Blood Pressure Lower Than When Taking Drugs

Ned, an electrical engineer and computer consultant from Oregon, has always been health conscious. He takes vitamins, exercises, eats a low-fat diet, and is a long-time subscriber of my newsletter, Health & Healing. Yet one problem plagued him for almost 30 years. When he was 40 years old, Ned was diagnosed with hypertension and started on a blood-pressure lowering drug. This was to be the first of a long, long string of prescriptions that not only failed to bring his blood pressure down, but also had many adverse effects. When the side effects of one drug became intolerable, Ned's doctor switched him to another. He figures he's tried just about every antihypertensive drug on the market.

Frustrated and fed up with feeling lousy because of his drugs, yet scared to just stop them, Ned came to see us. The first thing he learned at the Whitaker Wellness Institute was that he had insulin resistance. He also learned that when insulin resistance is an underlying factor in hypertension, it often responds very well to nutritional therapies and exercise. So Ned started on a comprehensive program of diet, exercise, and nutritional supplements as his physician slowly weaned him off his drugs. Much to Ned's delight, his blood pressure was even lower than it had been while he was taking drugs!

I ran into Ned a few months ago at a conference in Las Vegas. He was looking fit and healthy, and he told me hadn't felt this well in years. During the year after his visit to the clinic, as the diet and exercise program become a part of his daily life, the extra 30 pounds that had sneaked up on him over the years slowly but surely disappeared. He still takes his blood pressure two or three times a week, and for the past two and a half years, it has averaged 125/75—without medications.

— from Health & Healing by Julian Whitaker, MD