what is high blood pressure also known as hypertension in the United States
alone there is over a hundred million people about one-third with high blood
pressure around the world there is over 1 billion people with hypertension so it
is a growing problem but when should we start being concerned and what can we do
about it and how does it all really work those are questions that we're gonna
answer today coming right up hey I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a
former Olympic decathlete and if you'd like to truly master health by
understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe and hit that
notification bell so that you don't miss anything so first what is your blood
pressure supposed to be well the normal has always been considered 120 over 80
that's what most healthy people have then in the past
anything from 120 up to 140 used to be called either high normal or pre
hypertension so it was still considered like yeah it's a little bit high but
it's not a big problem then they've changed the guidelines lately and now
anything over 120 is considered elevated blood pressure so if you have a hundred
and twenty one that is now considered you're officially have elevated high
blood pressure if you are over 130 if you hit 131 now you are in stage 1
hypertension and if you hit 141 you're in stage 2 hypertension so they've
changed the labels a little bit to kind of raise the awareness and also my guess
is to increase the market potential for hypertensive medication it used to be
stage 1 was 140 to 160 and you weren't really considered really hypertensive
until you were over 160 and you were in stage 2 there's never actually been any
conclusive evidence of damage from blood pressure until it gets over
160 so 159 over 99 while everyone sort of agrees that yeah it's a bit high
there's never been any substantial damage reported so why would we care why
would we be concerned with anything like in a 120 to 140 range and I believe
it's because it's an indication of something starting to move in the wrong
direction even if that blood pressure in itself doesn't cause any damage it is
part of a bigger problem that we want to understand and address they've always
known that really high blood pressure is a big problem it's urgent they call
anything over 180 over 120 a crisis and I don't have any argument with that if
your blood pressure's up in that range I suggest that you seek medical help and
you get some medication until you can figure it out don't plan to be on
medication for the rest of your life because there are solutions to this
there's something that isn't working right and why is that called a crisis
because it can lead to cardiovascular damage also resulting in stroke down the
road because with that much pressure the friction on the inside of your blood
vessels it's much higher so there's more wear and tear there's more damage
there's more inflammation leading to damage and plaque building
and so forth it can also lead to cardiomegaly if you have high blood
pressure that means that your heart is working harder all the time and when it
works harder then it starts to grow especially the part of the heart that is
responsible for the pumping out against the pressure in the body that's called a
left ventricle and what happens when it starts growing is the wall of that
muscle thickens and it might seem like a good thing with a big strong heart but
the problem is when the wall thickens it doesn't fill because the blood needs to
contract to squeeze the blood out but then it needs to relax to let the blood
back in for the to get ready for the next heartbeat but if the
wall is too thick the heart is inelastic and it doesn't fill very well so the
efficiency of the heart goes down and that sets you up for serious long-term
problems one being heart failure another problem that's very often quoted is
kidney damage and eye damage blindness and these are also two problems that are
associated with diabetes because kidney damage and eye damage are associated
with microvascular the tiny tiny blood vessels in the eye and the kidney they
can't withstand that high pressure so they get damaged but because it also
happens in diabetes it is probably a combination of the high blood pressure
and the inflammation and the swelling resulting from diabetes from the high
blood glucose and that's what we want to understand about these things that if
you do a search for high blood pressure or belly fat or blood glucose or
diabetes or insulin resistance or any of these they usually say that there is no
known cause that they call the blood pressure sac for example essential
hypertension meaning we don't know what caused it and it's because they're
looking for a single cause they're looking for a direct cause rather than a
group of circumstances and that group of circumstances is syndrome X so the lower
levels of blood pressure are not necessarily dangerous in themselves but
they point to a growing imbalance and that's why high blood pressure is
associated with syndrome X with metabolic syndrome and it's also
associated with dementia but the blood pressure isn't the direct cause of these
even though they often quote it because they don't clarify the cause and effect
because they're always looking at a single thing but metabolic syndrome is
belly fat diabetes insulin resistance high blood glucose high triglycerides
low HDL and high blood pressure and all of these are a result of in
Selene resistance and of congestion in the body that's why insulin resistance
is the big problem and the blood pressure just kind of gets tagged along
at the tail end of that so let's talk a little bit about the bigger picture here
why what's the purpose of blood pressure what is blood pressure
well blood pressure is when the heart squeezes against a certain resistance so
when we look at the number of 120 over 80 the 120 is called systolic that's
when the heart contracts when the heart actively works the blood pressure goes
up then when the heart relaxes we still need a certain baseline
pressure to keep the blood flowing to keep the blood where it's supposed to be
there's two reasons why we have blood pressure and one is that we need a
certain pressure to keep the blood moving and the second is we need a
certain amount of pressure to work against gravity why do we want to keep
the blood moving why do we want to have different amounts of blood moving
because blood is the resource delivery system in the body all the resources get
transported they get distributed depending on how much blood goes to the
different body parts so there's oxygen and glucose and fatty acids and ketones
and minerals and vitamins and hormones they all get in the blood because
they're about to get delivered so that's the purpose of having blood pressure the
second thing to understand is that blood pressure is a variable high blood
pressure is not something that jumps on you because you're unlucky because you
get a disease it's because your body is creating the high blood pressure for a
reason in this moment and this moment in this moment and this moment every time
the heart beats depending on circumstances you create blood pressure
if you exercise for example then it's normal for blood pressure to be 220 the
