High Blood Pressure (IV)

By Dr. Gary Tran Quang Minh

Dear Zorro:

People kept distracted me from writing about your problem faster. Here I am back with the 3rd substance that you will have to take to drop your blood pressure and protect your brain, heart, and blood vessels from getting damaged.

But before that, I need to add a few remarks concerning CoQ10's properties that I ran into since I wrote you guys about that utterly important nutritional supplement for the heart.

It turns out that this molecule is also very important for the brain in many research trials. It is really helpful in treating and more importantly in preventing what they call mitochondrial diseases of old people--in other words, people like you and I. The mitochondrial diseases are degenerative diseases of aging like Alzheimer's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Parkinson's diseases. By the way, they said that these diseases are on rise due to the increase of baby boomers retiring. None of these diseases have well understood causes, but they all have very low CoQ10 in the brain and when that molecule was given to people affected by these diseases at high dose (500 mg to 1200 mg even at 1500 mg) the diseases showed improvement. They said that since these diseases are incurable when they are in advanced states, it's better to prevent them than to treat them. It was expected that 20,000,000 baby boomers would have them before they die--that's about a third of us. They said that the 2 substances best used to deal with mitochondrial degenerative diseases are CoQ10 and Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA). ALA is precisely the 3rd substance that I will write about to treat hypertension. By the way, mitochondrial diseases are the malfunctioning of the mitochondrial electron tranfer system in the cytoplasm of the cell where energy is produced for cellular functions of all kinds. Remember the analogy I gave you: the spark from the spark plug that fires the car engine? By the way, if you can afford only one nutritional supplement, take CoQ10. It's that important to the heart because this organ has to pump 8000 liters of blood through 104,000 km of blood vessels, beat 100,000 times a day. I have just gone over more recent researches that really blew my mind about how it helps the heart in so many ways that I will share with you when I discuss about cardiovascular diseases with you since HYQ has issues with them and I want him to live a long time to manage our goddamn K7CM for our benefit since no one has done a better job. A major finding about the heart recently was that a disease heart can regenerate myocytes (heart muscle cells) and heal itself when damaged, something that in the past scientists thought that it could not do and CoQ10 plays a major role in this action. So, don't hesitate to take high level of this wonderful and vital substance to fix your heart problem or to prevent it from failing and damaged. Don't you blame me for not stressing enough on this matter that allows you to live longer and healthier

ALPHA LIPOIC ACID (ALA) OR THIOCTIC ACID:

ALA is a universal antioxidant and the most powerful of all antioxidant in your body. It's the only antioxidant that is both water soluble and fat soluble and it can penetrate the blood brain barrier easily. A lot of antioxidants cannot penetrate the fatty tissue of the brain. ALA is very potent because it helps regenerate or recycle other important antioxidants that the organs need like Vitamins C, B complex, E (all forms), glutathione, SOD... Researchers found more and more roles that this mother of all antioxidants plays in our body functions especially in tandem with CoQ10. If you have money only for 2 nutraceuticals, take this cap bai trung CoQ10 +ALA and you'll be ahead of all the people who only rely on drugs. By the way, you can take these with your drugs in the beginning and find out after a while that you can drop more and more of the drugs because drugs taken on a long term basis will lead to nasty side effects that will kill you. In fact, one of the biggest regret I had in this life was that I did not learn about this long ago enough and my dad died of a heart failure at 72 some 3 decades ago. He died of a the side effect of Propanolol a cardiologist used to treat his cardiac arrythmia. Actually, that prompted me to learn frantically about alternative medicine. So far I lived longer than anybody in my clan even though I inherited pretty bad genes from my ancestors (heart disease from my father's side, diabetes from my mother's side.)

ALA was proven to play the following roles:

*It benefits greatly in the treatment and prevention of congestive heart failure and strokes of all kinds.

*It helps a great deal in the treatment and prevention of Syndrome X. (I will write about this in my discussion about cardiovascular diseases)

*It stabilizes arrhythmia. (HYQ, this is of great interest to you, my friend)

*It shows powerful antioxidant property in all tissues.

*It in antiprevents the glycation of protein, and consequently it plays an vital role in the anti-aging process.

*It prevents the oxidation of LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein or bad cholesterol) that lead to plaque formation in your arteries. If you have cholesterol problem, taking ALA will help you more than taking statin drug that will kill you in the long run by knocking off your CoQ10 formation unless you take high level of CoQ10 with your statin drugs. Or if you read about the new study just published about niacin doing a better job than statin drugs. (Hiep, go to Yahoo home page and scroll the different news of this week you will see this big news. All you need to lower your triglycerides and LDL and increase your HDL (High Density Lipoprotein or good cholesterol, the good stuff that help Thanh's body to make all his sex and brain hormones to allow him to do his dem 7 ngay 3 vo ra không kể tricks. Thanh, you'd better kể luôn your vô ra or else you misscalculate your energy need and underdose your CoQ10, man.)

