Use Exercise as a Drug
It’s no secret that regular physical activity is a far better drug than anything a pharmaceutical company can manufacture, as are the “side effects” of exercise.
Regardless of the primary reason you start an exercise program, your efforts will be rewarded incountless other ways.
A rigorous comprehensive exercise program seems to be very important in producing long-term benefits in people with high blood pressure.
Depending on your physical condition when you embark on an exercise program, you may needto consult with a healthcare professional who can design a fitting program for you, with intensity levels appropriate to your capabilities.
It’s important to have a target intensity level that will make a difference in lowering your insulin levels. As a general rule, weight-bearing exercises like walking, jogging and running are best.
Studies also indicate that aerobic activities like these—which increase your heart and breathing rates—are most beneficial for lowering blood pressure.
Admittedly, some people don’t have time to spend 45 minutes or more in a gym or working out.
That’s why short, intense workouts like high-intensity interval training (HIIT) are so popular.
While it was once believed that the longer you stayed on a tread mill or elliptical machine, the better, it’s now known that you can seriously maximize your fitness results while working out for a fraction of the time, as long as you sufficiently ramp up the intensity, interspersed with periods of rest.
The HIIT approach I personally use and recommend is the Peak Fitness method, which consists of 30 seconds of maximum effort followed by 90 seconds of recuperation, for a total of eight repetitions. I also recommend super slow weight lifting for your resistance training.
The HIIT type of aerobics can be performed in seven minutes, making it an easy way to address blood pressure problems. Coupled with strength training, you can quite easily get in shape while noticeably lowering your blood pressure.
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Another note: One way to maximize the benefits of HIIT is to incorporate variable-intensity interval training(VIIT) into your routine. VIIT consists of low, medium and high-intensity segments that can include a wide variety of exercise ranging from agility and strength to high intensity functional movements.
So, if you are insulin resistant, you’ll definitely want to find time for weight training as well. When you work the individual muscle groups, you increase blood flow to those muscles. Good blood flow will increase your insulin sensitivity.
Even more importantly, to keep your blood pressure low, you need to exercise regularly.
Get A Daily Dose of Sunshine
Believe it or not, the farther you live from the equator, the higher your risk of developing high blood pressure. And did you know that blood pressure is typically higher in winter months than during the summer?
It’s a long-known fact that vitamin D deficiency is associated with both arterial stiffness and hypertension, but a large-scale genetic study involving over 155,000 individuals has now found that low vitamin D levels can actually cause hypertension. Not only that, the highest vitamin D levels were shown to lower hypertension risk the most.
Vitamin D deficiency is also linked to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, so knowing your vitamin levels and keeping them at a healthy 40ng/ml is an important strategy for controlling blood pressure.
The best way to get your vitamin D is through sun exposure, especially since the health benefits of sunlight go above and beyond vitamin D. But if you live in a climate where a daily walk in the sun isn’t possible, you can also find it in certain foods. For example:
• Four ounces of wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon will give you 128 percent of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for vitamin D
• 3.2 ounces of sardines will yield 44 percent of the RDA
• One egg will give you 11 percent of the RDA
• Shiitake mushrooms offer up 5 percent of the RDA
A Word About Vitamin D Supplements
Please do NOT let your doctor give you a “prescription” vitamin D. That is vitamin D2, which is synthetic, and not nearly as beneficial as the real vitamin D, which is D3 (cholecalciferol).
Before supplementing, you need to know your vitamin D levels. A simple blood test can measure them. While the Institute of Medicine recommends 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) to be adequate, I believe that is a mistake,and that your levels should never be below 40.
According to Grassroots Health, a group of vitamin D specialists, practitioners and physicians , adults need about 8,000 IUs of vitamin D3 a day to maintain a 40 ng/ml level.
Also, if you supplement with D3, please remember that you also need to boost your intake of vitamin K2 through food and/oral supplement, as vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes in appropriate calcification that can lead to stiffened arteries.
Additionally, if you take a calcium supplement, it’s important to maintain the proper balance between calcium, vitamin K2, vitamin D and magnesium. Lack of balance between these nutrients is why calcium supplements have become associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
Other Supplements and Non-Drug Alternatives
Although I havel isted some supplements below that may help with blood pressure problems , please understand that they are NOT to be considered as an alternative to the primary recommendations above, which treat the real cause of hypertension.
Using only the supplements below without incorporating the lifestyle recommendations discussed above will not address the underlying causes of why you have high blood pressure.
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