Mindful Approach to High Blood Pressure Part 1

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In this podcast, we discuss:

• Diet:  My "quick and dirty" nutrition advise to reduce blood pressure.
• Sleep: getting enough, improving the quality of sleep
• Exercise:  How to keep it simple to get moving
• Relationships: Really? yes, learn to observe how you show up in your relationships.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome back to the Art Healing Podcast. This is Charise and thank you for joining me for today's episode, part one of the Mindful Approach to Managing Your Blood Pressure. So for the month of August, I mentioned very first podcast that I wanted to focus on blood pressure, particularly high blood pressure for a specific reason cuz I'm working on a project. And so we've been using the podcast to explore blood pressure, how do you check it? Ways to check it. Um, so if you're tuning in and you didn't catch the last few episodes, not necessarily required, but just so you know that, uh, we did cover, um, how to check Blood Pressure Best Ways I recommend to do that. Um, we covered what could be causing high blood pressure. Um, so for today's episode we're gonna discuss the mindful, um, lifestyle approach to manage blood pressure. Just to make the listeners aware, of course, high blood pressure can be a very serious medical diagnosis and you really can't manage a diagnosis of high blood pressure by yourself. So you do wanna make sure you are seeing a physician, you're being evaluated, you're being treated, and depending on your treatment options, you wanna be full disclosure with your provider. If you're wanting to do supplements or a lifestyle alteration to manage your blood pressure. Oftentimes high blood pressure may require medication because of the very serious consequences that can occur if we don't get the blood pressure corrected. So the following recommendations I'm offering can be used in combination with your medical treatments. If you've previously been diagnosed or recently diagnosed in your on medication, these are recommendations that you can actually still do to support healing your blood pressure. Um, these are recommendations I often, uh, make with my own, um, patients and, um, it's pretty, pretty simple and things that you of course you might be aware of, but I think it's worth revisiting. So, um, when it comes to your blood pressure and if you've learned it may be high or you are aware of a risk of high blood pressure because of your family history or your personal history, you know that you may have risk factors like you smoke or you have a lot of stress or weight related. Um, there are a few basic tenets that you wanna start looking at. Now, anytime we learn anything with our health is not correct. Um, in traditional medicine we often tend to focus on the end result and we go straight to medication. But please understand that oftentimes there's been many aspects of things that have led to where you are. No need to overwhelm ourselves with every single detail every single day of your life. But in terms of blood pressure, here are a few things that we can focus on that can offer some help right away. You do wanna be looking at your diet and um, if you've been diagnosed with high blood pressure or you've been doing some reading, you're probably aware of what you should be avoiding, what you maybe should be including. Um, the advice that I'm often giving to my own patients is that, um, as far as dietary changes, there are so many ways to approach this and pretty much anything you do that's not the, um, the term you've probably heard. The sad diet or the standard American diet is gonna be an improvement, the standard American diet, which, um, I do hope we find a better name, but, um, this is more of a convenience diet. So if you have a busy lifestyle and your dietary intake may be focusing more on convenience foods, fast foods. So, uh, you know, foods that are pre-made, um, if the foods are prepackaged, um, unfortunately those foods are likely to contain lots of sodium, lots of other salts. Um, so we talk about salt, sodium ma chloride, but there are other salts that we don't want our body getting too much of. But often if foods are prepackaged or preserved, they have to contain a lot of salts cuz it's part of the preserving process. Um, essentially if the foods, um, are being managed or manufactured in any way that makes the food vastly different from its source, um, it's gonna be questionable if this should be in your diet, if this wouldn't be causing you to have health related consequences. And if it's time to remove this from your diet. Now, when I'm working with my own patients, I have to be cautious because when we start dealing with lifestyle, this is often where it can get very difficult because, you know, everyone's trying to survive and everyone's gotta get through their days. And depending on a person's life and what's going on to tell them everything they're eating is wrong and it's terrible, that's very hard to hear. It's overwhelming and it's gonna make the person, it make you feel like there's nothing you can do to make your health better. But the catch all advice I give this the overarching advice, then you can fill in the blanks from there, is that if the food looks vastly different from its source, then it shouldn't be part of your diet. And that basically means if it's overly processed, overly manufactured, overly managed, the health consequences it could have could be major and it should not be part of your diet. So when you're working with your, your diet and you're trying to heal blood pressure, this would look like, um, straying away from foods that are in the center of the grocery store and moving more towards the foods that are on the peripheral of the grocery store. So, um, the instructions I usually give my patients, um, because you know, for many of them they're already