♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Hi, I'm Chris The Pharmacist.
- And today we're gonna talk about,
lower your high blood pressure naturally.
Recently supported by science,
Chris has done a lot of homework on this.
Blood pressure is a big deal,
you wanna keep it intact,
keep yourself healthy from now until you're 101 years old.
Now, before we go on,
we need to grab that form - I'll go get some stuff.
so you know where we're at. - All right here we go.
- We gotta make it right side up.
- Whoa! There we go - I've been practice that.
- So, we do have a giveaway but we don't know what it is,
just some future video.
But if you go to bobandbrad.com,
and go to the giveaway section or what is it?
Yeah, the giveaway section right?
Might go there and we'll be giving possibly a bed,
possibly thermotech infrared heater, whatever.
- FitGlide, Knee Glide.
- Fun things, go to Bob and Brad at Facebook,
top of the page, where the giveaway is given.
If you want 60 second short version of this video,
go to Twitter or to Instagram.
And the TikTok,
also has us there. - There we go.
So, let's go to blood pressure.
We want to...
Let's go right, what is high blood pressure?
And we've got a nice chart here of what the American-
- American Heart Association.
- American Heart Association has helped us out with.
- So, should we start out with normal?
Hopefully we're there.
- Yeah. So, basically the generalized number
is gonna be 120 over 80.
So, that's considered normal blood pressure.
And it can be a little bit lower, or it can be, you know,
so I mean, from that and some people....
like my blood pressure is constantly like 100 over 60.
So, but that's still considered normal.
So, even though it's lower than the norm,
but that's something that's very comfortable.
So, unless you're getting lightheaded or dizzy
that's when your doctor begins to address those issues.
- Sure
- But for the purposes of today's conversation,
we'll just deal with-
- Yeah. Now, we're looking at,
it's elevated as we kind of...
We made it at yellow
but we realized they couldn't see it very well.
It's that caution,
it's like yeah you're in the borderline,
starting to get the high blood pressure,
but you don't need meds yet.
Good place to change your diet,
change your exercises. - Exercise and diet.
And that's exactly what I did about 20 years ago,
I was in this range and with running consistently
and other activities,
I was able to drop it down within a few months.
- Yup. Now, that's huge.
So, this range is where you're gonna really focus
on those lifestyle changes.
And when you come to the doctor,
they're gonna start to talk to you about,
how are you eating?
And what are you doing for your activities?
And the key with activities, you know,
and that's probably the simplest natural way to,
it's just to increase your aerobic output.
So, but it's not to say that just aerobic
is the only way to get exercise,
I mean, weightlifting can be something that can be done.
So, there's swimming, there's biking, there's dancing,
there's gardening.
- Now, if you're not familiar with the term aerobic,
that doesn't mean you have to go to aerobics class,
where people are wearing everything and doing the jumping,
and, you know, having fun it's a good way to do it,
but you may not feel comfortable,
you can go for a walk.
- Yup a walk. - 30 minutes, a brisk walk.
A brisk walk, 30 minutes, five days a week.
- There you go.
So, that's not a big...
well, you know,
if you're a sedentary person,
that is a big deal. - It is a big deal, so.
You may wanna start out walking five minutes.
- Yup and I think you can...
Rome was not built in a day.
So, I mean, if you have a sedentary lifestyle,
but you're ready to make these lifestyle changes,
so that hopefully we can keep you off from medication.
You know, it's just a little bit at a time,
baby steps, I think it's a real approach,
'cause actually the last thing we want is an injury.
And you always wanna do this in accordance with your doctor,
feels safe for you.
So, we can't stress that enough.
- Right. You don't wanna overdo it.
And that can be a big thing as,
oh, you've been diagnosed, you're maybe at stage one,
you're at that borderline stage
and doctor has been talked to you about it,
it's like, I better get after this.
You might think, well, my father died
from high hypertension-
- Yeah. And he was 56 years old
or something like that. - Exactly. So, I'm gonna-
I mean it's-
- Yeah. And I know this one guy,
he started...
he wanted to run a half marathon and he started at age 60,
hadn't run before.
But he did it appropriately.
