LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Hypertension

FAVORABLE EFFECT OF BERRY CONSUMPTION – (08-25-08)

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Favorable Effect of Berry Consumption on Platelet Function, Blood Pressure and HDL Cholesterol

When is comes to high phytonutrient value and protection of mitochondria, berries definitely are found high on the list. And, when you think about it, increasing your intake of berries is not exactly painful. A cup of wild blueberries daily can go a long way.

In this particular study, we found increases in HDL levels with berry intake. Interestingly, there are not many direct pathways I can think of that would increase HDL levels with increasing polyphenol intake from berries. Which brings to mind the subject of surrogate endpoints. Recently, human clinical trials of a drug designed to raise HDL levels was canceled when patients in the study were dying on the drug, despite higher HDL levels.

The use of surrogate end markers (instead of looking at death, we look at lab values that are linking to higher death rates, such as HDL cholesterol in this case). The trial was not the first to find that a drug designed specifically to affect surrogate endpoints has resulted in higher death rates. So maybe, just maybe, the fact that higher HDL levels seem to protect against heart disease is because HDL levels are merely a reflection of the health of the entire patient, and when they are healthy, HDL levels go up–rather then being healthy because HDL levels are elevated.

So, back to this study, maybe the HDL levels have gone up because the polyphenols from the berries are improving the entire health of the patient, resulting in the by-product of higher HDL levels.

Read entire article here

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN OXIDATIVE STRESS AND INFLAMMATION IN SALT-SENSITIVE HYPERTENSION -(08-04-08)

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Interactions between oxidative stress and inflammation in salt-sensitive hypertension.

While this was a rat study, it does raise the question of whether salt, by itself, is truly an issue at all with hypertension. And given that reducing salt intake does not produce much bang for the buck anyway, it is surprising how much we hang our “hat” on this recommendation. Truly, high sodium intake is likely to be a marker for intake of processed foods. More processed foods will have little or no redox potential.

This correlates strongly with the findings in this study, suggesting that antioxidants attenuate the kidney damage that occurs from high salt intake.

Read entire article here

PREGNANCY BLOOD PRESSURE AND DIABETES – CAUSE FOR MASSIVE CONCERN

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Every pregnant woman knows she needs to watch her blood pressure and sugar levels during pregnancy. It’s not too uncommon for a pregnant patient to come into my office and state that she had blood pressure or sugar problems.  Or for a patient to have experienced these while pregnant in the past. They make changes and the problem goes away.  Or so we think…

I have found that patients are not fully educated on just how much these two conditions during pregnancy actually affect their risk for diabetes later in life. Many are told that they need to be careful and the discussion ends there.

However, we already know that, in the presence of obesity during pregnancy and a diagnosis of gestational diabetes (GDM), the chance of developing diabetes later in life goes beyond massive to almost a sure thing. A 3 pack a day cigarette smoker is less likely to develop lung cancer and heart disease than this pregnant woman developing diabetes. To be exact, this obese, pregnant patient diagnosed with GDM has a 4700% chance of becoming diabetic later in life.

This particular article looks at the relationship between high blood pressure during pregnancy and later development of diabetes and finds the connections just as disturbing. In pregnant women who had experienced hypertension during their pregnancy, the later risk of developing diabetes was 508% higher.  Interestingly, when they looked at the combination of hypertension, elevated cholesterol and obesity, the risk for progression to diabetes was again staggering–3950% higher risk. Maybe not as high as the previously mentioned study, but lets face it–anything over DOUBLE (200%) is bad enough.

When it comes to diabetes, nothing is set in stone, but clearly in these situations pretty dramatic lifestyle changes are required. Without these changes, diabetes is imminent.  If you had problems during your pregnancy, you will need to forever be vigilant with your lifestyle to avoid the development of diabetes.

TRENDS IN THE PREVALENCE OF CHRONIC MEDICATION USE – (09-01-09)

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Trends in the Prevalence of Chronic Medication Use in Children: 2002-2005

If this does not become a wake up call, then our country is missing a pulse. The REAL, REAL scary aspect is that there is likely some type of epigenetic, in uteru IRREVERSIBLE changes that occur as a result of poor nutrition, forced fertilization coupled with environmental toxicants. That means we really haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to diseases in children. But where are the parents??? Have we so blindly accepted the wisdom of mainstream medicine that we will put our children on drugs for hypertension, diabetes or high cholesterol without making lifestyle changes. I would venture so far as to say that almost ANY child can improve their physiologies with the correct recommendations for lifestyle changes. So why are we doing it????????? Can pediatricians really think this is the best approach?

Read entire article here

LOWERING EFFECTS OF DIETARY NITRATE

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Gastroprotective and blood pressure lowering effects of dietary nitrate are abolished by an antiseptic mouthwash

Talk about interconnected.  Follow this…nitrates in vegetables that we eat and converted by nitrate reducing bacteria in the mouth the nitric oxide.  Nitric oxide is well known to be anti-inflammatory and to protect the cardiovascular system.  So destroy the good bacteria in the mouth with antiseptic mouthwash and you lose all this protection AND you increase the risk of gastric ulcers.  Pretty interconnected, I’d say…and always brings to mind just how far reaching the dangers of antibiotics can be..

