What Is High Blood Pressure? Hypertension Symptom Relief In Seconds 🩸

what is high blood pressure also known as hypertension in the United States

alone there is over a hundred million people about one-third with high blood

pressure around the world there is over 1 billion people with hypertension so it

is a growing problem but when should we start being concerned and what can we do

about it and how does it all really work those are questions that we're gonna

answer today coming right up hey I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a

former Olympic decathlete and if you'd like to truly master health by

understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe and hit that

notification bell so that you don't miss anything so first what is your blood

pressure supposed to be well the normal has always been considered 120 over 80

that's what most healthy people have then in the past

anything from 120 up to 140 used to be called either high normal or pre

hypertension so it was still considered like yeah it's a little bit high but

it's not a big problem then they've changed the guidelines lately and now

anything over 120 is considered elevated blood pressure so if you have a hundred

and twenty one that is now considered you're officially have elevated high

blood pressure if you are over 130 if you hit 131 now you are in stage 1

hypertension and if you hit 141 you're in stage 2 hypertension so they've

changed the labels a little bit to kind of raise the awareness and also my guess

is to increase the market potential for hypertensive medication it used to be

stage 1 was 140 to 160 and you weren't really considered really hypertensive

until you were over 160 and you were in stage 2 there's never actually been any

conclusive evidence of damage from blood pressure until it gets over

160 so 159 over 99 while everyone sort of agrees that yeah it's a bit high

there's never been any substantial damage reported so why would we care why

would we be concerned with anything like in a 120 to 140 range and I believe

it's because it's an indication of something starting to move in the wrong

direction even if that blood pressure in itself doesn't cause any damage it is

part of a bigger problem that we want to understand and address they've always

known that really high blood pressure is a big problem it's urgent they call

anything over 180 over 120 a crisis and I don't have any argument with that if

your blood pressure's up in that range I suggest that you seek medical help and

you get some medication until you can figure it out don't plan to be on

medication for the rest of your life because there are solutions to this

there's something that isn't working right and why is that called a crisis

because it can lead to cardiovascular damage also resulting in stroke down the

road because with that much pressure the friction on the inside of your blood

vessels it's much higher so there's more wear and tear there's more damage

there's more inflammation leading to damage and plaque building

and so forth it can also lead to cardiomegaly if you have high blood

pressure that means that your heart is working harder all the time and when it

works harder then it starts to grow especially the part of the heart that is

responsible for the pumping out against the pressure in the body that's called a

left ventricle and what happens when it starts growing is the wall of that

muscle thickens and it might seem like a good thing with a big strong heart but

the problem is when the wall thickens it doesn't fill because the blood needs to

contract to squeeze the blood out but then it needs to relax to let the blood

back in for the to get ready for the next heartbeat but if the

wall is too thick the heart is inelastic and it doesn't fill very well so the

efficiency of the heart goes down and that sets you up for serious long-term

problems one being heart failure another problem that's very often quoted is

kidney damage and eye damage blindness and these are also two problems that are

associated with diabetes because kidney damage and eye damage are associated

with microvascular the tiny tiny blood vessels in the eye and the kidney they

can't withstand that high pressure so they get damaged but because it also

happens in diabetes it is probably a combination of the high blood pressure

and the inflammation and the swelling resulting from diabetes from the high

blood glucose and that's what we want to understand about these things that if

you do a search for high blood pressure or belly fat or blood glucose or

diabetes or insulin resistance or any of these they usually say that there is no

known cause that they call the blood pressure sac for example essential

hypertension meaning we don't know what caused it and it's because they're

looking for a single cause they're looking for a direct cause rather than a

group of circumstances and that group of circumstances is syndrome X so the lower

levels of blood pressure are not necessarily dangerous in themselves but

they point to a growing imbalance and that's why high blood pressure is

associated with syndrome X with metabolic syndrome and it's also

associated with dementia but the blood pressure isn't the direct cause of these

even though they often quote it because they don't clarify the cause and effect

because they're always looking at a single thing but metabolic syndrome is

belly fat diabetes insulin resistance high blood glucose high triglycerides

low HDL and high blood pressure and all of these are a result of in

Selene resistance and of congestion in the body that's why insulin resistance

is the big problem and the blood pressure just kind of gets tagged along

at the tail end of that so let's talk a little bit about the bigger picture here

why what's the purpose of blood pressure what is blood pressure

well blood pressure is when the heart squeezes against a certain resistance so

when we look at the number of 120 over 80 the 120 is called systolic that's

when the heart contracts when the heart actively works the blood pressure goes

up then when the heart relaxes we still need a certain baseline

pressure to keep the blood flowing to keep the blood where it's supposed to be

there's two reasons why we have blood pressure and one is that we need a

certain pressure to keep the blood moving and the second is we need a

certain amount of pressure to work against gravity why do we want to keep

the blood moving why do we want to have different amounts of blood moving

because blood is the resource delivery system in the body all the resources get

transported they get distributed depending on how much blood goes to the

different body parts so there's oxygen and glucose and fatty acids and ketones

and minerals and vitamins and hormones they all get in the blood because

they're about to get delivered so that's the purpose of having blood pressure the

