Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine, which means using standard diagnostic tests to identify places
where there is stress on your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your immune system, places
where things are not working like they should, things that you can identify early enough
to correct with better food, exercise, and supplements, and avoid becoming dependent
on drugs for the rest of your life.
The last episode, we talked about high blood pressure, safe, effective, natural solutions
to high blood pressure.
And if you don't know it already, all of the past episodes of this show are available on
my website, binkleyhealingcenter.com, as well as Apple podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, so
you can listen to them anytime you like on demand.
So more on high blood pressure this week.
I ended up, ended off last week's show talking about how I oftentimes get people coming in
to me wanting to get off all medications.
And there are some medications that are easier than others to get off of, but I always request
that they, I'm not going to, I always tell them I'm going to make that decision for them.
You need to go back to the prescribing physician and have a conversation with them and make
that choice yourself.
But there's, you know, cholesterol drugs, for example, and osteoporosis drugs are really
good drugs to not take unless you absolutely need them.
And there's lots of easy ways, better alternatives, natural alternatives that work better than
the drugs.
Blood pressure, blood pressure drugs are the great exception.
It's really important to take blood pressure medication if your blood pressure is elevated.
And it's obviously even more important to check your blood pressure.
People don't check their blood pressure.
You don't know if you have high blood pressure unless you check it.
It has no symptoms.
You can wait until you drop dead of a heart attack, but you know, that's not a very good
idea obviously.
People do that all the time though.
So it's really important to check your blood pressure.
If you're over 50 and you haven't checked your blood pressure in a year, get a blood
pressure monitor.
You can get a good blood pressure monitor for 35 bucks.
I'm going to come back to that in a second.
Everyone should be checking their blood pressure.
Even younger people.
If you have, if you have anxiety, if you tend to get angry, if you're sleepless, if you
have tight muscles throughout your body, if you find yourself arguing with other people
a lot, if you find that you can't cope with certain situations in your life, then you
have stress.
I mentioned that because a lot of times I have this conversation with patients and I'll
say, do you have stress?
No, I don't have any stress in my life.
I'm fine.
But they have all the other things that I just described.
Well, if you have anger management issues or difficulty sleeping or anxiety or you know,
you have stress, all those things are examples of, you know, stress and stress isn't, some
kinds of stress are not necessarily going to badly affect your health.
One person's stress is another person's stimulation.
You know, some people need more stimulation.
Some people sit around and worry too much.
And it would be some, something that might cause one person's high blood pressure to
go up, could cause someone else's to go down just to give them something interesting to
do to occupy their time with, or, you know, to go out and exercise and get something out
of their system.
So yes, it is still true.
If you or someone you love is looking for an alternative to becoming dependent on drugs,
then, you know, I'm your guy.
Come see me.
I will usually, I can usually find ways to first identify whether or not you have something
that needs treatment.
And most of the time coming up, come up with a treatment that doesn't involve drugs.
But the great exception is blood pressure.
There are others.
For example, if someone comes in and has a viral or a bacterial or a fungal infection
that requires antibiotics or other medication to eradicate, then I will recommend that they
see a prescribing physician to get that medication.
And it doesn't come up that often, but you know, more than once a year, sometimes two
or three times a year, I'll find people have cancer.
They didn't know it.
That's never exciting.
But bone marrow cancer, especially leukemia and lymphoma are almost always diagnosed in
an asymptomatic patient on routine blood work.
Meaning patient comes in for some other condition, they have no, you know, leukemia and lymphoma
basically have no symptoms until it gets bad enough that your immune system starts working.
Maybe you have symptoms of a cold or a flu.
But you know, it's very commonly identified on routine blood work.
Occasionally, I'll see someone that warrants a referral to a gastroenterologist for a severe
gut condition or a cardiologist for a severe heart condition.
But most of the time, these conditions cause symptoms that people are already being treated
for.
So it's rare that I have to refer out to another medical professional for mainstream medicine.
But if it's necessary, it will show us the point.
