Medical treatment- Other Options

High Blood Pressure

Let’s talk about Hypertension, otherwise known as High Blood Pressure (HBP)

Many adults get HBP as they age. Blood pressure (BP) is automatically controlled by the body. Usually it self regulates to a healthy level appropriate for activity. But when the self regulation goes awry, whether for disease processes or lifestyle choices, HBP can cause acute and chronic damage to our organs. We call this end organ damage and we do not want this to occur. As organs age, so do we. The more damage our organs accumulate, the less they can further handle before health deteriorates.

So chronic longstanding uncontrolled HBP ages us quicker.

The more we age the less new bodily insults we can withstand, whether it be further HBP, trauma or infections.

So what do we do?

Traditional treatment for HBP usually revolves around pharmaceutical medications as the traditional medical establishment rarely finds a medication they do not like. Better health through pharmacy is a motto I often hear. But there are many medications that have been around for decades with a good safety profile. Which medication works best can often be trial and error, but if you work closely with a physician who knows you well, they can help pick the proper and safest medication.

Non-traditional treatments for HBP usually revolve around lifestyle adjustments. At the Institute for Medical Wellness, we have helped many people get off of HBP medications when we found a cause of the HBP and worked to eliminate that cause. Quitting smoking and reducing alcohol are two lifestyle adjustments that help to lower BP, but the most common cause for HBP that I see is Insulin Resistance (IR).

In general, insulin resistance is just what it sounds like. Your body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin. Insulin is a growth hormone secreted from your pancreas and one of its main jobs is to store excess dietary carbohydrates in your body as triglycerides inside fat cells. We store excess energy as fat in case we need future energy during a time of less or no food availability, whether that be from purposeful fasting or famine. Storing excess energy as fat inside fat cells is safe and efficient.

Easy energy In- Easy energy Out.

This is probably a big reason why humans have survived for so long.

But everyone has a limit to the amount of fat they can safely store. It is probably genetics that guides this. Some think we all have a fat threshold above which we run into trouble. This is still being researched.

When we store fat inside fat cells we need to balance out the stored fat with water and salt inside the fat cell. So more stored fat means more salt and water retained in your body. Excess salt water retention generally increases BP.

I know if I gain 15 lbs, I become insulin resistant. Yet I have patients who are 100 lbs overweight and they are not insulin resistant.

Who cares you say???

Here are a few things that Insulin Resistance eventually leads to.

Insulin Resistance --> (High Blood Pressure) HBP

Insulin Resistance --> Fatty Liver --> Pre-Diabetes --> Diabetes --> Increased risk of Heart Disease, Strokes, Cancer, Dementia, Organ failure (Blindness, Liver Cirrhosis, Kidney Failure-Dialysis, Arthritis, Heart Failure)

You do not want to be Insulin Resistant.

Your body can handle just so much excess energy in storage before it says:

WHOA, Enough already!!

So what do we do at the Institute for Medical Wellness (IMW)?

We apply the WOW technique.

WOW = Working On Wellness

We work to look for causes and triggers of your high blood pressure and work to reverse those triggers.

If your high blood pressure is from Insulin Resistance, we teach you how to reduce it, most of the time starting with dietary nutritional adjustments. We follow you closely with blood pressure readings as well as lab tests that look at Insulin Resistance and other comorbidities associated with it.

A good test for Insulin Resistance is called the HOMA-IR and is calculated from your Fasting Glucose and Fasting Insulin test. This is part of the annual IMW lab tests we call our AWT (Advanced Wellness Tests).

The hopeful end result is you go from Insulin Resistant to Insulin Sensitive, while your blood pressure goes from high to normal, all with less medications or even removing medications altogether if possible.

Why do I believe that blood pressure medication alone is not enough?

My belief is that while medications lower the blood pressure number, often the abnormal mechanisms that contribute to the end organ damage still continues along silently. So while on medications you still may be aging your organs just as quickly and not even know it. This is my belief from my 30 years of professional experience even if it may not agree with the mainstream.

So if you have HBP and are looking for a new approach to treatment that does not solely rely on medications, work with someone who is knowledgeable that can help you lower your Insulin Resistance.