Posts Tagged: hypertension

Laughter and Health

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laughter best medicine

By Julia Gumm The word “humor” comes from the ancient Greeks. It refers to the practice of “humoral medicine,” a school of thought that proceeded from the notion that the four fluids or “humors” of the body, in balance or not, were responsible for the ups and downs of human health. These four humors and their corresponding organs and elements were black bile (gallbladder, earth), blood (liver, air), yellow bile (spleen, fire), and phlegm (brain and lungs, water). If a person had a tendency towards excess of one of those humors, it was believed that that was what determined their personality type, or as the term was at the time coined, their temperament- from the Latin temperāmentum, a mixing in proportion. Someone with excess of black bile was “melancholic”- introverted,… Read more »

How Dieting Causes Metabolic Syndrome

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image-lettuce-is-fattening

With quotes from Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon… “… extensive evidence documents that attempts at dieting typically result in weight cycling, not maintained weight loss.  Weight fluctuation is strongly associated with increased risk for diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, independent of body weight.  In other words, the recommendation to diet may be causing the very diseases it is purported to prevent!”  It’s a topic I’ve written about before in posts on Hypertension and How Calorie Restriction Causes Weight Gain, but I figured it was a good time to revisit the general concept.  I have been thinking a lot about sustainability lately.  Not sustainability in the “pee three times before you flush” or the “let’s build a compost toilet” kind of way, but the importance of sustainability in your… Read more »

Intestinal Bacteria and Obesity

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firmicutes

Before we jump into a very fascinating topic, I must first mention that my latest bestselling book (#1 of 22,000 listings in Nutrition on Amazon), Eat for Heat: The Metabolic Approach to Food and Drink, is currently available at a heavily-discounted price.  If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, now’s the time to get it – and tell your friends about it too.  Buying it, pressing the “like” button, and writing a short 1-paragraph review while you’re there would be a big help in moving it ahead of all the constipation-inducing, sex-drive killing, and otherwise metabolically-suppressive diet books currently ranked above it.  If you’ve already purchased it, consider giving a 99-cent “donation” by scooping it up on Amazon, or buying it for a friend or family member perhaps. … Read more »

Learn the Causes of High Blood Pressure & How to Lower High Blood Pressure Naturally

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Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is not a disease but a sign of physiological distress.The causes of high blood pressure and most of the problems associated with blood pressure regulation stem from kidney function and stress levels in the body. Luckily, once you know how to lower blood pressure naturally, you can treat hypertension solely with diet. The modern dogma is that eating too much salt causes the body to retain water.  This water retention, in turn, causes blood pressure to increase.  It is true that administering large quantities of salt will result in a slight rise in blood pressure.  However, the widespread belief that lowering high blood pressure can be done by reducing salt intake is pretty much a joke.  On top of that, cultures that eat enormous quantities… Read more »

Leningrad Hypertension Epidemic

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leningrad famine

One thing I’ve been keen on since the beginning of my “investigation” is the equal and opposite reaction of the human body to the things you force upon it. There is no end to the repetitive advice to eat less and exercise more to achieve any number of health benefits. When people with health problems increase their exercise level and decrease their food intake, a number of positives immediately jump into the spotlight… 1) They lose weight! Shazam! 2) Their insulin levels plummet! Ka-Pow! 3) Triglycerides fall off a cliff! Woo-sha! (this exclamation will be familiar to anyone that’s ever been forced to watch the “Verbal Judo” training video) 4) Blood sugar drops (a little bit)! Zowie! 5) And, the subject of today’s jibba-jabba, is that blood pressure drops! Boo-yah!… Read more »

Ancel Keys and The Biology of Human Starvation

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What a read. It’s finally over. Returned to the local library and being sent back from whence it came. As most of you know, I’ve been working hard to get through this 2-volume, 1300 page opus peering into the physiological aspects of human starvation. I did so for two primary reasons: The first reason is that during starvation the basal body temperature drops, and a long list of health problems encompassing a large spectrum of physiological and emotional issues ensue under such conditions. Since it has been observed that human body temperature is in noticeable decline, and is thought to be a legitimate epidemic by those who study body temperature closely amongst their patients – like Mark Starr or Stephen Langer, I couldn’t think of a better reason to delve… Read more »