by Joy Jones

Created on: June 13, 2007   Last Updated: August 04, 2010

Elevated blood pressure in an otherwise healthy pregnancy, often called "Pregnancy Induced Hypertension", is caused by low blood volume. This in turn is caused by a lack of the foods necessary for maintaining a healthy pregnancy.

One of the main tasks of the pregnant body is to increase the blood volume by 50-60%. The liver works at increasing the blood volume by making albumin from the protein that the mother eats. The salt that the mother eats also helps to increase the blood volume. Both albumin and salt create osmotic pressure, which helps to hold fluid in the mother's circulation, so that it doesn't leak out into the tissues of her ankles and fingers.

When the mother doesn't eat enough salt, and protein, and calories (to save her protein from getting burned up for calories), the blood volume stops increasing, and it plateaus or begins to drop. When the blood volume is less than it should be for that stage of pregnancy, the body reacts the same way as it would if the blood volume were too low due to hemorrhaging. The kidneys produce renin to constrict the capillaries and send all the available blood to the internal organs, as they would do in the case of hemorrhaging, to save the internal organs at the expense of the limbs, if necessary. In the case of the pregnancy with elevated blood pressure, however, where the inadequate blood volume is due to lack of proper nutrition, and not from hemorrhage, this constriction of the capillaries makes the blood pressure go up.

If the mother will increase the amount of salt, protein, and calories that she eats, the blood volume will increase, and the blood pressure will come down to a normal level. Sometimes this means that she will need to eat an ounce or two of protein every hour. Some examples of items that she could eat every hour are a handful or two of nuts, or cheese cubes, or trail mix. She could also eat a hard-boiled egg, or a slice of cold cuts, or a cup of yogurt, or 1/4 cup of cottage cheese.

If she also wants to use herbs to help address her elevated blood pressure, the herb that I have seen work is Passionflower. According to Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, by Susun S. Weed, the recommended dose is 2-4 capsules daily, or 15 drops of the tincture three times a day. However, in my experience the best results occur when the hourly doses of protein, and the other aspects of the Brewer Diet, are used alongside the use of the Passionflower, because in the absence of some kind of heart or kidney problem, the basic cause of the elevated blood pressure in pregnancy is the lack of enough of the right kinds of food.

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