He actually hired a trainer.
- All right.
- And it took 'em six to eight months,
exactly eight months.
And he did it.
So, that might- - That's a phenomenal goal.
That's an option.
He didn't have high blood pressure problems,
but he knew that if he went after it too aggressively
he's gonna hurt himself.
- Yeah. And that's the last thing you wanna do
is put you back on the couch.
I mean, other than they'll have to come and see you,
(both laugh) they come and see me for something for pain
but I mean, from that standpoint.
So, yeah. But basically when we get to those levels
then when we get up to stage one,
and that's about when your doctor is gonna start to say,
"all right, how are we doing on the diet?"
- Sure
- So, we wanna look at that too.
So, they talk exercise and diet.
So, one of the biggest guilty causes of blood pressure
and a lot of us don't know about it,
is just the amount of sodium we eat.
- Salt? - Salt.
- Salt. Yeah.
- So, that's one of the things, so, we wanna read packages.
So, basically, and then your favorite saying is,
don't buy anything out of the middle of the store,
and I say, don't buy anything out of boxes.
(Brad laughs) For the most part, it's one of those things
where that's a lot of the foods that are naturally,
you know, that are not natural,
are packaged and prefabricated,
and they're- - Processed, highly processed.
Processed food, they add salt in there
and sugar for flavor.
And so it's those dead calories and that sodium.
And that sodium can make you retain water,
which when you retain water
that makes your heart work a little bit harder,
more vascular resistance, higher blood pressure.
- I always think of it like a balloon,
you know, you put more water or air in the balloon
and it just gets more and more pressure built up.
And that's really what's going on in your system,
your vessels are taking in all that water
and it's blowing up those vessels and the pressure goes up,
heart has to work harder. - Yup
And then also we have some arthrosclerosis that can-
- Yeah. So, the hardening of the arteries,
I mean, we have to be careful,
there's a lot of other things
that once we get that word hypertension,
there's a lot of other things can go sideways.
So, it can affect our organs, like our kidneys,
it can affect our eyes,
obviously it's our heart, it's our circulatory.
So, there's a lot of things going on
because there could be strokes, there can be heart attacks,
vascular dementia,
so, there's lots of memory issues.
So, there's lots of things
that we have to be extremely cautious with,
when we start to hear this
and why we're gonna make this commitment to ourselves,
to help to naturally lower our blood pressure.
- Sure. So, and yeah, the thing is
these problems you talked about, the vascular problems,
well, the stroke too,
but all these things kind of accumulate,
over time. - Over time.
- Exactly.
- So, and you could be up to 140 over 90,
and feel perfectly healthy.
And maybe you haven't seen a doctor for 5 or 10 years.
It's like my grandmother,
she never saw the doctor until she went into a nursing home.
Luckily she was healthy, she didn't need to,
but she wasn't gonna anyways.
(Brad laughs) - Yeah.
- She was stubborn, you know. - Yup. Exactly.
- But if you have-
- There's a lot of us like that though.
- If you have a problem like this,
and then you find out after you've had it for 10 years,
maybe your vessels are already hardened
and you're having serious problems.
- Yeah anytime, I mean, you think of your blood vessels
they're are kinda like they're subtle,
it's kinda like subtle spaghetti.
I mean, they're just kind of a very flexible material,
well it's tissue.
And so basically when something's pushing hard against it,
in a case of like an aneurysm it's stretches,
in the case of just hardening the arteries,
you know, you've got all this resistance force,
pounding against it' cause that pump is working so hard,
that they just kinda harden, they aren't quite so supple,
there's some debris building up in there and so-
- Which actually makes the blood pressure go up more.
- Go up more because it narrows the arteries and vessels.
And that's what we have to be so careful with.
- So it's a compounding effect?
- Yes. It's not just one simple thing.
I mean, hypertension or high blood pressure is the word,
but there's so many other things going on.
And you know, for every 10 points in blood pressure,
your risk for cardiovascular problems goes up like 20%
so, each time.
And so many of us, because again it's the silent killer,
so, we don't feel blood pressure, we just generally don't.
