My blood pressure is always either perfect or low. It's never high.
In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.
In our experience, when people make comprehensive lifestyle changes, they usually can reduce or discontinue medications such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-hypertensives, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, nitrates, insulin, and so on.
Keep your blood pressure under control and pay attention to your urine. If it's foamy, that's not a good sign, and you need to check out your kidneys.
People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.
If you're in a diabetic or prediabetic state, it's good to have medication to go on for a period of time. But simply by making the changes - get your sleep, 35 grams of fiber and a half-hour walk - your cholesterol will come down, your sugar will come down, and your blood pressure will come down. Only the minority of people can't control it.
Reducing dietary salt is not only important for those who already have elevated blood pressure - limiting added salt is essential for all of us to remain in good health.
We now have 30 percent, for example, of Medicare patients who are seeing doctors who are rewarded for doing this kind of work, like high blood pressure control. So, the Affordable Care Act has pushed this direction down the road.
