When diet and lifestyle changes are not working to lower your blood pressure, It’s time to dig a little deeper and find the root cause of your high blood pressure.

In our modern day and age, Chronic and Prolonged Stress is real. Stress is a normal part of most people’s lives. We don’t even notice it because we are constantly living in a state of stress keeping our sympathetic nervous system pathways on continuous alert, excreting cortisol, adrenal, and other hormones on autopilot. 

Our body was designed through evolution to only turn on the sympathetic nervous system only when there is a threat for our life. Today, however, it is on from the moment we wake up, and the vicious cycle that is keeping our bodily systems dysregulated, including our blood pressure regulation. Read on to see how and why this is happening, and what you can do to break the cycle and lower your blood pressure. 

The Relationship Between Internal Stress and External Stress

When you have internal stress, like leaky gut, nutrient deficiencies, pathogens, or viruses, it really makes it hard for you to manage external stressors because your body is caught up in this chronic immune response, and it can’t shut it off. It's a negative feedback loop.  You are overwhelmed, your body is overwhelmed and you begin to get depleted, maybe start feeling run down, and it can lead to an adverse effect of raising blood pressure. 

Stress is supposed to be an acute response, and not necessarily a bad thing. For example, stress helps the body keep homeostasis when exercising, but when it’s a chronic and prolonged state the body becomes overcompensated for long periods, and then you can have systemic issues down the road. That can look like hypothyroidism, adrenal deficiency, high blood pressure, and other complications.

When your systems are fatigued and not producing adequate amounts of hormones and nutrients, you are going to have problems with regulating blood sugar and blood pressure, as well as regulating other systems in the body.

So how does stress do this? When someone is stressed, a whole chain of physiological reactions are set off in the body.

When the stress response, often referred to as the "fight,  flight, or freeze” " response, is triggered, a cascade of physiological and psychological reactions occurs in the body. This response is the body's way of preparing itself to face a perceived threat or danger, whether real or imagined (the body can’t tell the difference).. Here's what happens when the stress response is activated:

• Perception of Threat: The stress response begins with the perception of a threat, which could be physical, emotional, or psychological in nature. This can be something like having a fight with your partner or dealing with a difficult situation at work.  This perception triggers the brain's stress centers, particularly the hypothalamus and the amygdala, to send signals to the body's stress-regulating system.

• Release of Stress Hormones: The hypothalamus activates the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn stimulates the adrenal glands to release stress hormones, primarily adrenaline (epinephrine) and cortisol, into the bloodstream.

• Increased Heart Rate and Blood Pressure: Adrenaline causes the heart to beat faster and harder, increasing blood pressure and redirecting blood flow to essential organs and muscles (mostly to the peripheral parts of the body getting to run or fight

• Enhanced Breathing: Breathing becomes rapid and shallow, delivering more oxygen to the bloodstream to fuel the muscles and brain for quick response.

• Heightened Awareness and Vigilance:  The release of adrenaline and cortisol sharpens focus, enhances sensory perception, and increases alertness, enabling the individual to better assess and respond to the perceived threat.

• Suppression of Non-Essential Functions: Non-essential bodily functions, such as digestion and immune response, are temporarily suppressed to conserve energy for dealing with the immediate threat. This is the reason why you may have heard that chronic stress can cause someone to be more susceptible to catching colds or getting sick.

• Mobilization of Energy: Cortisol triggers the release of glucose into the bloodstream from stores in the liver and muscles, providing a quick source of energy for the body's increased demands.

This cycle is designed to be temporary until the perceived threat is taken care of. Most of human existence, we were running from bears or tigers, and not getting stressed from modern day issues like being frustrated at work, driving in traffic, or work-family balance.

Once the real or perceived threat has passed, the body's stress response gradually diminishes, and physiological functions return to normal. However, chronic activation of the stress response, due to ongoing stressors or unresolved psychological issues, can have detrimental effects on physical and mental health, leading to conditions such as hypertension, anxiety disorders, depression, and other stress-related illnesses. Therefore, learning effective coping strategies and stress management techniques is essential for maintaining overall well-being in today's fast-paced world.

