Foods that can help lower blood pressure

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Foods that can help reduce high blood pressure

(1) Cayenne is in chili peppers. Using those with food is good for reducing blood pressure, even though it may not feel that way.

Herbal masters Dr. Christopher and Dr. Schulz recommend taking a teaspoon of at least 40,000 heat units of cayenne pepper powder mixed in water two times daily to support complete heart health and more.

(2) Hibiscus or Jamaica (hu-my-ca) tea on ice is well known as a refreshing beverage in the Caribbean islands, South America, and Mexico. It has been clinically proven to lower high BP. You can dowse the flame out of your mouth from cayenne with a Jamaica iced tea and double the benefits.

Dried hibiscus flower petals are used to make the tea. Some health food stores may have them. Stores specializing in Hispanic foods most likely will. Or you can order them online.

To prepare: Simply cover the bottom of a large pan thickly with the petals, then pour hot (not boiling) water over them. Cover and let it steep for a half hour. Strain while pouring into a glass container then refrigerate and use when desired.

(3) A Louisville medical center study found that snacking on raisins three times daily could reduce BP among those in a prehypertension group. Amazingly, they even used processed food snacks containing raisins. [2]

(4) The American Heart Association has discovered through research that eating three kiwis a day reduces BP.

(5) The American Chemical Society claims purple root vegetables, such as purple potatoes, have chemical properties that reduce BP.

(6) A Florida State University study found that watermelon lowers BP. In addition to watermelon's potassium contribution, they found a specific amino acid that contributes to lowering BP. [2]

(7) Speaking of potassium, don't forget to eat bananas. The Harvard Medical School reported a UK study that determined foods containing potassium nitrate were even better than supplements using potassium chloride for lowering BP.

(8) Hawthorne berries have both herbalists and mainstream medicos agreeing on its blood pressure lowering ability. Its tea has been a Chinese household heart tonic for centuries. If you can't find a Chinese food specialty store, go online or use Hawthorne extract supplements. Details here (http://www.naturalnews.com/035685_hawthorn_berries_heart_health.html).

(9) We can't forget chocolate, can we? It should be organic and dark or bittersweet without milk and with very little sugar. Yes, it has been researched; there are compounds in cacao that dilate blood vessels and lower blood pressure (http://www.naturalnews.com).

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039994_foods_lower_blood_pressure_hypertension.html#ixzz2QvR92ecJ

Benefits of Vitamin D

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4/18/2013 - Science News has a great article today about the many benefits of Vitamin D. Those with adequate intake were shown to have lower blood pressure, reduced heart rate, fewer cavities, less chance of getting diabetes (particularly among blacks), and a smaller incidence of suicides when compared to those with lesser levels of Vitamin D.

Here's the article:

Vitamin D doesn’t disappoint

Vitamin D seems to be living up to high expectations

     

By Nathan Seppa

Web edition: April 8, 2013

A+ A- Text Size

Vitamin D seems to be living up to high expectations. A spate of 2013 studies has found that the vitamin may yield benefits in groups ranging from pregnant women to members of the military to kids in a dentist chair.
Six recent reports offer a sampling of the evidence:

