Healthy Eating Myths Shattered

 by: Dr. Jamie Fettig

Salt does Not Cause High Blood Pressure. Some things you need to know first to fully understand blood pressure, as well as helping you to understand about many other things in your body: The difference between average and normal.

Average is a mathematical statistic. Don't let that big M word scare you. All average means is that you add up all the totals you have and divide by the number of totals you added. This gives you an average of the group of numbers.

Normal is what is right for an individual, or what is common or appropriate for each particular person.

What the medical profession does is make the average normal. They measure a bunch of people's blood pressure, divide the added totals by the number of people they measured, and come up with an average blood pressure. And then they say this is the normal blood pressure for everyone.

I will let you in on a little secret. If you had the blood pressure I have at this exact moment, you would probably pass out. If you had the same blood pressure standing as you did sitting, you would probably pass out. Your blood pressure changes all the time, all day long. Your normal blood pressure needs to be different than everyone else's. You need the right blood pressure for you at the right time. If you had the average blood pressure all the time, you probably would be dead by now.

So what do you do with this? Take all the numbers the doctors give you with "a grain of salt." Just because their charts show that you Ashould be@ in this range does not mean you actually should. You are different than everyone else. Your normal might be outside of the range of average that they go by and still be perfectly healthy for you.

So your Ahigh blood pressure@ might very well be normal for you. And if it is actually too high for your normal, salt really has nothing to do with it.

Again the medical profession came up with a theory and never really tested it before they released it as Atruth@ on the world. Someone said that salt attracts water, and blood has water in it. So if you get rid of some of the salt in the blood, then there will be less water in the blood as well. And if there is less volume of blood, the pressure will have to be less. That was their theory and they began telling people to eat less salt thinking it would lower people's blood pressure. No real tests, no real studies, and yet believed to be true by many.

Here is the real proof it is garbage. Try and find one person whose blood pressure decreased because they quit eating salt. You will be very hard pressed to find one person. Because eating less salt does not lower your blood pressure. Just like a Diuretic, medications that cause you to release more water than your body wants to from your blood through your kidneys, is often prescribed to attempt to help lower blood pressure. And again, I dare you to try and find people who this has helped.

You see, the body is so much smarter than we are. Many more internal factors go into what your blood pressure is than how much water you have in your blood. Your Blood pressure is a function of your blood vessels, the stuff in your blood, the muscles in and around your blood vessels, your heart, and so much more. If you force water out of the body, your body will compensate in other ways to keep your pressure at your unique normal. Your body knows best where your blood pressure should be. And until you change one or some of the internal factors (and medications do not count) your body will do everything in its power to keep things where they are at.

Want something that is free and easy that decreases the blood pressure significantly for many people who actually do it? Drink Water. It often is as simple as that and here is a perfect example of why. Imagine some really thick ketchup and trying to suck it through a straw. Versus if you put a bunch of water in the ketchup and mix it up and suck the ketchup through the straw. Does it take more or less pressure to suck the watered down ketchup through a straw? It takes less pressure. Similar with your blood. If your blood is thick and sludgy because you are dehydrated, your body will increase your pressure to force the blood through the little itty-bitty vessels and capillaries.

Actually, your blood pressure is more than this. And drinking water does so much more than make your blood thinner so it flows through the vessels easier. Whatever the reasons, drinking water often lowers people's blood pressure.