Today we’re going to talk about low blood pressure. It doesn’t really get much mention anywhere. High blood pressure, of course, every time you watch TV, there’s commercials for high blood pressure medication and it just gets all the press. Low blood pressure not so much, as a matter of fact if someone is at their doctor and they end up having low blood pressure they say ‘oh that’s great.’ Well actually it’s not so great because it can cause a lot of issues and that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
Why Low Blood Pressure Is A Concern
So normal blood pressure is approximately 120/80 and high blood pressure is over 140/90, low blood pressure is 60. So once it gets at that level or below you can have a lot of symptoms like feeling tired, dizziness especially dizziness when standing up, lightheadedness, lack of focus and concentration even depression because you’re getting lack of blood flow and oxygen to the brain and it can cause a lot of these different symptoms. I often have patients come in with a lot of the symptoms and then we do see quite a few patients that do have low blood pressure and we’re going to talk about some of the causes why that happens.
About Adrenal Exhaustion
So number one of those causes is adrenal fatigue or adrenal exhaustion. So when you’re under periods of stress for a while and then eventually the adrenals can get kind of tired out and not function optimally and so then the blood pressure can start to drop. So that’s one major cause and then secondly there’s low thyroid function, and there’s anemia that can cause low blood pressure, hypoglycemia which is low blood sugar, and lastly not getting enough salt. I know salt is supposed to be so bad for you but actually if you eat the standard American diet with a lot of processed food and fast foods most people get to eat much salt, and that’s why there’s so much high blood pressure around, which will talk about in another video because we see a lot of patients with that too.
A Healthy Diet and Salt
But as far as getting back a low blood pressure, if you are eating a healthy diet like the diet we have our patients on, typically the Free Diet we put them on which is real whole foods diet which is high in vegetables and some fruit and healthy proteins and a lot of healthy thoughts, typically that’s not enough sodium, we’re not getting enough salt and so we have to add salt very generously to your feeds. As a matter of fact, salt recommended intake is twenty-three hundred milligrams a day or a teaspoon of salt a day and some of our patients that have really low blood pressure they actually have to add not only salt on their foods, some of our patients have to add salt in their water quarter a teaspoon or half a teaspoon, two three four times a day you know to get that teaspoonful a day, but typically you don’t have to do that. Typically if you just use plenty of Himalayan salt or sea salt on your foods that should be enough.
More About Salt
Now if you’re getting a lot of processed foods like you know sausages and bacon and fast food, of course, you know like I said you need to add salt or canned soups. God forbid, but aa basically whole foods diet you typically will need to add a decent amount of salt. So what do you do about this, other than adding salt because that’s not the main cause of low blood pressure, is to find out what’s causing it.
Get to the Cause and Treatment
We do an evaluation, blood testing to check the status of your thyroid, adrenals that’s I said the most common cause I see, to check if there’s anemia, low blood sugar, any of those issues and once we find the cause and come up with solutions, there are protocols we use for each of those that can really get this problem cleared out so that you can start to have more energy and get your blood pressure up to normal range. And it’s amazing what a difference that can make and how much more energy and more focus and alert that you can feel once you get your blood pressure up to a normal level.
Alright so if you have any comments or questions you can always also leave a comment or contact us at Natural Medicine Clinic.
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