Consequences of treatment: brain shrinkage, diabetes, or heart failure?

May 27, 1:04 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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In the 1930s, medical school students were taught that normal blood pressure was the person's age plus 100 over 90. That’s false and irresponsible.

Today you have a choice between conventional medicine and a special form of grape seed extract such as MegaNatural-BP, resveratrol, COQ10, cod liver oil/fish oil, slow breathing machines, music, isometric machines, e-waves relaxation machines, Lyco-Mato tomato extract, lower-sodium diets, vitamins, magnesium and other minerals, fermented milk products, natto, vitamin K-2, vitamin D3, silica and multiple minerals, plus a wide variety of books such as The Blood Pressure Cure, by Robert E. Kowalski or Reverse Heart Disease Now, by Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., James C. Roberts, M.D., with Martin Zucker. The trick is to find which nutrients actually lower your blood pressure and can be tailored to your individual inheritance.

There are many books written by physicians and/or medical journalists that tell you how to reduce your blood pressure in eight weeks if you stay on the regimen. How do you tailor your program? And what should you do if your doctor hands you a pill without testing you and tells you that you'll probably be on that pill the rest of your life--unless it doesn't work? How many pills will you try?

Is it all guesswork? And what will be the long-term effects of taking pills and more pills as compared to a variety of nutritional approaches, exercises, and lifestyle changes? Do you really have a choice between conventional medicine and your genes?

Today, half of women in the USA over age 65 have high blood pressure. And half of the people who suddenly die have damaged blood vessels, not high blood pressure, according to the book, The High Blood Pressure Hoax, by Sherry A. Rogers, M.D. (page 3).

According to this book, there’s a rundown of all the nasty side effects caused by the drugs that may or may not have any effect. Find out the cause of your chronic situation before you swallow a pill that you're told you might have to be on for the rest of your life that you haven't researched for long-term effects. Diuretics cause a loss of potassium. But for some improperly diagnosed potassium deficiency or magnesium deficiency could be the cause of the high blood pressure in the first place.

Low potassium (or too much potassium) causes palpitations in some cases. Then more medications are prescribed to correct the arrhythmias. Sometimes eating a higher potassium diet has corrected hypertension, but not if the kidneys are so damaged that potassium worsens the kidney condition.

See the medical journal article, “Potassium depletion exacerbates essential hypertension,” Annals of Internal Medicine 115; 2:77-83, July 15, 1991. Krishna G, Gopal MD, Kapoor SC. The conclusion noted, “Dietary potassium restriction increases blood pressure in patients with essential hypertension. Both sodium retention and calcium depletion may contribute to the increase in blood pressure during potassium depletion."

A sign of low potassium is calcium excreted in the urine. The study noted, "Plasma renin activity and plasma aldosterone concentrations also decreased in patients during low potassium intake, but concentrations of arginine vasopressin and atrial natriuretic peptide, glomerular filtration rate, and renal plasma flow were unchanged. Further, low potassium intake increased urinary excretion of calcium and phosphorus and of plasma immunoreactive parathyroid hormone levels. ”

Diuretics also cause the loss of magnesium. But for some people, high blood pressure could be caused by a deficiency of magnesium. Some blood pressure drugs lower magnesium levels.

Diuretics also flush out the magnesium. Then more medicines are prescribed because your pressure rose due to the loss of magnesium. Are you sure you want to be taking one pill on top of another until the guess work points in one direction?

What if you could be suffering from an undiagnosed magnesium deficiency? See the study, “Diuretic therapy for hypertension and the risk of primary cardiac arrest,” New England Journal of Medicine, 330:1852-7, 1994. Also see, Arno W. Hoes, Diederick E. Grobbee, Jacobus Lubsen, Arie J. Man in 't Veld, Emiel van der Does, and Albert Hofman
Diuretics, ß-Blockers, and the Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death in Hypertensive Patients, Annals of Internal Medicine, Oct 1995; 123: 481 - 487.

Diuretics became almost universally used as a first-line treatment of high blood pressure because physicians are told to follow the practice guidelines as a directive for treating diseases. The problem is some people’s blood pressure is not caused by too much water in the body, by excess ‘volume.’

Instead, the essential high blood pressure could be caused by a variation in a kidney gene that creates too much renin. So when a patient takes a diuretic and finds it only makes the high blood pressure worsen, the doctor may decide that the diuretic is the wrong drug. The point is, you need to find out and not just swallow a pill after spending seven minutes in a doctor's office. You need the correct tests. Too often, routine hospital lab tests don't get specific enough to find out what actually is the cause of your high blood pressure.