I mean, some people say they'll have a headache
or they get a nosebleed. I mean, some of those people,
I guess they're the fortunate ones,
not that it's fortunate to have a headache or a nosebleed
but they actually have- - At least it's a symptom.
it's a symptoms that shows you
that, hey I need to figure out what the heck's going on.
But for those of us that,
you know, are just walking around for 10, 15, 20 years,
you know, are healthy as a horse, feel great,
and all the sudden you go in for that doctor appointment
'cause maybe it was an insurance thing
or maybe your wife made you go
or might your husband or whatever.
And all the sudden you get this number,
like, oh my gosh what am I gonna do?
So, and this is why we have to be careful a lot.
- So, you know, it might not be a bad idea
if you're going to some stores,
having the thing you sit in and put your arm in there
and take it that way.
- Absolutely. - Yup.
So, yup. They're regulated, they're always very accurate.
So, I think you can feel comfortable that.
We'll give you at least a good guideline
or permanent sketch of where it is.
But again, when we're taking our blood pressure
even in a store or even at home,
we wanna make sure we're sitting in that proper posture,
both feet on the floor, relaxed.
You wanna give yourself about five minutes of sitting
before you actually hit the trigger if you're in a store.
- So, you relax?
- Yup, 'cause you wanna get an accurate.
'Cause if you just came in from,
boy, I don't feel really good
and I wanna, you know, get it set.
You know, you'll just jump in all of a sudden,
yeah, oh my gosh, I'm 170 over, you know, 110,
oh my goodness, what am I gonna do?
Well, and all sudden if you rest for five minutes,
and all of a sudden it comes down
to somewhere like, you know, 120 over 80.
So, you know, just like you were in a hurry,
driving and traffic, had a cup of coffee,
I mean, there's a lot of factors.
- And then, you may wanna take it a few times.
'Cause there's a little red flag there.
Why it's pretty high is it jumped up off-
- Yup, wanna wait another couple of minutes and repeat it
and you can, yup.
- Yeah. So, let's say you've been diagnosed,
you've know you've got high blood pressure
or you know you're in the elevated stage, stage one,
you're gonna work with exercise and diet.
We are not nutritionists, we're not dieticians us,
but we can give you some good, solid, basic introductory.
And we talked about the salt already.
Any other things besides looking
at making sure there's that much salt?
- Yeah, I mean, you're gonna wanna go with,
you know, you got lots of fruits and veggies,
lean protein,
so you just don't want tons and tons of basically animal fat
or if you're a vegetarian or vegan,
I mean, obviously you wanna get your protein sources
through nuts and you know, things of that are nature, soy.
So, there's a lot of good things
that are actually heart-healthy in that.
And like I said, vegetarians,
I always kind of liked because you know,
they generally are eating a lot of the right things.
It's hard to meet somebody
that's having a lot of health problems
when they're vegetarian.
Not that you can't have lean meats and protein,
I think that's...
to me, I couldn't live without it.
So, I'd have to...
I mean, I need to have meat so.
(both laugh) I would not feel right.
Maybe even a crabby person, but-
- And that's a personal thing, - Exactly.
You can work around that.
As far as exercise, we did mention walking.
But start out slow.
I mean, there is some people,
they may be overweight already, very sedentary
and they'll go of for a 10 minute walk,
could just literally be exhaustive.
So, you might start out with a two or three minute walk.
- Exactly
- And build it up week to week.
My typical rule of thumb for people
who are starting out exercising like that,
is not more than 10% increase per week.
- Correct.
- So, if you walked one...
well let's make it easy, 10 blocks week one,
week two you're gonna go 11 blocks.
- 11 blocks.
- That's 10%. - Yup.
And so it's like a slow
and you know, you don't have to do the math,
it doesn't need to be perfect but-
- No. But you know its mental math
it might stimulate the brain too.
So, that's always good.
- Well, there you go, exactly.
So, start out slow,
it can be walking,
you know, if you wanna get in the jogging,
stationary bike, things of that nature,
you can do inside the house are all acceptable.
- But, yard work.