overwhelmed with medications and labs and everything else is the next grocery shopping trip. When you start shopping, start in produce and you wanna fill up most your cart with what's in the produce aisle, the next you wanna head to the butcher's part and you're gonna, you know, fall advice as far as healthy proteins, although, um, you may need far less than you would've normally bought because we wanna move you more towards most of your intake being plant based. And then you can fill in the blanks with healthy bulk foods like nuts and healthy grains that are gonna be in the bulk foods aisle. So they're not packaged that pretty, they're just there. You have to package those yourself. And if that's most of what's in your shopping cart, that means that you're shopping, um, your, your price tag will probably actually drop cuz you're buying less of the processed food. Of course you will have to cook it yourself. So that's why I advise patients to start maybe looking into some cookbooks. Um, podcast listeners know there are gonna be a lot of podcasts offering some healthy recipes or, um, you know, if someone has some cooking skills themselves, just simply redirecting them to their own taste and their own cuisine preferences so that hopefully they're prepping their own food and making their own food rather than the, um, processed food. Now it can get nitpicky way beyond that and of course for a lot of individuals for time and the way their life's set up, that may not be possible. But that's just my general overarching advice is that the more the food, the less the food looks like it's original source, you don't probably want it in your diet, especially if you're suffering from high blood pressure. Definitely you want to address your sleep. And the overarching advice I usually, uh, let my patients know is let's make sure you're getting enough sleep. So let's make sure your bedtime is really a good bedtime. Let's make sure that you're not overstimulated all throughout the evening and then trying to force yourself into sleep. Um, much as your children need a bedtime and a bedtime routine, you as an adult need a bedtime and a bedtime routine so that you should be thinking of your evenings, whether it's time to get more done or being more productive. It's time to be winding down and relaxing and even realizing that we may wanna move the bedtime up knowing that you may not be very sleepy at one potential bedtime, but we should hopefully be more relaxed by the time we get there so that we're disengaging from the phones in the internet and screens and maybe turning off the TV and uh, kind of just winding things down. Although, um, my, uh, my voice is relaxing and sometimes I laugh at myself cuz I think my voice is very dull. So you can listen to some of my podcasts to help you relax cuz I, I do talk very slow, uh, as a habit. It's not even personal, uh, on purpose. So<laugh> just, just joking. But, um, definitely having your, your bedtime is mindful and intentional understanding. You're going to relax, they're gonna wind down and wind down time is individual. But if you start your day, for instance, that you have to be at work at eight in the morning, you may be waking up around six in the morning to get everyone squared away and yourself squared away so that the night before you're wind down prices may need to start at 7:00 PM I know it seems like a lot, but um, you know, maybe just recalling that like you may like to do things like read or journal or some quiet task. Maybe this would be a good time for that. Again, understand the lifestyle. By no means am I saying overhaul everything, but simply just having a look at what your evenings look like and maybe sort of orienting those to more of a relaxing regimen as a, as a habit. Not that it has to be that way all the time. Exercise is always gonna be recommended in the, uh, management of healthy blood pressure, um, exercise or how I sort of like to think of it as healthy movement can come in a number of ways. Um, I, so the general guidelines from all the major medical associations and for most doctors are gonna be cardiovascular exercise and that's where we intentionally raise the heart rate so it comes down later to a lower baseline. Um, so the advice that I give is that one of your best activities, your safest activities is going to be walking. Um, now if you want to do more than that, that's um, fine. Of course if you've got medical clearance, you discuss with your care providers cuz definitely if you have a diagnosis of one or more related cardiovascular issues, let's make sure that your physicians have deemed it safe for you to exercise. So let's make sure that there aren't any limitations on you. Um, so with walking it's my go-to recommendation because in modern times we've got smartphone that can track our steps and it's an activity that you can fit in the in between times. So if there's any reason that you don't really have 30 or 45 minutes to devote to just pure exercise, um, there may be ways to fit walking in, in all kinds of ways during your work day before work, after work, running errands, walking to your errands. It's a number of ways that you can do that without placing more stress on yourself. Um, used to be when I was younger physician, I would give different recommendations, but I found that, um, as far as my recommendation for a healthy movement, when we're dealing with blood pressure, I'd say start with walking, making sure you're getting enough steps. The number of recommended steps, the number we've been here is like 10,000 steps, but I usually ask patients, um, if they, you know, can pull out their smartphone and see where they are now, and then just simply start to add a thousand steps a day. Um, alright, add a thousand steps every, like once a month to just start gradually increasing the activity. You can definitely consider other types of healthy movement, but I have found that