admits Huge Mistake!

By Dwight Lundell, MD
Part 1 & 2 of a 2-part article (see part 2 below)

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong.  So, here it is I freely admit to being wrong.  As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.”  Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease.  Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible.  The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes.  Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended.  It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus.  The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders.

However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would wilfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body?  Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice wilfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels.  This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet that has been recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

In Part 2 of this two-part article, I’ll discuss which foods cause inflammation, how those foods trigger the inflammatory process, and the foods to eat that will cure inflammation.

Part 2

by Dwight Lundell MD 02/06/2009

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation?

Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator – inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean.  Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6′s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell – they must be in the correct balance with omega-3′s.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.  Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favour of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colourful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.  One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940  mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that
saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent.

The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.  Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favour of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store  aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

(Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ.  Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.)