by Dr. Mark Smith

Created on: December 10, 2010

Millions of Americans are living with high blood pressure (hypertension) without understanding really what is going on inside their bodies. One question that is never asked when faced with such a diagnosis is, “Well, why is my blood pressure high?” If we were to ponder the matter and find its cause, we could approach the issue entirely differently and correct the problem.

Unfortunately, that is not how our health care system works. Once we find the problem, we prescribe a drug, and the cause is mostly ignored. High blood pressure is not a malfunction. It is a response. When we truly appreciate the intelligence of the human design and its ability to adapt to all the toxic things we do to it, we will realize that disease does not happen by chance. Follow this chain of reactions and you will see how these chemical imbalances occur.

If you’ve ever had muscle cramps, you might have been told to take a magnesium supplement because magnesium relaxes muscles. Your body cannot store magnesium if you have been consuming too much sugar (in the form of processed carbohydrates like pasta, rice, bread, chips, etc. or from soda, candy and the like) because muscle cells will become insulin resistant to avoid the toxic effect of large amounts of insulin in the blood. Instead, you will excrete it in your urine.

If you are excreting magnesium, the muscles that tighten blood vessels won’t be able to relax and they will stay constricted, making the blood pressure rise and stay that way. Check out this vicious cycle…

High blood sugar leads to high insulin levels. High insulin levels lead to insulin resistance. When cells become resistant, magnesium levels drop. This causes blood vessels to stay constricted. The result is an inability for the body to deliver glucose and insulin to tissues which will cause the blood sugar to rise even higher. Higher blood sugar equals higher insulin levels which leads to more insulin resistance. Then you lose more magnesium and the sequence continues.

To make matters worse, insulin causes you to retain sodium. Sodium makes you retain water. Water retention causes high blood pressure. High blood pressure and fluid retention leads to heart disease and an early grave.

The entire process began for one reason, and that is the poor food choices which forced the body to change in order to protect itself. If the sugar and insulin levels were never high to begin with, this entire process, and the resultant hypertension, could have been avoided. The worst part is that this person, entering into our health care system, will not be counseled on diet choices. He/she will simply receive a drug to artificially change the symptom of unhealthy living and continue making the same mistakes. This person will never be well, and in fact the condition will deteriorate, until the decision is made to correct the dietary causes of the problem. .

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