when we're giving lifestyle recommendations, it's so easy to start overwhelming and overthinking and start thinking of kind of rabbit hole type ways to approach this that will sort of put you into an analysis paralysis and then nothing gets done. So, um, of course I love yoga and I practice yoga at home, so yoga can be part of your regimen and definitely can help with blood pressure. But for instance, if you don't practice yoga and you don't have a yoga mat, you don't know where to find a yoga mat, it won't help me already if I'm already giving you lots of instructions. And then on top of that, you have to add another layer or if you don't have a fancy exercise bike at home, but you've picked that and you may have to invest like a few thousand dollars to get the one that you want. That's too much if we want some changes right now. So any sort of healthy movement we can invoke like that day or the next day is what I lean towards. So for most of us it's gonna be simply just walking and I don't even put any type of, um, goals on how it should happen. Um, I say just probably use your, your, um, whatever, monitors your steps and, and take it from there. And then if you wanna add more to that, you definitely can. We had discussed in the prior podcast that, um, when we're all aware that there's a certain personality type that that has been shown to have more diseases of the heart, more cardiovascular disease, and this is what's known as the type A personality or the personality that is typically associated with more of the leadership archetype and possibly even associated with more of the masculine personality archetype. Um, I try not to stereotype too much because I think all of us can be type A, all of us can be controlling at times, it depends on the situation that we're in. But one way, in your mindful approach of managing your blood pressure, you can start to examine, you know, something you might want to approach differently are your relationships, and I mean relationships across the board with every being you interact with. So if your blood pressure's starting to run high, it may be a good time to start using observation, um, which ms time goes on. We'll discuss the power of observation, the practice of observation, but you may wanna observe Ober, observe your relationship with the closest. So with your spouse or with your kids. You may wanna observe your relationships with your friends and with your extended family. You may wanna observe your relationships with your pets, with your coworkers. You may wanna observe your relationships with other drivers on the road or at the grocery store. When I say observe, this does not mean to judge, but simply to observe, just make notes of how those interactions go. Maybe make notes of what happens, but what we would wanna know is if maybe, um, you're taking a controlling sort of attitude into me of these relationships, meaning you may be carrying the bulk of the burden of the the transaction. Do you always have to carry it? Does it always need you to carry that much of it? And again, doesn't mean that you change or it doesn't mean that there's even a problem. But as you're, if you've, you know, recently learned, you have high blood pressure, if you've had it for a while, that's a place you can start to do some self examination and, and wonder, you know, how much control are you exerting? So an example, you know, because I treat patients and my patients are human, um, there is, and I I am the physician, they're the patient. There's a big temptation for me to wanna take a very controlling nature of, of I say this, you do that. Um, and there may be times where there's like, you know, some, you know, it could be endangering someone's life where I may need to lean more towards that. But I mean, the reality is that, um, I don't live in that person's shoes. I don't know what they're going through. I'm getting a sh a snapshot of their life. So as I'm working with patients, is it, is it better for me to tell them? Well, I say I'm the authority you do what I say, or maybe take a different approach where, you know, I offer my recommendation, I show them some of the benefits and some of the risk. I show them the benefits and the risk of my recommendation, and then I inquire about how they feel and what they think should happen next and make sure that we are aware of the patient's goals. So by taking a less controlling approach to Steven with my own patience and understanding the knowledge of, you know, here's the health risk we're dealing with, here's what we want to prevent, but then making sure that I don't just inflict my own will upon them, that I, that there's an understanding that there's, this is a transaction that no one needs to carry all the burden in this transaction. So, um, just simple observation, knowing where you're controlling it, again, it doesn't mean, and don't, don't judge yourself if you decide to do this. It's not about self-judgment at all. It's just about acknowledging that there may be a habit that you're moving through life where it is creating more stress in you by feeling that you carry the burden of the world with you. So thank you so much for joining me for this Art Healing podcast. Um, I always appreciate your time and I do hope the topic has been useful. Um, I mentioned that I'm working on a project that has got my attention on blood pressure and the health of blood pressure and I'm really looking forward to sharing with the listeners as this project grows the prog progress. So if you'd like to be updated, um, definitely you can sign up for my newsletter and I'll place a link in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me, and we will be coming back together next week, which we will discuss the second part of the mindful approach, the high blood pressure, and how we can do that. And we'll finish the month with a little bit of a meditation practice. Thanks so much. Bye bye.