Blood pressure baloney - part 1 Everyone knows I hate to say, "I told you so." Honestly, I do. All it means is that nobody in the mainstream listened to me the first time (or the fiftieth time) and in many cases, people are dead because of it. All the same, I wish I had a dime for every article I've written that contains a variation of the phrase: "I've been warning people about this for over 30 years!" Here's another 10 cents in my pocket: For more than three decades now, I've been telling anyone who'll listen that high blood pressure DOESN'T CAUSE HEART DISEASE. Yes, you read that right. Despite what "unbiased" conventional medicine - which generates millions from the treatment of hypertension, mind you - maintains, evidence showing a conclusive linear link between elevated blood pressure and the incidence of heart disease is almost non- existent. In fact, the data from most studies on the subject suggest that hypertension is a symptom of cardiovascular disease (CHD), not its cause. Just about everyone in the medical community agrees that CHD is due in large part to a buildup of plaque in the arteries, reducing their diameter - which in turn causes the blood which flows through them to increase in pressure. Here's a good analogy: When you turn on the spigot outside your house, the water shooting out of your garden hose squirts 30 feet or more. Why? Because it's under a lot of pressure after being forced into a tiny 1-inch hose
But what would happen if that hose were, say, a foot in diameter? The exact same volume of water would slosh out at a very low pressure. It's the same way with your heart and arteries. Your blood pressure increases in response to arterial constriction - it doesn't cause the constriction. Elevating the blood's pressure is your heart's way of compensating for clogged up "hoses" to make sure your organs, brain and extremities are adequately supplied with blood. When you look at it this way, it just doesn't make sense to try to artificially lower your blood pressure using expensive, potentially harmful prescription drugs. Unfortunately, this entirely natural process is treated by mainstream medicine as a "cause" of CHD, while the real causes of arterial clogging - things like dietary trans-fatty acids in the bloodstream or chlorine "scarring" of the arterial walls - often go untreated
With deadly consequences, unfortunately. (I'll have more to say about the fads, fashion, and facts of hypertension drugs in the next Daily Dose.). Looking out for what's really harmful, William Campbell Douglass II, MD |