• An analysis of 24 clinical trials in children finds that kids getting vitamin D supplements had a 47 percent reduced risk of dental caries, researchers report in Nutrition Reviews.
• A study of 242 healthy adults getting daily calcium supplements shows that those who also took modest vitamin D supplements of 800 IU per day saw their blood pressure decrease. Their top blood pressure number fell by 10 points on average after a year and their bottom BP number fell by four points. Writing in Nutritional Influences on Bone Health, the researchers also report that the vitamin D folks saw their heart rate decline from 74 to 70 beats per minute. The calcium-only group saw no improvement on average.
• A 28-year study in which Danish scientists monitored the health of nearly 10,000 people finds that those who developed a tobacco-related cancer during that time had vitamin D levels at the study outset of 14.8 nanograms per milliliter of blood on average, compared with 16.4 ng/ml on average for everyone else. That report shows up in Clinical Chemistry.
• BMJ reports in a review of 31 studies that pregnant women with vitamin D levels of less than 30 ng/ml had an increased risk of developing a complication such as preeclampsia or gestational diabetes.
• Low vitamin D levels may hamper metabolism in blacks. A study in Nutrition Research finds that adult blacks averaged vitamin D of only 14.6 6 ng/ml compared with 25.6 ng/ml on average in whites. Blacks were also more likely to have insulin resistance, a condition in which cells fail to use the hormone insulin efficiently to process glucose. But when researchers compared groups with similar vitamin D levels, the differences in insulin resistance disappeared. That suggests that the higher burden of insulin resistance in blacks is at least in part the result of low vitamin D, they conclude.
• Very low vitamin D might be linked to suicide risk. An analysis of military service members finds that people who committed suicide appear to have similar vitamin D levels on average compared with those who don’t. But a closer look finds that people with the very lowest levels, less than 15 ng/ml, were roughly twice as likely to commit suicide as people with vitamin D ranging from 17 to 41 ng/ml. That study appears in PLoS One.
•   

If well-stocked bins in pharmacies are any indication, news of vitamin D’s benefits is reaching the mainstream. Public health leaders have responded unevenly to such data, however. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which is charged with advising the government and the public on health matters, declared that 20 ng/ml was the minimum blood concentration of vitamin D for bone safety. The IOM also bumped up the daily recommended intake, but only slightly to 600 to 800 IU for most adults (1/1/11, p.14; 7/16/11, p. 22).
The Endocrine Society, the oldest and largest group devoted to hormone research, cited ample research in upping the ante several months later and calling for vitamin D intake levels two to three times higher than IOM’s.
Not all vitamin D studies show a benefit. It’s also difficult to randomly assigned people to get specific amounts of a vitamin that can be obtained from sun exposure. Can the benefits of vitamin D be oversold? Possibly. But one thing is clear: So far, 2013 is shaping up to be a very good year for the sunshine vitamin.

Comment

Citations

S. Afzal et al. Low plasma 25-hydroyvitamin D and risk of tobacco-related cancer. Clinical Chemistry. Volume 59, 2013, in press.
doi: 10.1373/clinchem.2012.201939. [Go to]

F. Aghajafari et al. Association between maternal serum 25-hydroyvitamin D level and pregnancy and neonatal outcomes: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. BMJ. Volume 346, 2013. [Go to]

P. Hujoel et al. Vitamin D and dental caries in controlled clinical trials: systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutrition Reviews. Volume 71, 2013, p. 88.
doi: 10.1111/j.1753-4887.2012.00544.x. [Go to]

M. Pfeifer. Effects of vitamin D and calcium supplementation on heart rate and blood pressure in community-dwelling older individuals. Nutritional Influences on Bone Health. 2013, p. 343. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4471-2769-7_33. [Go to]

J. Umhau et al. Low vitamin D status and suicide: A case-control study of military service members. PLoS One. Volume 8, 2013. [Go to]

S. Williams et al. Association of racial disparities in the prevalence of insulin resistance with racial disparities in vitamin D levels: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2001-2006). Nutrition Research. In press, 2013. [Go to]

Suggested Reading

N. Seppa. The power of D. Science News. Volume 180, July 16, 2011, p. 22. Available online: [Go to]_

N. Seppa. Vitamin D targets increased. Science News. Volume 179, Jan. 1, 2011, p. 14. Available online: [Go to

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Endorses Acupuncture

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941-366-1110

AFL-CIO President Trumka endorses union Acupuncturists

FREE HEALTH INFO USA

The information offered on this blog is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or treat disease.

WELCOME to the free health information blog, especially intended for AFL-CIO members. The purpose of this blog is to offer you vital information to help you stay healthy or to regain your health.