If you do the complete blood panel with me, we're going to see that stuff too.
It's really easy to diagnose severe medical conditions.
This is a huge point.
It's really easy to diagnose full blown diabetes, full blown heart disease, you know, full blown
kidney disease, liver disease, you know, a huge screaming autoimmune condition.
Medical conditions are easy to diagnose.
They're glaringly obvious on just a few tests.
This is why one of the major distinctions between functional medicine and mainstream
medicine is that functional medicine requires doing more tests because it's harder to diagnose.
It requires more tests to diagnose and a separate form of education that most doctors don't
get.
They certainly don't get it at medical school and most doctors are just, you know, they're
not interested in it.
They're busy treating people.
It's not their fault.
You know, you can't expect.
Why don't all doctors do this?
Well, because they're busy treating the mess that most people show up with in their offices.
Most patients aren't interested in taking better care of themselves.
Most patients, if you judge by their actions, not their words, but their actions, are not
interested in a safe, effective, natural solution to anything.
They want to just wait and cross their fingers and wait for somebody in a white coat with
a medical miracle to save their life.
So yeah, no doubt it's never going to be the case that mainstream medicine is going to
do the type of things that you hear about on this show because they're busy doing mainstream
medical care for people who often need mainstream medical care.
But for many, many, so many conditions, there are other options.
The major exception that we're focusing on today is high blood pressure.
So if you have high blood pressure and nothing else you're doing is keeping it under control,
then you should take blood pressure medication.
I do recommend sometimes people go get a physician to give them medication for high blood pressure
if they're not controlling it otherwise.
Why?
Because people aren't checking their blood pressure.
So here's one of the most important things we're going to talk about today.
Check your own blood pressure at home.
Get a blood pressure cuff.
Well, what kind of blood pressure cuff should I get?
What's the best brand?
Should I get one that checks the blood pressure on my finger, on my wrist, on my upper arm?
Well, it's always best to get one that checks the pressure on your upper arm because they're
just the most reliable.
And one of the reasons they're the most reliable is because they're more difficult for you
to screw up the reading when you're taking your blood pressure at home.
So I just researched this.
There was a few years ago when the wrist monitors, don't get a finger monitor, those are still
no good.
The wrist monitors are actually accurate now.
If you use them correctly, the reason they're not as accurate as upper arm ones is because
most people don't use them correctly.
So I'll come back to that in a second.
Omron, O-M-R-O-N is one of the most common reliable brands that's been around for decades.
I've had an Omron battery powered machine that I use in my office for intake exams.
Just quick and easy way to check people's blood pressure.
I can have my assistant do it.
They're reliable, well known, well studied, been around for years.
For about 35 bucks, you can get a basic Omron machine that works great.
But Omron is not the only good one.
You can Google a list of AMA approved blood pressure cuffs.
New machines are coming out all the time with convenient features like apps on your phone
to track your readings.
So it's not the only one.
If you have one now or if you want to buy one and you want to make sure that it's accurate,
you can bring it into my office and I'll check your pressure with a proper cuff and a stethoscope
to make sure your machine is accurate, just like I do with my Omron machine in the office.
So Omron is one of the most popular brands to demonstrate reliability.
35 bucks on Amazon.
But the basic $35, they have other ones, but the basic Omron device, the most common one,
it only records 14 readings.
You can always just write them down.
But it's nice to have a device record them for you if you're tech savvy enough to use
it.
But the basic Omron $35 Omron device only records 14 readings and does not offer a phone
app, which many people may prefer.
So the most popular brand currently on Amazon is called iHealth, little iHealth brand monitor.
Over 33,000 reviews.
It's $36.
It'll store up to 99 readings and it comes with a free app for any smartphone which connects
by Bluetooth, wirelessly connects to your phone.
You have to set it up once, download an app on your phone, but then it'll store all of
your readings, unlimited readings.
And so you can then easily email those records to your doctor, save them for yourself.
It's got a way to record notes and set reminders for yourself to check your blood pressure.
And it even will detect irregular heartbeats.