*It drops you total cholesterol. To find out about your bad cholesterol (LDL) you take this total cholesterol you minus your good cholesterol (HDL) and you minus that result further by 1/5 of your triglycerides because 1/5 of your blood fat (triglycerides) is included in the tested total cholesterol. Here are the normal values to shoot for: total cholesterol = 180-200 mg/dl;  triglycerides = 30-200 mg/dl (if you have 100 mg/dl you are fine and you don't worry about a goddamn thing if Thanh ever asks you to join him going anywhere and doing anything strenuous.); the risk factors of heart disease are calculated by dividing the cholesterol by the amount of HDL. If it's 4.5 you are at average risk. If it's higher than 4.5 you have have increased risk, so take higher doses of your heart-healthy nutraceuticals to fix this problem ASAP and I would not go anywhere to do anything with Thanh if he offers to pay for it all. I'd stay home doing my Càn Khôn Thập Linh exercise. If it's below 4.5, I wouldn't hesitate for a second following Thanh anywhere, even to VN (But, don't forget to bring TQM Cure with you, though.).

Research showed that ALA reduced systolic blood pressure by increasing tissue cysteine and glutathione.

Research also demonstrated that ALA is valuable in treating diabetic and non-diabetic congestive heart failure by being able to protect the heart muscle from free radical damage and subsequent arrhythmia due to its powerful antioxidant property or free radical scavenging action. This is the most important property of ALA because the heart is the organ which is the most susceptible to free radical damage as seen in coronary disease and myocardial infarct for the simple reason that the heart is the organ that cannot stop to rest and heal injury done to it. Old hearts have 3 times more radical than young ones. So you must get rid of these tên nằm vùng in your heart. Think of ALA as our former Biet Cach Du. Drugs cannot do this.

Research also showed that stroke death dropped from 78% to 26% among people who took ALA compared to the poor souls who were treated by doctors who were mù tịt about this molecule.
Other researches showed that ALA is the substance of choice to reverse or prevent Syndrome X by increasing the burning of blood glucose. Remember the energy-regenerating Krebs Cycle that Thầy Hải or Thầy Tâm taught you guys in biochemistry or physiology? ALA plays a much bigger and more efficient role than all the B vitamins. If you forget this goddamn cycle--we used to call it in vet school the Craps Cycle--this is the scheme whereby high energy is produced in the powerhouse of the cell or the mitochondria. Remember the old CoQ10 spark plug in the mitochondria I told you about earlier? It's like Thầy Hải and me in the Ban Súc Khoa or Thầy Trình and Thầy Tụng in Ban Nông--you just cannot not have one without the other to be any good. Free radicals are produced beaucoup in this stupid cycle and ALA squenches the free radicals that are not being kềm hãm in these biochemical reactions.

Here is another discovery about ALA that excites the hell out of me more than Thanh's đêm 7 ngày 3 stuff because I am a diabetic: As your blood glucose is fueling your Krebs' Cycle, its level drops and so does insulin. Not only that, insulin sensitivity increases. Now if you take ALA, this burning of glucose as induced by increased sensitivity of insulin went up by a whopping 50% compared to the diabetic patients treated by endocrinologists who did not take time out to keep up with research in holistic medicine. Blood sugar level drops 23-45% also in animals given ALA by sharp veterinarians like me.
The next discussion interests my Thien Loi Zorro: ALA was found to decrease the production of what they call glycosylated end products.  These are nasty products that are formed when proteins in the blood react with sugar. This process makes you prone to cardiovascular diseases because it oxidizes LDL to make your blood vessels tough and inflexible like a rubber or plastic water hose that you leave in the yard in the sun and snow that becomes hard from oxidation by sunlight.  If you let this process goes long enough it affects the left side of your heart and makes it enlarged or tired, and thus less efficient in squeezing oxygenated blood out into the organs. This leads to the increase of diastolic blood pressure (the low number of your blood pressure and makes it higher than the normal 80 mmHg). Of course, the hard inflexible arteries increase your systolic pressure due to higher resistance to blood flow through non-dilated vessels (The high number of your blood pressure higher than 120 mmHg). The bad thing about glycosylated cholesterol-carrying proteins is that they cannot hook-up to receptor sites in the liver cells (hepatocytes) to signal them to stop making more cholesterol (Remember the liver could make 1500 mg of cholesterol a day or more until the normal cholesterol-carrying proteins stops this by binding to the receptors on the liver cells.) Without this binding process, the liver keeps on making cholesterol unabated. ALA puts an end to this process từ trong trứng nước by stopping the glycation of blood protein and sugar. Free radicals are normal products of metabolism, but if you lack anti-oxidants to neutralize most of them they will cause severe damage to lipid cell membranes, cell organelles, and cell DNA.

