Chronic emotional and mental stress is a big contributor to high blood pressure because stress can cause increased activity in the sympathetic nervous system associated with a “flight or fight” response.
When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, it floods your blood with cortisone and adrenaline accelerating your heart beat, constricting your blood vessels, and increasing your blood pressure.
If you need to lower your blood pressure, one of the best things you can do is manipulate sympathetic nervous activity with techniques to calm yourself. Defuse emotional anxiety and promote optimal physical and mental balance. Recognize your triggers, manage your emotions, move your mind and body, and check your alignment. I cannot emphasize how important it is for you to learn what triggers stress, and promptly deal with them. You must manage your emotions, particularly anger and grief. These are hidden risk factors.
As far as moving your body, you must exercise. Studies show that Yoga in hypertensive adults with and without coronary disease have found that Yoga-based interventions can reduce the need for high blood pressure medication. Daily 30-minutes of Yoga has been shown to lower blood pressure.
Check Your Alignment:
according to Chicago Rush University Hypertension Center, unresolved blood pressure could be related to misalignment in the atlas vertebra, C1, which sits atop your spinal cord and bears the weight of your skull. To test the hypothesis, Dr. Grimley divided 50 patients with high blood pressure into two groups.
One group received a single upper cervical chiropractic manipulation of the atlas and the other group did not receive an adjustment. After eight weeks, patients who received treatment of the atlas vertebra showed a reduction of blood pressure similar to that being achieved by taking a blood pressure medication. It appears that misalignment of the atlas can potentially interfere with nervous system pathways to the brainstem and lead to high blood pressure. An understanding has been limited to a relatively small number of chiropractors specializing in upper cervical manipulation.
If your blood pressure is resistant to medications and you have tried other alternative therapies without success, a chiropractic evaluation may be in order, especially if you have had a past neck injury, whiplash or a fall. Even the birthing process can result in neck trauma.
deanr. silver,m.d.