Through the dysregulation of the immune response that I mentioned earlier, chronic stress can induce the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and dysregulate the immune response, leading to systemic inflammation throughout the body.

When you have inflammation in the gut or in the intestinal lining, it's going to cause malabsorption of important minerals and vitamins that are needed to regulate blood pressure. Like magnesium, calcium, sodium, and potassium.

Getting to the root of what is causing that stress response is what will heal your high blood pressure in most cases. You can use mindfulness techniques to help manage and reduce your chronic stress.  You can download my free Mindfulness to Lower Blood Pressure Guide below.

If it’s not external stress or things that are going on in your personal life, then the next step is to take a closer look at your diet.  In the Standard American Diet or the Modern Day Diet, we have refined foods, refined sugars, inflammatory fats like seed oils wich create a perfect storm to perpetuate inflammation, and therefore directly affecting our blood pressure.

These inflammatory fats like trans-fats and seed oils are the kind that actually build up in our blood vessels and cause plaque formation leading to inflammation of the blood vessel and artery walls. When you have inflammation and your blood pressure is being raised, and you have plaque in your blood vessels and arteries, the force of blood hitting those walls becomes higher than normal. That's when you're going to be more prone to having a cardiac event.

When your diet consists of processed foods, your body is deprived of fiber, protein and good sources of fat that will help you keep  that blood sugar stable.

When your blood sugar is not stable it also makes your stress response unstable. When you blood sugar spikes and drops, your stress hormones immediately get turned on. So your cortisol is going to try to release glucose into your bloodstream really quickly, and you are then in a state of catabolism.

This makes it even more important to eat in a more whole foods way rich in fiber with, protein and healthy fats to keep blood sugar stable, because the SAD is not a good way of keeping your blood sugar stable.  The Core Four Way of Eating is a good framework of what your meals should look like when eating to stabilize blood sugar and lower blood pressure.

STRESS -REDUCING FOODS TO ADD TO YOUR DIET

The following foods support adrenal function, helping to lower cortisol in the body.

1. Magnesium- Pumpkin seeds, spinach, dark chocolate, and avacado

2. Vitamin C- Citrus fruits, strawberries, bell peppers, and brussel sprouts

3. L-Thaenine- Mushrooms, matcha, white tea, and oolong tea

4. Prebiotics- Garlic, onions, asparagus, and unripe bananas

INTERNAL STRESS

Stealth infections are defined as disease-causing microorganisms that can lie dormant for a long time before causing illness.  Like mold, bartonella, and babesia can cause an immune response on a cellular level leading to all around inflammation in the body. It’s really good to do some functional testing to look and see if that may be the root cause of your high blood pressure when everything else is not working or that you suspect this may be the case.

Running some functional medicine testing like looking for things like heavy metals, hidden viruses and bacteria will be indicative that this may be a cause of your high blood pressure.

The other thing to look at is environmental toxicity like metals and chemical build up in the body.

Just think anything man made in our environment that is going to be unrecognizable by the body is going to increase stress on the body causing extra work, not only on the liver but on the immune system as whole. This will directly affect physiological functions like hormone that regulate blood pressure/blood sugar, blood sugar, and conversion of important vitamins D.

Another root cause of HBP is ALCOHOL. It has a direct effect on the liver and blood sugar affecting detoxification, blood sugar, and stress hormones.  There is an undeniable stress response associated with alcohol and its inflammatory effect on the body. 

Certain medications are also responsible for raising blood pressure.  These are ones like NSAIDS, steroids, decongestants, and even birth control.  These medications are known to deplete nutrients and antioxidants …. which add to  that adrenal and hormonal stress.

This may be a little overwhelming, but when you learn why high blood pressure happens it becomes enlightening giving you the information you need to take action and become in control of your health. No one knows your body better than you, so learn to listen to your intuition to help guide you in taking the right action steps to heal.

Buy an empty journal and make it your health journal that you review everyday to see patterns and symptoms that you document and can discuss with your practitioner and health coach to help you heal as quickly as possible to start a life you love living :)

In good health,

Serene ❤