hello health champions today I want to talk about how to lower blood pressure

naturally and how to do it in just minutes coming right up

I am dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former

Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health by understanding how

the body really works make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell

so you don't miss anything to understand how to lower your blood pressure in

minutes and to really grasp the full impact we need just a few basics so

blood pressure what's the purpose purpose is to move blood around the body

and the reason for that is to deliver nutrients nice and simple next question

is how does the body create blood pressure well the mechanism is that the

heart contracts with a certain force and the vascular system resists called

peripheral resistance so the more the peripheral resistance is the harder the

heart has to squeeze to get the blood to move the third factor is blood volume

because the vascular system is a closed system so it's kind of like a balloon if

we inflate it the more pressure we put into it the more volume we put into it

the greater the pressure but what's often not asked is how does the body

normally regulate these variables and especially the blood volume because it's

well known that salt increases the blood volume but they never ask how does the

body normally regulate that how does the body normally reduce that blood volume

and keep it in balance so I've done several other videos where we talk about

those things but today we're gonna focus on the things that you can change in

just a few minutes so let's look at the variables that affect these things

variable number one is metabolic like in insulin resistance and a full 80% of

people with type 2 diabetes also have high

blood pressure and they're not really sure why the exact mechanism isn't known

but there's a few things that they think are involved one is that high insulin

levels increase the amount of sodium being reabsorbed it is necessary to

reabsorb somewhere like 98 99 percent of the sodium that gets filtered out

through the kidneys but high insulin levels alters this balance so even

higher portion even a higher percentage of the sodium is being reabsorbed

creating imbalance higher fluid volume and higher blood pressure the second

thing is that insulin resistance over time over years and decades creates

vascular remodeling so that the vascular the peripheral resistance increases with

insulin resistance so now the heart has to squeeze even harder and blood

pressure goes up and if the cause for high blood pressure is not metabolic

then it is neurological and the obvious example is when you exercise because now

you have an actual need for more nutrients when you exercise you couldn't

do that unless the body had a way of providing more fuel and more substrates

and more oxygen immediately at a very short notice so that's kind of obvious

that's just how it's supposed to work however it could also be a perceived

need meaning you're not actually moving you're not actually exercising but

you're feeling stressed and in this case if you're sitting in traffic or you're

sitting behind your desk or you're having a fight

you're not expending more energy but your body is anticipating that in the

very near future you will need to expend more energy it interprets this tension

as danger and says hey we're going to have to run or fight pretty soon so we'd

better ramp up the glucose and the blood and so on and anytime that you have this