So I haven't used one of these yet, but if it can detect irregular heartbeats accurately,
that's a huge added benefit for 36 bucks.
So bottom line, if you have any kind of stress in your life, or even if you think you don't,
if you have difficulty sleeping, if you have anger management, if you get irritability,
anxiety, ask your spouse or your friends if they think you're stressed, if you think you're
not.
And if they say yes, get a blood pressure cuff and start checking your blood pressure.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
You're listening to safe, effective, natural solutions to almost any health challenge.
Today we're talking about high blood pressure, how to know if you have it by getting a blood
pressure cuff and checking, the importance of checking yourself.
So important.
But also we're going to talk about how to control it and how to reduce it and keep it
low without drugs.
Hopefully, sometimes you can't.
And it's one of the most important things if you're, you know, you're really gung ho
about not taking any medications, but your blood pressure is high, that's the one medication
you should take.
You only get one heart.
Well, you can get a heart replacement, but not recommended.
And it's just super and super important to know.
First of all, just to know if you have high blood pressure and then control it if you
do.
And there's lots of ways to do that without drugs, which we'll talk about.
Before we get back to that, I mentioned that, you know, now it has been shown that the upper
arm, the standard ones that you see most places where you put it around your upper arm right
above the elbow, those are the best, most accurate blood pressure monitors.
But mostly because the wrist ones are more convenient for some people, some people who
have really large upper arms or really small upper arms, the regular blood pressure cuffs
might not fit, or it might just be difficult to fit, especially if someone's obese, or
it might be painful.
If someone's really sensitive for any reason in their arm, it might be just uncomfortable
enough.
If it's uncomfortable enough or just difficult enough to use that you're not going to do
it, then get a wrist cuff.
But here are the main reason the wrist cuffs end up being less reliable is not because
of the device itself, but because you need to use it properly.
And so I think that's important enough to mention here right now.
And some of these recommendations apply to using any blood pressure cuff.
So the first few, for example, avoid coffee, tobacco, and exercise for 30 minutes before
taking your blood pressure so that you're getting a normal read, not an overstimulated
read.
Use the bathroom, sit still for five minutes before you get started.
Use which arm you're going to use, sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor.
Even that, people don't realize how important that is.
You don't want to be lying in bed or sitting with your feet crossed.
When your feet are flat on the floor, you will end up being more relaxed.
So you'll get a better reading of your average blood pressure.
Position your chair on a flat surface with a table right in front of you and put the
cuff on your wrist, secure it in place, and then put your elbow on the table.
We're talking about how to use a wrist cuff now.
So these previous instructions are important for using any type of regular blood pressure
cuff.
But when you're using the wrist one, you want to have a table in front of you, using a wrist
monitor, put it around your wrist, have the elbow on the table in front of you, gently
place your hand on your chest with your wrist at the level of your heart.
So you put the monitor on your wrist, put your elbow on the table, and then rest your
wrist with the monitor on it against your heart.
So now the monitor is at the same level as your heart.
So it's not going to be higher or lower than your heart.
This is one of the most common errors.
If your arm is just hanging down at the side or if it's above your heart or below your
heart in any position, that's going to dramatically alter, negatively impact the accuracy of that
blood pressure reading.
So you sit with your elbow resting on a table and your wrist with the monitor resting against
your heart, and then measure your blood pressure.
Stay in this, relax and stay in this position for a few seconds, you know, 30 to 60 seconds,
a minute or so before starting.
Take a couple of deep breaths.
Make sure you're relaxed before you start, before you push the button, and then measure
the blood pressure without moving or talking.
So sit there by yourself.
Don't talk, don't move, push the button, and then take your blood pressure in with, if
you do all of that, then you can get an accurate reading with a wrist cuff as accurate as a
normal upper arm cuff.
So you can get an excellent blood pressure cuff on Amazon in stores for about $35, maybe
even less.
I don't know, maybe I'm not 100% on this, but I would imagine if, especially if you're,
I have Medicare or many insurance companies, I would, I don't know this for sure.