According to “The High Blood Pressure Hoax,” page 7, “Scientists looked at the panel of ‘experts’” that develop the practice guidelines, and found that more than 87% of these ‘experts’ were financially linked to the pharmaceutical industry. The source is the medical journal article, “Relationships between authors of clinical practice guidelines and the pharmaceutical industry.” Choudry, NK, Stelfox HT, Detsky, AS, Journal of the American Medical Association, 287; 5:612-617, Feb. 6, 2002. What happens when the experts are on the payroll of the large pharmaceutical firms? As a consumer, your defense is to get the correct tests to protect yourself.

For example, ask for an RBC (red blood cell or erythrocyte magnesium and potassium) and a whole mineral panel to find out whether your body is actually absorbing minerals in the cell. A blood serum test won’t be accurate enough to find out what’s absorbed in your cells. You have to look for minerals in the cell, not in the blood serum or plasma.

Think about what the diuretics do in the long term. When you take any diuretic for high blood pressure, it raises your homeocysteine level 16% according to the medical article, “Antihypertensive treatment and homocysteine concentrations,” Westphal S, Rading A, Luley C, Dierkes J. Metabolism, 52; 3:261-3 March 2003. Homocysteine raises your blood pressure.

See the medical journal article, “Homocysteine: an aetiological contributor to peripheral vascular arterial disease," ANZ Journal of  Surgery, 72; 9:669-71, 2002. Kuan, YM, Dear, EA, Grigg, MJ, The abstract notes, “Effective lowering of elevated homocysteine levels is possible with folate, vitamin B6 and B12 supplementation and may reduce the incidence and sequelae of atherosclerotic peripheral arterial disease.”

You don't want your homocysteine levels raised. The article's abstract notes that “There is increasing evidence that, in addition to coronary disease, hyperhomocysteinaemia is also associated with an increased risk of developing peripheral arterial disease. Causes of elevated homocysteine levels include inherited enzyme deficiencies and acquired vitamin deficiencies. Detection of hyperhomocysteinaemia is particularly relevant in patients with early onset atherosclerosis.”

High levels may also contribute to systolic hypertension by causing the arteries to lose elasticity and become stiff. Excessive levels occur with deficiencies of vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid (also called folate). Homocysteine appears to be toxic to the cells lining arteries and to contribute to blood clotting.

So basically, the point is that diuretics increase your homocysteine levels. So does niacin, but vitamins B6, folate, and B12 balance the niacin so that your homocysteine levels don’t rise when you take niacin. However, when you take diruetics, your homeocysteine levels rise from the drug.

So then you’re prescribed beta blockers to lower the blood pressure and homocysteine levels. But half the people on beta blockers drop out due to feeling dizzy and depressed.

Then you might be switched to calcium channel blockers, although they are being prescribed less due to one or more of the side effects: shrinkage of the brain within five years, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. See more information on this subject on page 11 of The High Blood Pressure Hoax in the section that reads, "Calcium Channel Blockers Shrink the Brain."

What can you do about type 2 diabetes developing in people taking high blood pressure pills who are predisposed to diabetes, but don't have it before they take those pills? Certain studies show that people that take diuretics, beta blockers and other classes of drugs for high blood pressure get higher rates of diabetes. See the medical study, “Do antihypertensive drugs precipitate diabetes in predisposed men?" British Medical Journal, 298:1147-1152, April 29, 1989.

The conclusion stated, “A severalfold difference in the incidence of diabetes between treated hypertensive and non-treated, normotensive men may be a consequence of the treatment, which may be particularly deleterious in men predisposed to diabetes.” The conclusion doesn't mention the effects on women. Who's studying effects of drugs on women?

The solution to this problem is to find the cause of essential hypertension in you, the individual. Is it nutritional? Genetic? Environmental? Heavy metal toxicity? Adrenal problems? Kidney gene variants? And then work with your health care professionals to create a regimen where you can take the right approach that works best for you, such as a change in nutrition, lifestyle, slow breathing machines, exercise, or whatever it takes to restore your health without damaging it in the long run.

Find out the role your kidneys and other organs play in your chronic situation and research what the ways to correct the problem might be. Then look to other causes, such as your adrenals, and any other part of your body that increases your risks. Is your problem caused by heavy metals such as cadmium stored in your kidneys, or a gene variant?

What other causes are there? And how come so many people in the USA get high blood pressure as they age, whereas people living in other countries, especially in isolated areas of the world don't see such a deep rise in blood pressure as they age? Is it air pollution? Traffic? A common gene variant where you only need one copy of that gene to increase your risk?

Is there an environmental cause or different stressors? Is it our fast-food diets? Keep looking for multiple causes. The answers may show up with the right tests. Look at what's being absorbed into your cells (RBC tests) or missing from them rather than only search the blood serum tests. The answers lie in the clues.

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