Derek Bok, past-President of Harvard University, once said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." This is especially true when it comes to health care. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and for those already ill, there are often inexpensive alternatives to costly medical care, in many cases approaches you can take yourself at home. As this blog progresses, you'll find numerous posts which may be of assistance to you.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has endorsed the services of  National Guild of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NGAOM) members like myself, having personally benefited from our care. Please read this letter of introduction from him:

My web address is http://www.hkacup.com and phone number is 941-366-1110. Please call if you want to schedule an appointment for more in depth perspectives about how to care for your health. 

                                Dr. Harvey Kaltsas, Acupuncture Physician, V.P. (FL), NGAOM; OPEIU, AFL-CIO

4/16/2013 - Yunnan Baiyao powder for injuries

The sadness attendant to the tragedy in Boston yesterday is inescapable. Unfortunately, I can't possibly suggest any cures for the mental illness that led to such an attack. As for the physical trauma, we're lucky to live in a country with such advanced emergency room care.

What do those in poor Asian countries do to deal with injuries?  Back in 1969-70 I had several friends return from Vietnam talking about how the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars treated their wounded. Every soldier carried with him a small packet of Yunnan Baiyao, an herbal formula that both disinfects and stops bleeding. When shot, stabbed, or otherwise injured the Vietnamese would sprinkle this powder on their wounds and take some internally.  North Vietnamese Generals say they won the war because of Yunnan Baiyao. Unlike we Americans who had Medivac helicopters and mobile field hospital MASH units, the Vietnamese had none of these things. They needed something small, extremely inexpensive, and highly effective to treat their wounded. They used Yunnan Baiyao, the exact formula of which is a state military secret of China.

In time, American troops started buying Yunnan Baiyao while on R&R in Hong Kong to carry around with them on patrol when they returned to Vietnam. The Chinese got wind of this and stopped exports of Yunnan Baiyao to Hong Kong for the duration of the war, or so legend goes. These tales of the power of Yunnan Baiyao is actually what got me interested in traditional Chinese medicine in the first place, back in 1970. I started studying acupuncture then, and the rest is history.

I've used Yunnan Baiyao on many patients for a variety of conditions. One was an AIDS patient whose platelet count was four (4). Platelets are essential for clotting blood. They also contain the growth factors necessary for healing tissue. Without platelets even a minor cut can result in someone bleeding to death. Four (4) is an almost unbelievably low platelet count because. In men the average platelet counts  is 237,000 per mcL. A platelet count below 150,000 per mcL is called thrombocytopenia. Anyways, my patient took an airplane flight to Europe and upon descent the change in air pressure provoked a nose bleed that would not stop. Fortunately he had some Yunnan Baiyao in his luggage, and after retrieving his bag from the carousel he broke open a capsule of the powder and snorted it. The bleeding stopped instantly.

I had another patient with a similar problem - even though his platelet counts were high, whenever he got a nosebleed it would not stop. This patient was very wealthy, had contributed $326 million to charities, and the doctors did everything they could to him for SIX WEEKS as an in-patient in a hospital before they could get it to stop. Imagine the expense. One night at 2 a.m. his wife called me in a panic because her  husband suffered another nosebleed. The last thing he wanted was to spend another six weeks in a hospital. I got to his home around 4 a.m. with a short straw and some capsules of Yunnan Baiyao. Making a little joke of the process since neither of us had ever snorted cocaine, I instructed him how to inhale the Yunnan Baiyao through the straw. In seconds his nosebleed stopped, and he was both relieved and astonished. Relieved that he didn't have to spend another six weeks in a hospital and astonished that Western medicine doesn't know about such simple, inexpensive folk remedies.

It's definitely not only for nosebleeds. I use it on myself, my family, and patients whenever anyone gets a cut. an abrasion, or has some nasty infection and I don't have access to an antibiotic ointment.

Yunnan Baiyao is available online from Amazon.com for less than $12.00 for a box of 16 capsules.