Lower my Blood Pressure

The heart has two (2) floors. On each floor there are two (2) rooms or chambers. The atrium chambers live on the top floor, and the ventricle chambers live on the bottom floor. Their role is to help circulate blood with oxygen into the body and receive blood after the oxygen is used up back into the heart. This cycle happens in one beat (that’s fast!). Here’s what happens in one heart beat in simple terms as a lead in to better understand blood pressure - we’ll think in terms of steps (i.e. step 1, step 2, step 3, and step 4).

• Step 1: The right atrium receives oxygen-depleted blood from a large vein (called the vena cava)

• Step 2: Once filled, the right atrium pushes blood into the floor beneath it (the right ventricle)

• Step 3: The right ventricle pushes blood into the lungs to pick up its best friend called oxygen that we breathe in. As oxygen is added back into the blood, it enters into the top floor (left atrium).

• Step 4: The left atrium fills up with oxygen-rich blood and then pushes blood into the final chamber (left ventricle) - the power house that pushes freshly oxygenated blood into the body.

All of the movement describe above to get one heart beat requires a type of energy, let’s call it a force.

• Force by definition simply means interactions that causes some form of movement.

• Pressure is how we measure the force within a given area.

Blood pressure then is simply the measurement of the force blood applies on the blood vessels and it is being pumped from one step to the next, and is expressed with two numbers written as a fraction (e.g. 120/80 read as 120 over 80). The unit of measure for blood pressure is millimeters of mercury (120/80 mmHg).

• The numerator, or the top number, is called the systolic blood pressure reading.

• The denominator, or the bottom number, is call the diastolic blood pressure reading.

That’s it! That’s blood pressure simplified.

There are two main categories that can cause consistently elevated blood pressure readings: lifestyle & diet choices.

1) Lifestyle choices

• Smoking

• Physical inactivity

• Alcohol consumption

• Daily high levels of stress

• Lack of sleep and/or poor sleep quality

• Too much body weight (overfat/obese)

2) Diet choices

• Processed foods (e.g. chips, packaged snacks)

• Ultra-processed foods (e.g. artificial dyes/food coloring/flavors, preservatives, additives)

• Eating large amounts of salt, sugar, and fat (e.g. saturated, trans fat)

• Eating few to no fresh/frozen fruits and vegetables

• Consuming an inadequate amount of potassium (found adequately in fruits and vegetables)

3) "The Domino Effect"

A combination of lifestyle and dietary factors can lead to medical conditions commonly seen in people with high blood pressure due to what I call “the domino effect.” Many of these lifestyle and dietary factors individually or combined lead to common preventable diseases/disorders, such as:

• Gut dysbiosis

• Type 2 diabetes

• Irritable bowel syndrome

• Cancer

• Kidney disease

• Adrenal gland dysfunction

• Thyroid dysfunction

• Sleep apnea

• Some emotional-mental health disorders (i.e. gut-brain axis)

• Diseases of the heart (e.g. high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stroke, coronary artery disease, and peripheral vascular disease)

Hopefully, you can see the power of eating more plants as a priority at every meal and snack, every day, with water as your go-to beverage of choice to avoid not only high blood pressure (or hypertension) but a long list of other very expensive preventative diseases.

So, let’s talk now about what those blood pressure numbers mean that you hear or see captured at a clinical visit, or that you read later from your after visit summary.

High blood pressure categories or levels are set by each respective country. This is an important fun fact if you travel abroad. For example in America, normal blood pressure is a systolic (top) number less 120 mmHg and a diastolic (bottom) number less than 80 mmHg. However, in South Africa normal blood pressure is <130 mmHg/<85 mmHg.

Let’s compare blood pressure tables from America and South Africa. What differences do you see?

Well, unless you are in a hypertensive crisis or emergency, blood pressure is very asymptomatic. This means there are no symptoms until you are closer to or in a hypertensive crisis/emergency.

The best way to know your blood pressure is to have it checked regularly. You can check it at home to keep up with your blood pressure more regularly than health visits. In fact, I encourage everyone to own a blood pressure monitor. Knowledge is power, and now that you know and understand what a blood pressure reading means, you can make informed decisions to take your health back one meal at a time by eating more plants®. And if your blood pressure is optimal, let’s keep there by eating more plants.

Remember, eating more whole plant foods is just one part of the “food as medicine triangle” as I’ve coined it.

• We must also be intentionally physically active and drink half our body weight in ounces of water every day.

• We must make a decision in advance that our health is our #1 priority, and that may mean taking a hard look at where we spend our time to evaluate what daily routine would optimize our day (and sleep) to ensure we are able to live the food as medicine lifestyle that propels us towards optimal blood pressure and the overall quality of health we desire for our lives.