Don't quote me on this, but I would imagine you could probably get it for free if you
get your insurance physician to request it for you.
But anyway, get a blood pressure cuff, measure your blood pressure, and check, you know,
log the readings, keep a record, get an average over a week and save those records, send them
to your doctor, bring them in to see me.
If you get a meter and you're not sure if it's accurate or you want to confirm that
it is accurate, bring it in and I'll check it with a regular cuff and a stethoscope to
make sure that it is accurate.
But the most important thing, as far as I'm concerned, and to most people who come to
see me, is to learn how to control your blood pressure yourself.
This is why it's so important to get the monitor so that you know whether or not it's elevated.
But I've done this with hundreds of patients.
You get your monitor, you check your blood pressure, especially when it's high, like
you, you know, you're agitated maybe, or you know it's high, or maybe you're just, you
know, you've established the habit of checking it.
You get a high reading and you're worried about it.
Immediately lie down on the floor, not a bed, not a couch.
You need to be on a firm surface.
If you've got a massage table or any other kind of table with a little mat you want to
lie down, that's fine, but anyone can lie on the floor.
You need to be on a firm surface so that the muscles around your rib cage that are used
in breathing will relax.
This is the easiest way.
Lie on the floor and do deep breathing exercises for 15 minutes.
So this is as simple as lying on your floor, lying on the floor, on your back, with your
knees bent or straight, if you have any pain in your low back, lying on the floor, then
if you bend your knees, you know, that can take that issue.
Get a little pillow to support your head.
If you're, if you're, if you're lying on the floor and your chin is higher than your
forehead, then you need a pillow.
You want your forehead to be at least as high as your chin.
You don't want to be lying there with your head tilting back because of your, because
your upper back is hunched forward.
You know, get into a comfortable position and just position and just do deep breathing
exercises.
This is as simple as slowly breathing in to the count of four or six or eight.
Just slowly inhale.
One, two, three, four, maybe, maybe you've already breathed in as far as you can at a
count of four.
Maybe you count to eight, whatever it is, just count slowly as you're breathing in,
pause for a count of one or two and then slowly exhale.
And this is the important part.
When you exhale, and this is why it's important to count, it doesn't matter what number you
count to, but when you exhale, make it take longer than the inhalation.
So if you inhale as slowly as you can and you end up on a count of five, then when you
exhale, make it take seven or eight.
Let's make the number simple.
Say you, and that you inhale and you only get up to four, then try and make the exhalation
to a count of at least six.
If you inhale slowly counting and you get up to six and you're breathing in as much
as you can, pause for a breath or two, a count or two, and then slowly exhale and restrict
that breathing.
You know, slowly let the air out, restrict the outflow of the air so that if you breathe
into a count of six, make the exhalation take to a count of eight.
And you know, just apply that to whatever number you naturally easily breathe into.
The actual number doesn't matter that much.
Just make the exhalation take a little bit longer than the inhalation.
Do that for 15 minutes and then recheck your blood pressure and you will be amazed.
It can go down 10, 15, 20, 30 points in 15 minutes.
I've had people do this hundreds of times.
And the importance of that is number one, if you're at risk of heart disease, if you're
in a really stressful situation, you know, it could dramatically diffuse that situation.
But the reason I really like to have people do that is so that you know, you have that
instant feedback, you know, you can control your blood pressure.
How cool is that?
You can do something immediately to reduce your blood pressure so that if you, you know,
you have a high reading for whatever reason, you don't raise your blood pressure even more
by freaking out because your blood pressure is high.
You know, you can just lie down on the floor, do some deep breathing exercises and reduce
your blood pressure immediately.
There's lots of other things you can do to immediately lower your pressure.
You can go for a walk.
You can do anything that relaxes you.
But the important, the main thing is I really want to encourage you to, you know, get the
monitor, check it, go for a walk and check it if it's high, go for a walk, check it again
after not immediately after, you know, go for a walk, come back, you know, rest for
five minutes to completely calm down, not sweating anymore, breathing normally again,
and then check it.
