Many of us know that hypertension means high blood pressure. Did you know that most hypertensive individuals are completely unaware of it because they never experience any symptoms? The good news is, there are blood pressure machines located in most grocery stores, Targets, and Wal-marts that allow you to check your blood pressure on your own in a matter of minutes.

Compare your results to the current guidelines:

	Systolic (top number)	Diastolic (bottom number)
Normal (optimal)	<120	<80
Prehypertension	120-139	80-89
Stage 1 Hypertension	140-159	90-99
Stage 2 Hypertension	>160	>100

Are you at risk for being hypertensive?

Many of the risk factors of hypertension are well known including being overweight, consuming foods high in salt and fat, inactivity, drinking more than two alcoholic drinks/day, pregnancy, taking oral contraceptives, and smoking. Despite this knowledge, the individual cause of high blood pressure is recognized only about 5-10% of the time. The most common and often overlooked factor is STRESS.

How do we control stress when we live in today’s fast paced society of ringing cell phones, incessant emails, buzzing alarm clocks, honking horns, and unrelenting workloads?

Researched techniques have been developed to reduce stress where it originates, at the heart level. The Institute of HeartMath is a non-profit, research organization that consists of a number of world renowned cardiologists, psychiatrists, brain experts that is dedicated to researching the connection between the heart and the brain.

They have discovered the opposite of mainstream theory. The communication of the heart is actually stronger than that of the brain. For years scientists have researched intelligence through IQ testing and other brain evaluations. The HMI was the first to announce the intelligence of the heart. Instead of simply being a muscle, pumping blood throughout the body, the heart plays a large role in health and overall wellbeing by sending instructions to the brain and the rest of the body through biochemical, biophysical, and neurological communication methods. They have measured the electromagnetic field of the heart, demonstrating that it is 5000 times larger than that of the brain and able emit far outside of the body.

With these findings, they have further discovered that by tapping into the intelligence of the heart we can vastly improve health and well being. They have developed tools that have been globally effective in reversing stress, lowering blood pressure and improving the quality of life.

There are three techniques that the Institute of HeartMath has found particularly effective lower stress and blood pressure without the use of drugs:

Please utilize the links above to learn these clinically validated methods for reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and improving your current state of health.

Chances are you or someone you know is either on cholesterol lowering drugs or worried about their cholesterol level. The latest information on cardiovascular health has vindicated cholesterol from its former bad reputation. We know understand that inflammation is the major contributing factor to cardiovascular disease.

The obsolete theory of cholesterol is the major marker of cardiovascular disease stems from a study done in 1948 that claimed high blood cholesterol from saturated fat in the diet strongly correlated to cardiovascular disease. In 1956, the American Heart Association spent millions sending out a message to the public that the cause of coronary artery disease was butter, lard, beef, and eggs. Mainstream medicine adopted this concept and the “low cholesterol = health” message plagued the country.  It wasn’t until they began putting every patient with high cholesterol through an invasive procedure called an angiogram and repeatedly seeing that many people did not have any signs of arterial damage that they began to rethink their claim.

Just to detail out exactly what we were so focused on eliminating from our body, let’s take a look at the benefits of cholesterol.

• Brain Health – formation of memory, uptake of neurotransmitters in the brain, including serotonin (happy neurotransmitter) Levels <160 lead to depression, aggression, memory loss and cerebral hemorrhages.
• Nervous System Health – Low levels can lead to global amnesia because nerve transmission can not occur.
• Immune Function – Cholesterol is used to fight infection and neutralize bacterial toxins that can enter the bloodstream from a weak digestive tract.
• Hormone Production - Some of these hormones, the corticoids, balance blood sugar, promote healing and reduce inflammatory processes in the body. Sex hormones, such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, are also made from cholesterol.
• Used for the bile salts which are required for digestion.
• Makes up the membrane surrounding all cells in your body
• Constitutes over half of the dry weight of the cerebral cortex of the brain.
• Repair Substance – Scar tissue contains high levels of cholesterol
• Antioxidant – protection from oxidative stress, which leads to cancer and aging.

All that being said, insufficient cholesterol in the body can, at the very least, lead to mental imbalance, immune dysfunction, reproductive problems, and chronic inflammation. So why are we still focusing on lowering cholesterol?

So, why how did cholesterol first become guilty? By association…with an unhealthy body. Cholesterol in a healthy body do all of the wonderful things listed above. Levels are kept in a healthy range by a system of checks and balances between the introduction of cholesterol through liver formation and diet and the removal of cholesterol by lecithin cholesterol acyl transferase. Cells ask for cholesterol when they need it through receptors and only receive as much as they need.

However, in an unhealthy body, cholesterol transforms into an evil villain. How does this happen? Free Radicals, which arise from factors that probably sound familiar including:

• Stress
• Pollution, environmental contaminants
• Smoking
• Drinking
• Refined Foods, sugar, unnatural fats, food chemicals, inadequate fish and vegetables, not enough H2O
• Genetics

Picture free radicals as Tasmanian devils, twirling and darting around your body and wrecking havoc wherever they touch down. Now, picture the Tasmanian devil free radical that bombards a healthy cholesterol molecule and turns it into an evil villain, an oxidized cholesterol molecule, that busts into arterial cells and cause inflammatory injuries. Inflammation consumes the tissue on the inner surface of the artery, leading to a weakening of integrity and a rupture of plaques that lead to heart attacks and strokes.

As you can see, cholesterol in a healthy system is not the problem. Therefore lowering cholesterol in an unhealthy system is not the answer, creating and maintaining a healthy body through diet and lifestyle is.

Do you know how healthy your cardiovascular system is? The easiest way to check is through a functional blood chemistry analysis. This is a simple, inexpensive blood draw that can be done at any labcorp location. Contact me for further details.