High Blood Pressure (II)

By Dr. Gary Tran Quang Minh

Dear All:

As promised, I began my write up on high blood pressure (hypertension).

I want to start this long write up by the topic NUTRITIONAL THERAPY near the end just in case you want want to do something right away since it may take me weeks to go over the whole subject. This is the practical part of the whole write up that you can apply immediately while waiting for theoretical part to be completed for a deeper understanding of this serious problem.

At the outset let me emphasize that this is the nutraceutical approach to deal with this problem. You don't stop any high blood pressure medicines your doctor prescribed for you. As you take these neutraceuticals, make sure you measure your  blood pressure daily. If you see the combination of medicines and nutraceuticals begins to drop your blood pressure too low, you may have to ask your doctor to reduce the doses of your medicines. These natural substances are, most of the time, molecules that your body either produces or is familiar with and they don't interfere with any drugs you are taking. However, since the body produces these substances in lesser amount as you age, you develop symptoms of deficiency of these substances. So, by replenishing them, your organs function better and your symptoms diminish or disappear. Therefore, you may have to reduce your medicines or your blood pressure is dropping too low causing the symptoms of hypotension (low blood pressure). So listen up.

NUTRITIONAL THERAPY:

Holistic doctors used nutraceuticals or many other modalities to control high blood pressure for hundreds of years. Unlike conventional (allopathic) doctors who tend to think that only drugs are proven to be able to control high blood pressure, holistic doctors could cite all kinds of research showing that nutritional supplements have achieved similar results, but ignored by their conventional colleagues.

These holistic doctors have successfully used natural substances to reduce or eliminate hypotensive drugs for years. The only difference is that it usually takes longer to to achieve the desired outcome with the non-drug approach than the medical approach--1-3 months instead of immediately . But, the beneficial effect of the nutritional therapy is that it is devoid of side effects with long-term therapy and that it tends to cure a problem instead of suppression certain symptoms.

You have to secure the cooperation of your conventional doctor to be able to have a meaningful and successful treatment program as a lot of allopathic doctors are dismissive or derisive of their holistic colleagues due to ignorance or greed. You may have to find a young and/or female doctor to be your doctor because young and female physicians are more open-minded and less money-grabbing.

When my old doctor retired I chose a pretty young Indian female MD for my personal physician. And as an Asian American she was very knowledgeable about natural medicines and quite empathetic with what I had been taking. The only problem was that she always wanted to strip her patients down to their birthday suit. So, a few years ago when I had to see her for a physical to make sure my heart is OK since I am diabetic, I asked, "Doctor, I came here to have my heart checked and my heart is above my waist, so why do you want me to strip down?" To that she said, "Dr. Tran, as they said, once you see one, you see them all. No naked patient excites an MD anymore. Besides, you are as old as my dad. So what's the big fuss?" I came back with, "It's not you whom I worry about. It's me. I don't want to be embarrassed should I strip down and look like a pervert." She had the last words, "If at 70 and you are still that excitable, you don't need me. Your heart is fine! Keep on taking all your nutritional supplements." I didn't have to strip down afterall

The following nutrients are routinely recommended by holistic doctors to prevent the development of hypertention and to delay the happening vascular disease and subsequent cardiac diseases caused by chronic high blood pressure. These nutraceuticals are listed by decreasing order of importance.

Co-enzyme Q-10 or Ubiquinone: You need to Google and read up on this vitally important    substance. I could not think of any other nutrient as important for the circulatory system as this molecule produced by our liver. It is so important for the heart that 70% of it is located in the heart muscles. Merk discovered this substance 50 years ago but sold it patent to the Japanese. Now, 15 plants in Japan work round the clock to produce it for increasing world-wide consumption. My neighbor who is a cardiologist on the heart transplant team in Louisville said that even conventional medicine uses this substance now and all his heart transplant patients are on this substance on a continuous basis. If you take statin drug to control cholesterol and you don't take this nutrient, your heart won't last very long because these statin drugs deplete CoQ10 production in the liver so your heart will fail from diminished supply of this vital substance for heart contraction.

Basically, CoQ10 significantly improve diastolic and systolic pressure. Research showed that hypertensive patients who took 200 mg of CoQ10 were able to quit using from 1 to 3 hypotensive drugs. Thousands of clinical studies all over the world in the past 50 years showed that it is an important nutraceutical for systolic high blood pressure, that it was able to reduce systolic pressure by 18mmHg after 3 months even at the low dose of 60 mg without any other drug.

Research also showed that diastolic function and thickness of the left chamber of the heart (left ventricle) of hypertensive patients of one year duration improved so well under 200 mg of CoQ10 given along with hypertensive drugs that the doses of the drugs had to be reduced after 1-6 months. Fifty percent of the patients were able to terminate the use of 1-3 of their regular hypertensive medicines after 4 and a half months. It was found that the wall of the dilated left chamber of the heart caused by over work from pumping through high blood pressure became thicker again with CoQ10.  Another research of primary or essential hypertension (where high blood pressure is the main cause of the disease condition and not a secondary symptom to some cardiovascular problem) when 50mg of CoQ10 was given twice a day for 10 weeks showed that systolic pressure dropped from 164 mmHg to 147 mmHg and diastolic pressure dropped from 98 mmHg to 86 mmHg and bad cholesterol dropped from 223 mg/dL to 213 mg/dL while good cholesterol increased from 41 mg/dL to 43 mg/dL.

CoQ10 dropped your blood pressure by correcting the underlying disease condition causing hypertension. It achieved that end by decreasing the oxidative stress and insulin-response in patients on hypertensive medicines. Research found that patients with heart diseases causing exhaustion and difficulty breathing taking 200 mg CoQ10 a day  showed improvement of these symptoms without any side effects.  

CoQ10 has another good side effect: it strengthens the teeth and corrects the receding gum of old people.

My wife who had 5 kids had terrible teeth problems, but when she took 100 mg CoQ10 a day her teeth became so strong that her dentist and his dentist son could not pull one of her molar out. She was sent to an oral surgeon for that. I am taking 400 mg of that stuff a day because my dad died of heart disease and I had diabetes, which makes me very susceptible to heart and kidney diseases. Up to this point, I have not seen a goddamn dentist for 5 years and do not take any cardiac drug.

I recommend that Zorro and HYQ immediately go to Cosco to get its Ubiquinone or Sam to get its CoQ10 immediately. Take 1 capsule of 400 mg a day or 2 capsules of 200 mg twice a day since you guys have cardiovascular and/or hypertension problems.

Thanh, you should take high dose also since you have some sort of lymphoma. CoQ10 is one of 10 pillars of cancer treatment and prevention in holistic medicine. I will write about the second important substance tomorrow. I am sleepy now and likely to write weird things.

Stay healthy!