second thing to understand is that blood pressure is a variable high blood

pressure is not something that jumps on you because you're unlucky because you

get a disease it's because your body is creating the high blood pressure for a

reason in this moment and this moment in this moment and this moment every time

the heart beats depending on circumstances you create blood pressure

if you exercise for example then it's normal for blood pressure to be 220 the

systolic the high number can be 220 when you exercise and that is

perfectly normal because that's what your body needs in that moment to

deliver the appropriate amount of fuel to the tissues but hypertension the

unbalanced situation is when your blood pressure goes up for some reason and

then the body fails to bring it back to balance so blood pressure is a variable

it's created in every moment of your existence and high blood pressure is a

failure to regulate it properly so why is the number 120 over 80 why is that

normal is there a reason well of course there's a reason the body is not random

it's super intelligent it's going to maintain the appropriate blood pressure

in that situation it has to do with two reasons one is it takes a certain

pressure to keep the blood moving and then it takes a certain pressure to lift

the blood up against gravity when we have a certain distance from the heart

to the brain the blood has to be maintained at a pressure high enough to

be squeezed from the heart to the brain against gravity that's why we have

different blood pressure when we lay down versus when we stand up so if you

lay down you stand up quickly and you get a little lightheaded that's a sign

that your body couldn't react fast enough that you have a little bit of

adrenal fatigue the adrenals make adrenaline that squeeze on the blood

vessels so when you stand up the blood rushes to your feet if the squeeze is

appropriate and fast enough then the blood stays in the brain if it's not

fast enough gravity takes over and the brain is left without blood you get

lightheaded so 120 is the number that we need to get the blood from the heart to

the brain when we're standing up the 80 is how much background pressure we need

because if all the blood vessels relaxed completely all the blood would end up in

your feet and it wouldn't matter how hard the blood pumped because it would

all you'd walk around with huge feet the body is smart

so it's going to maintain the right pressure to distribute the blood

throughout the body and that's why 120 over 80 but what it also means is that

if your brain is further from your heart than most people then you need more

blood pressure the taller you are and the longer your neck is the more likely

that 130 or even 140 is normal for you so we said that blood pressure is a

variable that your nervous system will regulate how hard the heart squeezes and

how much the blood vessels resist and there are signals and there's hormones

and there's a very complicated intricate system and because it's all about fuel

delivery there's that's the ultimate purpose is to deliver oxygen and

nutrients and fuel to the body then any condition where you have a lessened

ability to deliver the fuel or an increased need then your body might

compensate by increasing blood pressure smokers for example they inhale carbon

monoxide on a regular basis that's a very toxic and foreign substance to the

body and it sticks to the red blood cells and blocks the ability to take up

oxygen so a smoker will typically have blocked 20% of their oxygen delivery

capacity right off the bat so a lot of smokers their bodies will compensate by

increasing blood pressure so if there's not so much oxygen in the blood we got

to send more blood out there and me me a same thing if you are anemic you have

fewer red blood cells less hemoglobin there's a less lesser ability to deliver

nutrients and fuel and oxygen to the body so the body might compensate by

raising blood pressure if you have reduced circulation or if you're

unhealthy for any other reason where your body is not as good at using the

fuel then it's going to require it's going to request more fuel and the core

concept to understand when it comes to high blood pressure is stress because

stress is a situation where your body has an increased need of something

stresses when the body perceives real or imagined that there's a threat that

there's a reason to produce more energy because we need more energy so exercise

is the obvious example where the body needs many many times more fuel than

normal but if we're not exercising and we're stressed we're sitting in traffic

we're having too many bills to pay the kids are screaming the boss is rude or

angry then when we get tense when we get stressed then the blood pressure goes up

when we get nervous blood pressure goes up there's something called white coat

syndrome when you have your blood pressure taken in a doctor's office with

a lot of white coats around a lot of people will add 20 30 points to their

normal blood pressure because they get nervous because they have some stress

some of the simplest techniques of breathing that you can take your blood

pressure if you notice it's a few points high like 135 ish you sit down and

breathe for five minutes and your blood pressure is right at 120 over 80 this

will work for 90% of people almost instantaneously and if you turn it into

a habit then your body learns to get into that relaxed state so if your blood

pressure is very high like 160 180 then you want to seek help as soon as

possible but if it's in the 120 130 range even 140 then you want to start

asking why is this happening how can I reverse this why is my body responding

and creating this kind of blood pressure right now what what imbalance do I need

to address blood pressure is associated with all of the factors of metabolic

syndrome so one of the main things that you want to do is look at your insulin

resistance at your carb intake at your weight at your belly fat all those

indicators of insulin resistance of course the

good blood work for that as well but the second thing is you definitely want to

start understanding stress because people have never been busier they never

had more stress more deadlines more interruptions more fires to put out and

this creates a habit of stress it creates a habit of being of perceiving

that the body needs more more fuel more resources stress raises cortisol which

raises blood sugar which raises insulin resistance but primarily the acute state

that it creates is stress so if we can just breathe for a few minutes that can

work wonders for most people and the last thing is I put number three to get

healthy well that sounds sort of like a redundant argument that's like people

telling you to solve your obesity by losing weight but here we want to

understand what healthy means that health means homeostasis in every aspect

of the word chemical structural and emotional balance that all the things

that we call disease happen because there is something out of balance

homeostasis is not there we're pushing the body out of homeostasis so the more

we can understand about all these variables of holistic health the better

we can actually get healthy get into homeostasis high blood pressure is a

very important topic and there's so many myths and misconceptions out there about

salt and minerals and weight and exercise and losing weight and just do

this so I'm gonna do another video probably to talk about some of the

mechanisms in more detail but until then if you enjoyed this video then you're

gonna love that one thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the

next video