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Hey, this is Dr. Berry. Let's talk for a few minutes about something that's very, very important: how to lower your blood pressure naturally. It's estimated that about 75 million people in the United States suffer from hypertension, or high blood pressure. If they've been diagnosed properly, they take one or two or three different medications for this every single day. Each medication comes with a long list of potential side effects, and if you double your medication or triple it, you don't just double or triple the potential side effects, you multiply them. So let's talk about this. If you know someone who suffers from hypertension or high blood pressure, please take a moment and share this video with them. You can click the share button and share it on Facebook, send an email, or send a text message. There are multiple ways you can get this message to them so that they don't have to keep taking a handful of medications, but also don't have to keep suffering from the increased risk of heart attack and stroke that uncontrolled high blood pressure will bring them.
I'm going to talk to you about seven principles of lowering your blood pressure naturally, and then at the very end of this video, I'm going to tell you three myths that you can completely ignore when it comes to lowering your blood pressure. So let's jump right in.
First and foremost, the first principle is chronically high insulin levels. This has been published in multiple research articles: a chronically high insulin level is going to make your blood pressure higher. We don't know 100% for sure whether this is causation or correlation, but when I look at all the research, it sure looks causal to me that a high insulin level leads to an elevation in blood pressure. There are a couple of reasons. First, when you have a chronically high insulin level, you tend to hold more fluid, more water in your body, and that increases your intravascular volume and therefore your blood pressure. Second, chronically high insulin levels, and the chronically high blood sugar levels that lead to elevated insulin, cause inflammation, and this leads to damage inside the tiny arterioles and capillaries, which ultimately leads to a heart attack or a stroke. So you have to work on lowering your insulin level to as low a normal level as you can get. That will protect you from hundreds of complications as you go through life, and it will also lower your blood pressure.
There are a couple of big diets that I've researched and used over the years to try to control hypertension. One didn't work at all; the other works great. The first is the DASH diet, the diet recommended by the American Heart Association. It recommends lowering your salt and your fat. I used it for the first few years I was in practice, and I found it had basically zero effect on my patients' blood pressure. It didn't help them lose weight, it didn't lower their insulin levels, it didn't lower their inflammation levels, and it didn't help with their blood pressure. I just kept adding more and more pills to their high blood pressure regimen, so I don't recommend the DASH diet anymore. When I discovered the ketogenic way of eating, or the low carb, high healthy fat way of eating, I immediately saw my patients' insulin levels come down, their inflammation levels came down, and their blood pressure came down. I was able to stop medications they were taking, two, three, four medications a day, and they were able to start stopping those, and they also lost weight. The ketogenic way of eating, or the low carb, high healthy fat way of eating, is the best way I have ever found in my years of medical practice to lower insulin to a low normal level, which reverses hypertension or high blood pressure, and also diabetes and all kinds of other conditions as well.
The second principle is inflammation. You do not want chronic inflammation in your body. It leads to all the damage that leads to all the secondary bad outcomes, and it also keeps your blood pressure higher. Once again, the ketogenic way of eating is the most anti-inflammatory diet I've ever used personally or recommended to my patients. It has almost miraculous anti-inflammatory benefits. When you remove the slow poisons of sugars, grains, and vegetable oils from a human's diet, they start to heal and get better. They lower their insulin level, which gets rid of the extra fluid that raises blood pressure, and they get rid of chronic inflammation. This can be inflammation in the gut, in the brain, in the joints, or many other places in the body, including the tiny arterioles that feed the heart, the brain, and the other vital organs. Lowering inflammation is vital. You have to get inflammatory things out of your diet and out of your life. Anything that chronically inflames you is bad, and you need to get it out of your life.
Next is a mineral: magnesium. Multiple medical studies show without doubt that getting enough magnesium in your diet helps keep your blood pressure lower naturally. On the ketogenic way of eating, there are multiple keto-friendly foods that provide a good supply of magnesium: dark leafy greens, meats, and nuts. I'm going to link to a video that discusses seven keto foods that provide plenty of magnesium, because so many people in the US and the world are deficient in magnesium. A deficiency will cause your blood pressure to be naturally higher, and you don't want that.
Next is potassium. Again, multiple medical studies show that when your potassium levels are optimal, your blood pressure is lower. I also have a video about the seven ketogenic foods that will give you plenty of potassium. You can check that video out after you finish this one, because you don't want to miss the three myths at the end.
Next is stress, and by this I don't mean acute good stress like learning to play the piano or starting a new job. I'm talking about chronic, bad, daily stress that keeps your adrenaline, or epinephrine, levels high and your cortisol levels high. If you have chronic bad stress in your life, you have to work on that. My wife Neisha and I have talked about strategies for lowering chronic bad stress on several of our Facebook Live videos on my Facebook page, and you can check those out. You have to develop strategies to get rid of the chronic bad stress in your life. That lowers cortisol and chronically elevated adrenaline, and that lowers your blood pressure.