I mean, raking leaves, - Yard work.
so, this time of the year we're in the Northern
where you mentioned we're gonna be shoveling
'cause we're up here in Wisconsin,
so, or Minnesota.
So, from that standpoint,
but it's one of those things where anything
that you find an activity that you can gravitate to,
that you enjoy,
I think that's really the most important thing.
- There you go.
- You can repeat it and do it day in and day out
where you're not thinking it's a chore.
You wanna just say, hey I really look forward
to getting my daily walk,
hey, I look forward to getting on the garden
or I look forward to pushing my lawn mower.
I mean, you know, there's lots of things
that people can do
and it can be resistance training,
it can be Polaris, it can be Yoga.
I mean, there's a lot of good things that happen
with different forms of exercise.
- So, you say resistance training,
it can be weights, but you don't have to have weights,
use stretch bands in your house,
you don't have to go and spend a lot of money.
It's just a matter of doing it.
There's a lot of YouTube,
just go to Bob and Brad we've got a lot of exercises.
- A couple of videos.
- Yeah. Mostly with stretch bands.
We don't do much with weights.
Just not what Bob and I have a history
of doing personally as well as clinically.
So, and it's a great way to exercise
with your balance, strength,
a number of things there.
I do wanna talk a little bit more about
'cause we didn't touch on like diet
and far as specialty foods are...
not specialty, but flaxseed.
We actually did a video.
Bob's wife did some flaxseed diet,
you can watch that video.
And she says...
and they both say,
boy, her blood pressure came down as a result of it.
What's the science or what's the research say
about things like that?
- Yeah, you know, its a little bit of a mixed review,
but I think more positive than negative.
And so I do think that with flaxseed and flaxseed oil,
both products may use, it's got Alpha-linolenic acid,
that's the active ingredient
and it's the big fancy term for your Omega-3s,
the healthy fatty acids, - Sure.
that it kinda help
to maybe keep blood vessels more supple,
may help to lower cholesterol,
may help to kinda lower your blood pressure.
So, with these ingredients,
there's a couple of different ways you can attack it.
Some people like the oil,
some people like capsules,
some people can grind up the seeds and put it in their food,
so you can bake it, you can throw it in your oatmeal.
So, there's a lot of healthy ways
that you can add flax to your diet
and actually get some real good positive benefits
and with consistent use.
That's where I think you might see
the blood pressure lowering effects occur.
- And this is one of the things, if I understand this right,
there's really no...
you know, maybe the research or it doesn't do anything,
but is it gonna do any bad thing, bad side effect?
- Generally sometimes
it cause a little bit of GI side effects
but that is so rare and so remote.
And I mean you'd probably have to be throwing too much flax,
I mean, you'd be happening take a quarter of a cup.
- Shovel. (laughs)
- Yeah. So, you know, a little too much.
- So, flaxseed is a healthy thing.
- I would call it a thumbs up.
I mean, I don't think it can do anything wrong.
It's no different than having like adding fish to our diets.
So, if you're eating fish two to three days a week,
that's another really good healthy protein
to put in your diet
because of the particularly fatty fish
like salmon and mackerel.
Those types of things actually have
those good essential fatty acids,
which are very cardioprotective.
- Sure
- And when you see diets around the world,
you know, the Americanized diet
doesn't have fish as a staple,
maybe on the East coast and West coast
where it's a little bit easier to get to it.
But when you go to some of the Island nations
or Japan in particular it's a very good,
they have some of the lowest incidences
of blood pressure as a whole because of their fish,
you know- - Japan?
Japan. So, but-
- But they say it's from diet.
- Diet and then maybe actually done some studies,
these are older studies,
but when they've come to the United States
and they've moved here for a while
and they get acclimated to our Americanized diet,
blood pressure goes up.
So, a lot of that's from the salt and things that we eat so.
Although there's kind of an interesting study
in Northern Japan,
that actually when we talk about essential hypertension,
which is that you know, when we get to this stage right here
and that stage one,
we don't know why it's caused, but it is.
But the Northern region of Japan,
eats the saltiest diet per capita in the world.
And that's just a small population of people,
but they have so much salt in their diet,
and there's a large...