systolic the high number can be 220 when you exercise and that is
perfectly normal because that's what your body needs in that moment to
deliver the appropriate amount of fuel to the tissues but hypertension the
unbalanced situation is when your blood pressure goes up for some reason and
then the body fails to bring it back to balance so blood pressure is a variable
it's created in every moment of your existence and high blood pressure is a
failure to regulate it properly so why is the number 120 over 80 why is that
normal is there a reason well of course there's a reason the body is not random
it's super intelligent it's going to maintain the appropriate blood pressure
in that situation it has to do with two reasons one is it takes a certain
pressure to keep the blood moving and then it takes a certain pressure to lift
the blood up against gravity when we have a certain distance from the heart
to the brain the blood has to be maintained at a pressure high enough to
be squeezed from the heart to the brain against gravity that's why we have
different blood pressure when we lay down versus when we stand up so if you
lay down you stand up quickly and you get a little lightheaded that's a sign
that your body couldn't react fast enough that you have a little bit of
adrenal fatigue the adrenals make adrenaline that squeeze on the blood
vessels so when you stand up the blood rushes to your feet if the squeeze is
appropriate and fast enough then the blood stays in the brain if it's not
fast enough gravity takes over and the brain is left without blood you get
lightheaded so 120 is the number that we need to get the blood from the heart to
the brain when we're standing up the 80 is how much background pressure we need
because if all the blood vessels relaxed completely all the blood would end up in
your feet and it wouldn't matter how hard the blood pumped because it would
all you'd walk around with huge feet the body is smart
so it's going to maintain the right pressure to distribute the blood
throughout the body and that's why 120 over 80 but what it also means is that
if your brain is further from your heart than most people then you need more
blood pressure the taller you are and the longer your neck is the more likely
that 130 or even 140 is normal for you so we said that blood pressure is a
variable that your nervous system will regulate how hard the heart squeezes and
how much the blood vessels resist and there are signals and there's hormones
and there's a very complicated intricate system and because it's all about fuel
delivery there's that's the ultimate purpose is to deliver oxygen and
nutrients and fuel to the body then any condition where you have a lessened
ability to deliver the fuel or an increased need then your body might
compensate by increasing blood pressure smokers for example they inhale carbon
monoxide on a regular basis that's a very toxic and foreign substance to the
body and it sticks to the red blood cells and blocks the ability to take up
oxygen so a smoker will typically have blocked 20% of their oxygen delivery
capacity right off the bat so a lot of smokers their bodies will compensate by
increasing blood pressure so if there's not so much oxygen in the blood we got
to send more blood out there and me me a same thing if you are anemic you have
fewer red blood cells less hemoglobin there's a less lesser ability to deliver
nutrients and fuel and oxygen to the body so the body might compensate by
raising blood pressure if you have reduced circulation or if you're
unhealthy for any other reason where your body is not as good at using the
fuel then it's going to require it's going to request more fuel and the core
concept to understand when it comes to high blood pressure is stress because
stress is a situation where your body has an increased need of something
stresses when the body perceives real or imagined that there's a threat that
there's a reason to produce more energy because we need more energy so exercise
is the obvious example where the body needs many many times more fuel than
normal but if we're not exercising and we're stressed we're sitting in traffic
we're having too many bills to pay the kids are screaming the boss is rude or
angry then when we get tense when we get stressed then the blood pressure goes up
when we get nervous blood pressure goes up there's something called white coat
syndrome when you have your blood pressure taken in a doctor's office with
a lot of white coats around a lot of people will add 20 30 points to their
normal blood pressure because they get nervous because they have some stress
some of the simplest techniques of breathing that you can take your blood
pressure if you notice it's a few points high like 135 ish you sit down and
breathe for five minutes and your blood pressure is right at 120 over 80 this
will work for 90% of people almost instantaneously and if you turn it into
a habit then your body learns to get into that relaxed state so if your blood
pressure is very high like 160 180 then you want to seek help as soon as
possible but if it's in the 120 130 range even 140 then you want to start
asking why is this happening how can I reverse this why is my body responding
and creating this kind of blood pressure right now what what imbalance do I need
to address blood pressure is associated with all of the factors of metabolic
syndrome so one of the main things that you want to do is look at your insulin
resistance at your carb intake at your weight at your belly fat all those
indicators of insulin resistance of course the
good blood work for that as well but the second thing is you definitely want to
start understanding stress because people have never been busier they never
had more stress more deadlines more interruptions more fires to put out and
this creates a habit of stress it creates a habit of being of perceiving
that the body needs more more fuel more resources stress raises cortisol which
raises blood sugar which raises insulin resistance but primarily the acute state
that it creates is stress so if we can just breathe for a few minutes that can
work wonders for most people and the last thing is I put number three to get
healthy well that sounds sort of like a redundant argument that's like people
telling you to solve your obesity by losing weight but here we want to
understand what healthy means that health means homeostasis in every aspect
of the word chemical structural and emotional balance that all the things
that we call disease happen because there is something out of balance
homeostasis is not there we're pushing the body out of homeostasis so the more
we can understand about all these variables of holistic health the better
we can actually get healthy get into homeostasis high blood pressure is a
very important topic and there's so many myths and misconceptions out there about
salt and minerals and weight and exercise and losing weight and just do
this so I'm gonna do another video probably to talk about some of the
mechanisms in more detail but until then if you enjoyed this video then you're
gonna love that one thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the
next video