Next is sleep. I have a video I'm working on for sleep that should be posted on this channel by the end of November 2018. You can check it out; I don't have it on here yet. But if you're not sleeping well at night, it will make your blood pressure higher. Sleep apnea is one of the leading causes of secondary hypertension in Americans and in the world. If you're overweight, chronically inflamed, or have chronically high insulin levels, you're more likely to have sleep apnea, and that's just one of the ways poor sleep can raise your blood pressure. If you don't sleep well, your adrenaline, cortisol, and insulin levels will chronically be higher. You'll be tired, and when you're tired and grumpy from not sleeping well, it's much easier to reach for carbohydrates you don't need, processed foods, grains, and sugar. If you slept well and you're alert and really awake, you're much better able to make good decisions about your diet. So you have to follow the principles of good sleep and maintain meticulous sleep hygiene, especially as you get older. At 17, you can sleep deeply, and someone could kick you out of bed and you wouldn't even wake up. But as you get older, it gets harder and harder to get seven to nine hours of deep, quality sleep, and that's vital for keeping your blood pressure lower.
The last principle is alcohol. If you're young and healthy and don't have blood pressure problems, you can have a carb-free mixed drink or two every night, and that's not a big deal. But as you get older, more insulin resistant, more chronically inflamed, and more stressed, alcohol becomes a problem, especially if you take one or two or three medications for your blood pressure. You have to stop the alcohol, I'm sorry. Once you've taken care of all these principles and gotten your blood pressure, weight, insulin, and everything else fixed, you may be able to go back and have a carb-free mixed drink or two every now and then without it being a big deal. But why in the world would you want two or three drinks at night if that's contributing to your high blood pressure, when you can stop voluntarily and maybe get off one or two or three medications?
If you're currently on any medication for hypertension, do not stop those medications without seeing your doctor. You can start implementing these seven principles right now to start lowering your blood pressure, but don't stop medications until you've talked to your doctor about your plan. Also start keeping up with your blood pressure. Get a home blood pressure cuff that goes on your upper arm, not your wrist, and check your blood pressure twice a day when you're calm, cool, and relaxed. Don't check it when you're in pain, angry, or super tired, because it will be high, and that's normal. Also, don't let your doctor start a blood pressure medicine if you're rushed. If you go to the doctor's office, they rush you in, set you down, check your blood pressure, and of course it's high because you're under stress, rushed, and a little mad. Many doctors will inappropriately start you on a blood pressure medicine based on that one reading. That is inappropriate, it is not proper medical practice, and you should not allow it to happen.
If your blood pressure is running consistently high at home right now, you might need a temporary medication or two to bring it down. But when you follow these seven principles long enough, you should be able to get off most, if not all, of your blood pressure medication. You'll do it hand in hand with a learned health advisor, which is your doctor. Your doctor also needs to rule out other causes of secondary hypertension, like sleep apnea, and several others that involve the kidneys and adrenal glands. If you have a secondary cause of high blood pressure, you may have to stay on a medication or two, and that's just how it will be. But most people who follow these seven principles don't need any blood pressure medication whatsoever.
Now let's talk about the three myths you hear all the time in the media and maybe even from your doctor if he's behind on his reading. The number one myth is salt. If you eat salt, it will make your blood pressure go up. This has been proven incorrect multiple times in huge medical studies. My good friend Dr. James DiNicolantonio has a great book about this called The Salt Fix, and I'll put a link down below. Don't worry about salt. Maybe one or two people out of a million have a genetic predisposition and are very salt sensitive, but once you've worked on the seven principles I've discussed, salt will have no meaningful effect on your blood pressure whatsoever. You can enjoy your salt; that's how we get our minerals. Don't worry about salt.
The second myth is caffeine. If you drink coffee or tea, you'll raise your blood pressure. This has been shown multiple times not to be true. You might have a transient elevation in pulse and blood pressure in the short term after a cup of coffee, but that is not the definition of hypertension or high blood pressure, and it has nothing to do with the big picture. There are many good benefits to drinking good-quality coffee or tea, so don't worry about them raising your blood pressure. That's a myth.
The third myth is a bit more complicated, so listen carefully. Many organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association, imply that smoking raises your blood pressure. As much as doctors would love this to be true, and as much as we would love one more thing to add to the list of reasons to quit smoking, multiple large studies have not been able to prove that smoking increases blood pressure in any meaningful way. I strongly encourage you to stop smoking. I have a video on this channel about vaping instead of smoking and how that is about 100 times safer. It's not ideal, but it's safer, and you can check that video out. But smoking is terrible for you in hundreds of ways, even though it doesn't raise your blood pressure. So that's one less thing to worry about, but I still want you to quit smoking.
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