response whether it's real or perceived it's created by increased sympathetic

tone in other words a stress response and this is the factor that you can

change in minutes obviously the real need you don't want to change that's how

it's supposed to work the metabolic factors it's going to take some time to

change it will take days to weeks but the neurological sympathetic tone you

can change in a few minutes and if you change your blood pressure by addressing

the root causes by reversing adaptations then there's always a nice bonus in

there for you so make sure you stay tuned we're going to talk about that

toward the end let's understand how breathing works when you breathe in also

known as inspiration you activate a little bit of sympathetic nervous system

activity why is that because we want to increase the heart rate during the

in-breath when there's more air in the lungs it would make sense to speed up

and send more blood there to pick up the oxygen and then to do the opposite

during expiration breathing out we activate the parasympathetic so we can

decrease the heart rate that way we use the resources more efficiently so when

you're measuring your heart rate if you have a heart rate monitor or a pulse ox

or something and it's reading 60 that's actually an average you're probably

closer to 65 during inspiration and maybe 55 during expiration and then you

can't breathe without using certain muscles so the primary breathing muscle

is your diaphragm and it's a dome-shaped muscle then when you contract it it

pushes the belly down and out and it pulls the lungs down so that's your

primary breathing muscle the second muscle is the intercostal and you have

one muscle between every rib that pulls on the ribs and make them flare a little

bit so first the diaphragm pulls down the

intercostals pulled to the side so it's expanding in two dimensions and then the

third muscle is your upper trapezius anytime you need to take in full breath

a maximum breath you also need to pull your shoulders up and that's what the

upper trapezius does but during normal breathing you only want to use your

diaphragm and your intercostal muscles anytime you use your upper trapezius

it's an emergency and you activate too much sympathetic activity that's why

stressed people pull their shoulders up and that's why you want to practice

breathing with your shoulders relaxed so how can we change blood pressure in

minutes by understanding that breathing gives us a window into the autonomic

nervous system it gives us a window an opportunity in real-time to affect the

balance between sympathetics and parasympathetics so these two are like a

seesaw and a seesaw means that whenever one side goes up the other one goes down

it's just wired that way there's no way around it and it's like driving a car

you can't speed up and slow down at the same time you're doing one or the other

and the way to do this is by breathing deeper and slower and increase the time

of expiration of breathing out so a lot of people they will breathe 18 to 20

times per minute so one to two seconds in and out and oftentimes it's breathe

in and out and that's how stressed people breathe the problem with that is

that's not enough time for the seesaw to move from one side to the other when you

breathe shallow and fast it gets stuck in sympathetics you breathe in and it

starts moving and then you breathe in and it starts moving and it never has a

chance to get out of that sympathetic mode but if you breathe slower like for

- five seconds in breath and five or more seconds breathing out now that

longer breath out allows that seesaw to move all the way through so that you can

decrease your sympathetic and increase your parasympathetic so now you're

creating flexibility in your autonomic nervous system but I already know what's

gonna happen someone's gonna try this and they're

gonna leave a comment and they're gonna say yeah doc it worked but it didn't

last and that is completely and totally expected because these things take a

little bit of time it's like some people say oh don't tell me that food affects

health I don't believe that because I ate a carrot once and nothing happen

right it doesn't work like that you have to understand that certain

things take time but there's not supposed to be an instantaneous effect

but if we understand neuroplasticity then we can have it work for us think of

a concert pianist someone who is as good a pianist as that they can play on

automatic how is that because they have reinforced certain pathways certain

neural networks to the point where they're so practiced they're so strong

that's how animated you want to get you can practice certain habits practice the

good habits that you want more of to the point where they become automated that's

the power of neuroplasticity it works against you in that bad habits also get

automated but it works for you in that you have the choice to automate the good

habits that you want including how your sympathetic and your parasympathetic

nervous system behave now you don't have to practice five hours a day like a

concert pianist but five minutes a day would be really

good or maybe five minutes twice a day but don't think that you're gonna create

neuroplasticity any permanent plastic changes unless you're willing to do it

for a few months or let's say six to twelve months now here's where it gets

really interesting the vagus nerve also known as cranial nerve 10 is the primary

it's most of the parasympathetic nervous system outflow and vagus nerve vagus

means wanderer and it starts off in the brainstem and it comes out and it

innervates the heart along the way and then it goes all the way and does most

of the digestive and abdominal organs but it does different things to

different organs so while increased vagus activity

decreases heart activity at the same time it increases the activity of

virtually all the other abdominal organs so when we increase vagus activity we

improve digestion we improve repair we improve detoxification and we improve

healing and even reproduction because these organs cannot work without blood

flow and the parasympathetic and the vagus it's like turning on the faucet of

blood flow for all of these vital organs and here's the real bonus think of your

body as your vehicle and let's say that this vehicle has a few years on it it

may not have been perfectly maintained but you're going to take it in for an

oil change but this is your lucky day because the dealership says if you are

willing to pay for an oil change and do it right and just be a little patient

because we're going to take a little extra time then for no extra cost we

will let you drive home in this vehicle right how many people if this was your

body vehicle how many were people would trade it from

this to that I know I would write because when you activate Vegas and you

calm down the heart and you reduce the blood pressure it's not about the blood

pressure that's just the symptom that's just the tip of the iceberg

that you also will improve digestion improve immunity improve libido reduce

cortisol and belly fat so please understand that when you address a

problem by handling by reversing the root cause you always get a bonus you

always get more than you bargained for because it's not about the symptom if

you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more about how to get healthy and

how the body really works I think you really liked that video next thank you

so much for watching I'll see you in the next video