My BP now averages a healthy 110/75. I still take a bit of medication, but have cut back to about a quarter of what I was on. My diet, lifestyle and weight are better now, which I think is what dropped my BP down.

I have heard of RESPeRATE and Breatheasy before (and in fact Kellie reviewed Breatheasy a few year ago). Not really my thing, but I am sure it could work for others.

Thanks for all your posts and links. It is friday afternoon here now, and I look forward to doing some reading over the weekend.

Enjoy your weekend!
Steve

http://www.nature.com/jhh/journal/v15/n4/pdf/1001148a.pdf

This the machine that I talked about in my prior post.

If you still have high blood pressure then I’ve talked to several people that are very impressed with a deep, slow breathing biofeedback method that apparently works very well. There is an expensive biofeedback machine of some sort but the music CD’s are just as good at a fraction of the cost. Here’s link to one:

http://www.control-your-blood-pressure.com/index2.html

For most of my life I loved eating starchy carbohydrates. Cereal, rice, pasta, and especially bread … I could never get enough of them.

About 3 to 4 years ago I found myself starting to eat less starchy carbohydrates and more vegetables and good fats (especially olive oil). I wasn’t following any diet, or doing it for any other reason, except that is what my body was telling me to eat!

These days I eat very little starchy carbohydrates, and instead eat lots of vegetables, olive oil, seeds and nuts, and a bit of protein. When I don’t eat my normal amount of vegetables and olive oil, I feel kind of sluggish the next day.

I had not thought much about it before, but maybe the reason I like what I eat these days, is because of the insulin effect that you mention.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

The biggest error (omission) was in the 2nd sentence of the 2nd paragraph. That should read:

“TREATING a symptom without primarily addressing THE CAUSE is doing the patient an injustice although the medical profession and drug companies flourish.”

Blood pressure is a good example. Most hypertension is labeled “idiopathic” which means that there is no known cause. Well, really there is a known cause for most hypertension and it is excessive insulin levels. Once again the short story is that excess insulin levels lead to water/fluid retention, loss of magnesium and stimulation of the nervous system that controls blood vessel restriction/dilation. Dramatic reductions in blood pressure are often seen when people lower their insulin levels by diet. Drs. Michael and Mary Eades, authors of Protein Power, describe this very nicely in their book Protein Power. Here’s a link to an article summarizing the Eades work.

http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/foods35.php

Do a Google search on Michael Eades to find more. Better yet buy Protein Power. In the USA it is in paperback and cost under $10.

Ron Rosedale also observes the same thing in his practice when people stay on a low carb, healthy fat diet.

Thank you for your thoughts and information, and also for the link. Interesting reading!

> Information is power.

Thanks for the information!
Steve

I’ll give you the short story. What the mainstream medical people call ” adult onset or Type 2 diabetes” is really just the end stage SYMPTOM of insulin resistance. When we treat a symptom without primarily addressing is doing the patient an injustice althouhg the medical profession and drug compnaies flourish. Insulin resistance is a disturbance in energy metabolism. Neonates born to Mom’s that eat lots of carbs have higher insulin levels than those born of Mom’s who do not eat lots of carbs. The summary of the study (your link) is a little confusing to me. Am I right that all study participants had elevated blood sugar levels? And yet they gave the control group a placebo? I have an ethical issue with that but lets go on.

“Adult onset diabetes” does not usually just appear out of nowhere. There is usually a decades long creeping up of insulin resistance as measured by rising fasting insulin levels. This can be measured and monitored but virtually no doctors do it. The blood sugar over these decades is normal yet the insulin levels are rising and the a tipping point occurs when the insulin resistance is so bad that the blood sugar is elevated. This when a doctor declares the patent has diabetes while all along this disaster could’ve been prevented by treating the underlying cause primarily with diet. Exercise of course helps too and should be encouraged.

That poor lady in the You Tube video said that her diabetes is just the way it is. I wonder who told her that. You don’t just get or catch diabetes – it’s a self inflicted condition caused by diet, being overweight and being sedentary. The main dietary problem is too many carbs and trans fats in any amount.

The benefits described in the article were modest at best especially when you take into account that at the end of ten years the yearly diabetes incidence rate of the control was approaching that of the intervention and metformin groups.

In order to treat insulin resistnace or to reverse adult onset diabetes all one has to do is restrict carbs so that the fasting insulin level drops to under 10 (the lower the better). The added benefits of this is that triglycerides, cholesterol and blood pressure will NECESSARILY reduce. The good thing about this is that it will work in virtually all patients. While I understand that this lifestyle change is hard to achieve I think that all patients deserve the correct, true facts surrounding this insulin resistance epidemic and let them choose.

Below is a link to papers by Dr. Ron Rosedale who is a very respected leptin, aging and diabetes expert. Good reading!! Information is power.

http://life-enthusiast.com/index/Articles/Rosedale/Insulin_and_Its_Metabolic_Effects

> my body (mouth, tongue) began
> finding other foods that I didn’t
> like (think fruits and vegetables)
> more appealing

I like how you put this! I have found the same thing happening to me as I’ve got older.

Love the river analogy. When I hop on my exercise bike this afternoon, I will think of those fast running clear streams

Thanks!

Realizing it was better to make one change at a time, working on one thing until it became a habit, I began exercising–intentional walking–Feb. of 2006. I began keeping a log of how many miles I did a day on an Excel spreadsheet so I could over time do an analysis.
Overtime my diet seem to self-adjust because the food cravings I gave in to, stop being an issue and my body (mouth, tongue) began finding other foods that I didn’t like (think fruits and vegetables) more appealing. It also took less to fill me up. This change of portion size reduction came on its own it wasn’t something I worked on. I think my exercising began clearing out some of the “sediment” in my blood vessels and then my body became more efficient in pulling out the nutrients in the foods I ate (That statement is only antidotal as I haven’t any scientific study to back it up. It also came from an experience I had while hiking in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, in the USA near the Canadian Border, in the State of Washington. I noticed that all the streams running down the mountains, fast moving water, were clear, no sediments, etc. , as opposed to the Mississippi River near its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico where it is flat. That water is murky and filled with sediment. I used that analogy and visual as my motivation to exercise every morning.) I also had heard this saying from some health professionals, “We are a nation of overweight and undernourished people” knowing how much some of overweight undernourished folks ate. I’ve also read research on how exercise promotes the growth of collateral blood vessels in adults and helps change the elasticity of the same said vessels.