And then when they studied the people
that just don't like salt,
none of those guys have the blood pressure issues
like the people that are on the high salt diets.
So, this is kinda-
- Oh, so, they do?
They're in Japan but they love salt
and their blood pressure is higher?
- Yup. So, even though they're eating
the fish and the protein,
that salt seems to be sodium,
and it just seems to be that limiting factor.
So, it's something to be real mindful of.
And when you're actually looking for levels,
as we talk about food,
you know, a lot of people like flavor,
so, salt is an easy thing to put in there.
So, you really, the standardized measure
that they say is about 2300 milligrams is what we want.
And a low salt diet is considered 1500 milligrams.
But how much is? - But what does that mean?
Yeah. So, it's kind of hard to figure that out.
So, basically a level teaspoon full.
So, if you took a measuring spoon
and you filled it with those white crystals of table salt,
and you scrape it off the top, that's about 2300 milligrams.
So, that's your daily allotment for salt.
So, when we talk about reading boxes and food stores
and what the sodium content is in say cereal and bread,
bread is like a sneaky ingredient
that has a lot of sodium in it to make it taste good.
- Ah!
- Yeah. You wanna look for low sodium options,
especially when we're starting
to get up into these higher levels.
So, look for low sodium on your packaging.
So, we wanna get used to reading stuff
in the grocery store before you buy it.
- So, bread's got a lot of salt in it?
- Yeah, it does it's kinda tricky.
And you know, things like lean meats
like turkey and ham even they have a lot of sodium in there.
So, you wanna be- - As part of the processing?
Yeah, that's the deli meats,
so you wanna be real careful with that.
So, you'd be probably better off,
you know, bake some chicken
and use that as for your sandwiches and things-
- Then you control what you put into control of your diet.
- When you're controlling it, exactly.
- Yeah. So, there's a lot of things diet wise
that you can just be an observant by reading the labels,
and you may be reading a book or doing a little research,
watching some YouTubes,
you know, go a long way
on getting that blood pressure nice, relaxed manner.
And I'm feeling very relaxed now, Chris.
- Yeah. Well, there you go, I think you're- (Brad laugh)
Yeah and that's the other thing,
stress is actually one of the other contributing factors
of hypertension and blood pressure.
So, it's something that,
you know, that's a lifestyle change.
So, it's something that we do wanna be mindful of.
So, whether it's meditation, reading, taking a walk
which again is more on the exercise,
but you wanna find some time to make sure...
So, if you have a stressful job, stressful lifestyle,
I mean, a lot of us with this COVID situation,
our lifestyles are very different these days,
and maybe we can't be as active as we want
or we're trying to work the job,
trying to get the kids
through their virtual learning modules.
I mean, so there's stress on people
that may not necessarily recognize
that they're approaching some of these levels.
So, just taking a few minutes to try and relax
is actually still very important.
It goes a long way with trying to help to keep
that blood pressure under control.
- Right, yeah. You don't have to...
that's from the neck up mostly.
- Yup, correct. (Brad laughs)
It is, but there's so many things that,
you know, in our Americanized society
and actually I would say worldwide,
I mean, I think everybody is tending
to get busier and busier based on things that I read,
and it things...
you know, taking a little bit of me time is important.
Even though maybe as a busy parent or a single parent,
it's not always that easy.
You know, if you can find 15 minutes for yourself
just to relax. - Right
Whether it's finding a book, doing a puzzle,
just something, starting a rope,
but just staying relaxed,
seems to have a very positive effect on blood pressure.
- Makes sense to me. - Sure.
All right. Well, I'm feeling relaxed now,
I'm feeling much better,
my blood pressure is down a little bit,
I think I'm gonna relax for the rest of the afternoon.
- All right, well sounds good.
- All right. Well, thank you for watching.
And once again, we can fix anything except for-
- A broken heart, but we're trying.
- Yeah this fits right in.
This we're gonna put it in the archives
and into that category.
- Yeah, well hopefully we'll help a couple of people.
- Yeah. It's nothing to joke around about seriously,
but we're doing a little bit of it here.
- Absolutely.
- All right, take care. - Have a great day guys.
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