Do literally anything you can think of that you find relaxing and then check it again
after it's high and see that it's gone down.
So doing this will give you the confidence to know that you may not need drugs for the
rest of your life.
You just need to check your pressure regularly and figure out a way to do basically two things,
reduce your heart rate and the tension in the muscular walls of your blood pressure.
Your blood pressure goes up when your heart beats faster and it goes up because the heart's
pumping out the blood faster and that increases pressure in the pipes.
It also increases when the pipes get stiff or when the muscular walls of the pipes spasm,
which is often the result of stress and creates back pressure.
So the pressure is increased by the heart beating faster.
It's also increased by the pipes getting clogged or stiffer or tighter because of muscular
contractions in the walls of the pipes, which is usually the result of some kind of stress.
But exercising regularly will tend to reduce your blood pressure over time.
Just noticing that it's high is more likely if you do something about it, is a good way
to make will result in you more likely doing something about it if you're so inclined to
do things about it.
Getting adequate sleep is really important.
Seven to eight hours per night and waking in the morning feeling rested.
So if you're in bed for seven or eight hours, but you wake up and you don't feel rested,
then you're not getting adequate sleep.
If you sleep six hours a night and you wake up and feel ready to go, that's a rarity,
but good for you.
You're better off than a lot of people who lie in bed but do not wake feeling rested.
Avoiding salt intake, we hear about that all the time.
It can be important for many people, especially if you eat a lot of processed food or eat
out in restaurants frequently or use a salt shaker at your table.
I don't have a salt shaker on my table.
I cook delicious food all the time and very rarely use salt.
There's lots of other ways to make your food taste better.
But conversely, there's a lot of really good foods that are salty too.
But more important than the salt conversation, we can talk about that a little bit more,
but more important is to understand that sodium is an essential nutrient.
So more important than controlling sodium is controlling your sodium potassium balance.
Sodium and potassium must be in balance.
They're both essential nutrients without which you cannot survive.
And they balance each other out.
And maintaining that balance is essential for the workings of every cell in your body
and also maintaining blood pressure.
But for most people, supplementing potassium is often a bad idea.
Can't even be harmful.
And here's the good news.
The best place to get more potassium is eating fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables.
There's potassium in all vegetables and fruits.
So if you eat adequate vegetables, like if you eat a big salad every day or a big portion
of broccoli or cauliflower or bell peppers or tomatoes or carrots or whatever vegetable
you like that isn't mostly starch, then you will often get plenty of potassium to offset
the salt that you're eating if you don't eat a lot of junk food or a lot of processed
food or eat out in restaurants where they over-salt their food.
And if you don't, most people have heard that bananas and avocados in particular are super
high in potassium.
So it's always a good idea to avoid using a salt shaker at your table.
I prefer to make my food taste good, for example, with herbs and spices like garlic and onions,
Herbes de Provence, which is a combination of rosemary and basil and a few other herbs,
chili flakes and chili peppers if you can tolerate the heat, black pepper.
If you can't tolerate the heat of chili peppers or chili flakes, you can cook the heat off
the capsaicin, the hot component of peppers, just by cooking them, putting them in a little
oil or whatever you're cooking on a stove with the fan on, cook for saute something
for a little bit and most of the heat goes away and you still get the delicious flavor
of various peppers, which is so important for so many.
If you like Mexican food or Indian food or any other food that uses spices like that,
that is one of the main ways they make those foods taste so yummy.
And you know, there's also, it's nice to be able to get a potassium in your diet so
that you can eat some healthy foods that tend to be salty, like fermented foods like sauerkraut
and kimchi and pickles and cheese.
A little bit of cheese can make things taste so great.
Thank you for tuning in.
Send me your questions about how to control high blood pressure without medications and
tune in here next week.
Have a fantastic weekend.
You've been listening to Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to
drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved
ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 4 p.m. for Safe, Effective Natural Solutions right here on
98.3 The Word, KDAR.