how to lower blood pressure on the spot
how to lower blood pressure on the spot

 The blood pressure of your heart rises and falls all the time. It’s not steady, and for you, it’s probably not very important. But it does matter to doctors, who measure your blood pressure and calculate your risk of stroke and heart disease.

If you have high blood pressure, your doctor probably wants you to take medicine to bring down your pressure. The medicine works, but it makes people feel sleepy, and it makes them hungrier, too, so they eat more.

Some people are desperate. If the medicine makes them feel sleepy, they try another medicine that makes them feel even sillier. If that doesn’t work, they try another medicine, and so on, until they have so many pills they can’t remember their names.

Is there a way to do something without the expense and embarrassment of all these pills?

There is. If your doctor has an instrument called a sphygmomanometer, he can use it to measure your blood pressure and tell you everything you need to know. You don’t need any medicine.

The Sphygmomanometer is a high-tech version of the elastic bands you used to put on your wrist when you were a kid. The sphygmomanometer is a plastic tube with a rubber bladder at one end. The doctor puts a cuff on the other. He pushes the bladder up and down, and the pressure inside the cuff changes. A computer detects the pressure change and converts it to an instantaneous blood pressure reading.

You take your blood pressure at home the same way you would take your blood pressure at the doctor’s office. You wrap the cuff around your arm, you press an “on” button, and you wait.

When the doctor gets the results, he can tell from your reading whether your pressure is normal, a little high, or

  • Vegetables and fruits are your friends. Eat them
  • Eat more fish
  • Eat less meat
  • Eat less fat
  • Drink less alcohol
  • Get more exercise
  • Learn to relax
  • Take vitamins
  • Take herbs
  • Take probiotics
  • Take fiber
  • Take magnesium
  • Take fish oil
  • Take acidophilus
  • Take garlic
  • Take L-carnitine
  • Take resveratrol
  • Take curcumin
  • Take ginkgo b
  • Take Ginkgo Biloba
  • Take St. John’s wor
  • Take Valerian root
  • Take 5-HTP
  • Take SAM-e
  • Take taurine
  • Take melatonin
  • Take DHEA
  • Take chromium

In 1761, Sir Hans Sloane, a British physician, published A Compendious Collection of all the Drugs, Medicines and Herbs of whatsoever Sort and Description, whether Simple or Compound and Their Effects, Medicinal and Un Medicinal, which he collected from the Best Authors. He included recipes for making pills, powders, ointments, and tinctures, and described the medicinal properties of remedies as varied as arsenic, alum, and mistletoe.

how to lower blood pressure on the spot

Sloane’s book was enormously popular. It went through three editions. And like all good recipe books, it was organized around the idea of making a recipe, and the effects it would have. So Sloane’s readers could look up, for example, “Ointment of turpentine,” or “A powder of cloves,” or “The best possessing and purging syrup that ever was made.”

The things people wanted to make were often things people didn’t know they had. When people had a headache, Sloane’s readers wanted a remedy; they didn’t want a diagnosis. So Sloane’s recipes included things like “An Excellent Powder given for Headaches,” and “A Powder given for Wind.” These were remedies for things people didn’t know they had.

The first recipe Sloane’s readers found for “a powder of cloves” was something like “Take a clove, and rub it in your palm, and spit it out, and then rub your face with it, and spit it out again, and then rub your forehead with it, and spit it out again;