Lastly, ALA is a universal anti-oxidant because it empowers and recycles all the other anti-oxidants like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, CoQ10, etc... to keep them in working order.

How much to take ALA depends on the conditions and whether you take also other anti-oxidants. The recommended low dose is 50-250 mg a day. The average dose is 250-500 mg. High dose--600-1800 mg-- is for people who have bad problems of the heart or bad problems of the vascular system that will lead to heart problems (hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia). I am taking 600 mg. Most German doctors recommend high doses. Zorro and HYQ should protect yourself with high doses. This product is very safe. Nobody has died from taking it on record. If you are afraid that your problem may cause you to have heart attack and stroke take this ASAP. It will save your heart and your brain by confining and limiting the tissues damage so your doctors have time to intervene. People who don't take this their heart and brain are shot pretty quick.

Take care.

High Blood Pressure (III)

By Dr. Gary Tran Quang Minh

L-Arginine: This is the second most important substance to use to deal with high blood pressure. As CoQ10, L-Arginine is also a Molecule of the Year. The scientist who unraveled the mystery of this fascinating substance received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Google it for more details. I read that story many years ago. The late sixtyish guy presented his discovery on the mechanism of action of this substance at a scientific conference. All of a sudden, he dropped his pants to show to the big audience his horrendous erection. You could hear the appreciative female audience's rumbling WOW crescendoing in the quiet huge hall. The story is too long to tell here and it does not help Zorro's hypertension a bit. So, I skip and cut it to the chase.

Basically, L-Arginine acts to drop blood pressure [That's why it causes mind-boggling erection in men from allowing large quantity of blood rushing into their organ with its blood vessels all dilated] by dilating the blood vessels through the action of NO (Nitrous Oxide) on the endothelial cells lining these blood vessels' walls. In this regard, it has the same action as your nitroglycerine patch or medicine that conventional doctors use to treat congestive heart disease because this medicine also provides NO.

Unlike nitroglycerine which is an explosive invented Nobel of the Nobel Prize fame, L-Arginine is an amino-acid produced by the body. Meat and nuts (from plants and not the nuts Dat may think about) are very high in arginine. Can you understand why Buddhist monks don't eat meat and there is not a whole lot of sexuality problems in Buddhism? Buddhist monks don't ingest a lot of arginine in their diet to arouse anything. And even if they want to arouse something, they couldn't due to the absence of arginine.

In your body L-Arginine plays a vital role in the normal function of your blood vessels. Research showed that it caused a 4-fold increase in the dilation of blood vessel. Dilation of blood vessel is what causes the reduction of blood pressure. The reason L-Arginine can do this is due to the fact that it produces NO in the endothelium (cells lining the blood vessels) which is a vasodilator (something that dilate blood vessel) through the action of an enzyme system called nitrous oxide synthase ( Enzyme involved in the synthesis of nitrous oxide ). NO is able to dilate blood vessel because it can block the adrenaline hormone, which is a stress hormone that constricts blood vessels for the flight or fight scenario. This hormone is produced by the adrenal glands (nang thuong than). NO also is also a substance that can maintain the elasticity of blood vessels.

Holistic doctors commonly use L-Arginine to treat high blood pressure the way allopathic doctors use nitroglycerine to deal with it because both substances have similar function on the blood vessels: relax the smooth muscles of blood vessels, thus allow them to dilate. Research showed that a defective nitrous oxide is at the origin of hypertension because blood vessels cannot dilate without it. If blood vessels constrict it's very hard for blood to flow through to distant parts of the body, thus requiring the heart to pump harder to force the blood through leading to hypertension.
Another research showed that high dose of L-Arginine increase blood to the extremities by 29%. The doses used were from 5.6 to 12.6 grams ( 5,600-12,600 mg ) a day. I would not recommend you use this high dose because it not only increases blood flow to your arms and legs but to another of your organ that makes it very uncomfortable if you don't have a very young wife. If you have an old wife, and if she finds out what happens to you after taking that stuff, she would not let you travel to VN alone anymore. Probably, she would not let you go anywhere alone anymore, not just Viet Nam. That scientist who discovered the mechanism of action of this wonderful substance must have taken the high end of that high dose to have that horrendous show of male virility that made all these female scientists drool at that conference first day. Stick with 3,000 mg (1 tablet of 1000 mg three times a day is plenty) a day. This is the amount I am taking until TKT sent me the Quinoa article and I had to reduce it to 2000 mg or else my blood pressure is too low for comfort.

Too damn much excitement for today. It's not good for an old heart. The third important substance will follows soon.
Zorro or anyone with high blood pressure may need to be on this substance ASAP. It's sold at Vitamin World or Whole Foods store. Buy the 1000 mg tablet size or else you may have to swallow too many pills.

Good health.

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!