Read entire article here

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE DRUGS LEAD TO SERIOUS CONDITION

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Blood pressure problems are extremely common in today’s nutrition poor lifestyles. As a result, many in our population are on medications to lower blood pressure. Rather than helping, this actually creates many problems.

There are several main classes of blood pressure drugs:

  1. Beta blockers (“ols”)
  2. Angiotensen converting inhibitors (“prils”)
  3. Diuretics
  4. Angiotensen II receptor blockers or ARBs (“ars”)
  5. Calcium channel blockers

Sounds like we have all kinds of options, right??

Still sound promising?

As if this wasn’t enough of a concern, this particular article looks at the risk of gout in patients taking high blood pressure medications. If you ask anyone who experiences gout, they will tell you it’s not a whole lot of fun. Gout is also strongly associated with prediabetes (uric acid levels rise with prediabetes).

While calcium channel blockers and losartan actually lowered the risk of gout. The data was not so pretty with the other classes of drugs:

  • 2.36 times the risk for diuretics
  • 1.48 increased risk for β blockers
  • 1.24 greater risk for angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors
  • 1.29 for non-losartan angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs)

The bottom line is, as always, that lifestyle is the ONLY way to lower blood pressure that will not kill you some other way first. There are many changes to make to lower blood pressure through lifestyle. They include:

  1. Use of the Resperate or meditation to lower blood pressure
  2. The full list is here

7 FACTORS FOR HEART DISEASE–ARE YOU IN THE 1%?

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By now we can all accept that heart disease is almost entirely lifestyle in origin.  I’m sure there are a few events per year that were entirely mediated by genetics, but, in general, if you have heart disease, it’s because of the choices you have made.  And likely continue to make.

Everyone out there who is looking forward to their first heart attack please raise your hands.  Great…now everyone who has had a heart attack and wants a second, you can raise your hands now.  Lastly, those of you who just can’t wait to have your sternum cracked open with a spreader, your circulatory system put on a bypass around the heart and veins stripped from your leg to re-plumb your heart, go ahead and send both hands up.

Looking around, there is not a single hand in the air.  Imagine that–not a single person has a desire to experience a cardiac event.  Go figure.  NOW let’s ask the important question…

Who is willing to make changes to their lifestyle to avoid the aforementioned events?

Not so many hands, I’m guessing.

Why is that?  It really is that clear cut.  Does society think that medicines will save us from these outcomes?  If so, think again.  You could not be further from the truth.  Medicine is very, very bad at preventing events.  Sure, we run around telling everyone “our numbers are under control,” but this house of cards soon falls after the first heart attack.

Look at this particular study here.  Researchers looked at 7 cardio-protective behaviors:

  1.  Ideal healthy diet
  2. Physical activity
  3. Ideal body mass index
  4. Non-smoking
  5. Ideal blood pressure
  6. Low total cholesterol
  7. Low fasting blood glucose

That’s it.  7 simple factors.  I could easily add another 10 and tighten up what they consider “healthy diet.”   But, overall, pretty basic guidelines.  So, how many people (out of 14,500, aged 20 and above) had all seven of the factors present?

Are you sitting down?

Less than 1%.  That is flat out sickening and extremely disappointing.  There is a massive disconnect in this society between what WILL happen and what we think will NOT happen to us.

Are you in the 1%?  If not, what will happen to those you leave behind?

THOSE STUPID LIFESTYLE CHANGES DON’T WORK ANYWAY…

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For many, at first thought, the idea of adopting a healthier lifestyle seems almost painful and certainly not worth it.  Many have tried and did not see results in what they thought was a reasonable time frame.  Many think they have made healthy changes, but in reality their choices were the wrong ones.

A frequent retort to the suggestion of making healthier lifestyle changes usually runs along the lines of “Well–Uncle George smoked 6 packs of cigarettes per day, drank Jim Bean like water and never ate a vegetable in his life and he still lived to 104 until he was taken out skiing off a cliff on Machu Picchu…” 

I call this the “genetic lottery” approach.  How many of us sit on our duffs watching Jerry Springer reruns from the couch, assurred that we are going to win the lotto?  Do some people win the lotto?  Of course.  But do you want to hang your hat on that miniscule chance?  Didn’t think so.  So why are you so willing to do that with your health?

I have covered the concept of flow mediated dilation and pulse wave velocity in a prior post, but suffice it to say that these are very important markers for looking at how healthy our blood vessels are (or are not..).

This particular article looked at prediabetic patient adopting a low sugar diet combined with a high intensity workout (>3 times per week at >75% VO2 max) and found that, after 12 weeks and again at one year, pretty much every marker they looked at had improved pretty dramatically.  64% of the participants no longer met the criteria for prediabetes.

This is not a complete lifestyle overhaul, but rather very straightforward changes in merely two aspects of lifestyle.  Before you begin to shake your head and think you can’t adopt these simple changes, remember that your fate is not likely to mirror Uncle George.