About high blood pressure! Hmmm. You must understand the foundation of my BELIEF about medicine:

Doctors, like every other person on earth, know best what they see every day. Family doctors see sore throats, etc. They can diagnose what they see frequently. They have forgotten the vast majority of what they learned in med school, or worse, they don't know that they have forgotten and continue to act like they have a foundation of science beneath them. (The most dangerous person in any profession is the person who doesn't know that he/she doesn't know.) They remember as much about medicine as the average educated person remembers about U.S. geography. We all studied it for at least eight years but few of us, unless we work with the facts, remember very much. We could look up the produce grown in Minnesota just like your doctor could look up and CHECK the symptoms that are described to him by opening his Merck Manual, and bless the physician who does look everything up!

When it comes to prescribing, doctors, because they delude themselves like everyone else to BELIEVE that they are too busy to research each and every new finding, BELIEVE what the drug detailers tell them about the meds that are currently being pushed. I don't trust any data that is produced by someone who is going to make money from the findings. Drink Milk for healthy bones, data published by the Dairy Association of America? I look elsewhere for my information.

We have an aging population in the U.S. Oceans of money are being made from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cancer.
The A.M.A. establishes the standard of care. The A.M.A. tells your doctor when he/she must insist that their patient go on medication . Then, if the patient is not cured the doctor is safe from civil suit because the standard of care has been followed.
Is the A.M.A. effected by the money flowing from the drug companies. Hmmm. Is there a strong correlation between lowering cholesterol and blood pressure with medication and decreasing heart disease? Look it up.

Now, I haven't researched high blood pressure in the counter culture information sites recently, but I do know a thing or two about it from my years as a midwife. High blood pressure is very significantly related to hemo dilution, a term that means that a huge amount of water is released into the blood vessels to dilute toxic substances, the most common being too much salt, too much sugar and too much alcohol. Diuretics, like coffee, help your body to release fluid into the blood stream, dilute the toxic substance to a safer level and excrete it quickly. Reducing intake of substances that cause your body to react as if from a toxin is important. Natural diuretics, or those used for thousands of years, like coffee, is probably safer than the meds. Also, to help your body repair and regrow flexible arteries and veins lift weights to failure. Lifting weights is the only documented external that I have discovered that encourages your body to grow and repair, thus, even
eighty year olds can add significant muscle mass from a well designed program of weight training, and the same hormones that build muscle mass build flexible veins and arteries to supply those new, healthy muscles and consequently reduce blood pressure.

Naturally, most health problems are the result of not only hereditary predisposition, but trauma and diseases like systemic strep and staph. Many researches believe that stroke and heart attack are directly related to blossoming strep and staph. A good way, according to alternative medicine, to keep that from happening is to keep your ph balanced or slightly acidic if you have problems with strep and staph. Many supplements contain betaine hydrochloride which raises the ph and also helps digestion. Acid levels in the stomach decrease with age, so does the ability to digest and metabolize nutrients. Thus, betaine is added to counteract the natural deterioration of stomach acids. And, this additive, if taken in moderation, is a whole lot safer than the drug regimen prescribed by physicians.

I believe in the ability of the body to heal itself and it took me many years to find a physician who is like minded. My doctor is
brilliant. He has a photographic mind and remembers everything. He is suspicious and disenchanted with the money medics. He is open minded. For instance, he went along with the A.M.A. on the immunization regimen for infants until my son spent a year talking with him about the immunizations which were effective, and reasonable. Is is reasonable to give a six week old infant an immunization for hepatitis C when it is usually contracted through methods that few if any infants would incur? The dangers of the immunization outweigh the possible benefits. Now, giving the immunization to a six year old may be justifiable and reasonable. He listened, and did his own research and adjusted his immunization regimen to match his trust in his own
expertise,an ethic that is sorely missing in the cover your butt mentality of today. Whoops. That sounds judgmental and critical. How unlike me. I must say that I have been to my doctor twice in twelve years. The most recent visit was to discuss
high cholesterol which he said that according to the A.M.A. and the standard of care he must insist that I go on medication but that the medication was documented to cause liver disease and the correlation between high cholesterol and true heart disease is statistically insignificant. I like this guy!

I guess I'm finished with the doctor rant for today. Take care of yourself! I mean that in the most literal interpretation.

(correlates: AsymmetricChallenges, Be the Heat, BuildingToLast, ...)