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Stress and Blood Pressure.

As you all may have realised during the month of February, we have been focussing on Heart Health. As part of that we have started our Blood Pressure challenge, taking people’s blood pressure and seeing if natural remedies can help to reduce it. I first mentioned a few weeks ago in my article on natural ways to reduce blood pressure. One of the things that has become very clear to us over the last few weeks looking at people’s blood pressure, is the huge effect of stress and anxiety on the blood pressure readings. We all know about white coat syndrome – where the blood pressure goes up, due to anxiety about the doctors. Even here at the shop, we have had people’s readings shoot up after becoming worried about their blood pressure readings. Another lady’s blood pressure shot up ten points just because she had mentioned the fact that she was worried about her daughter!
So this week, I thought I would cover the natural remedies which can be helpful for anxiety, both in the short term, to potentially help with white coat syndrome and long term, for those who do get worried a lot.
For those whose blood pressure only zooms up at the thought of having it taken or going to the doctors a good product to try is Theanine. Theanine is sourced from Green Tea and is said to help improve your production of alpha brain waves – which are your calming, chilled out, meditative brain waves. One lady I knew, used to get incredibly anxious before having her blood pressure checked, even when it was me doing it. We found though, that if she took a Theanine capsule half an hour previously and kept her eyes closed and focussed on her breathing, whilst the reading was done, her blood pressure was significantly better – normal even! Whereas without these measures it always came back as high.
For those who are the worrying type, it is possible that your anxiety is having an impact on your blood pressure, so if your readings are high – and we can check that for you if you like – then taking something to reduce your anxiety and worry on a daily basis could be really helpful. In this situation we tend to suggest a product called Balance for Nerves. Balance for Nerves is a constant favourite of mine because I have had such great reports from people who have used it. It combines Theanine to calm the brain, with B vitamins, to support the nervous system and energy, plus passiflora and lemon balm two herbs which are often used to help with stress and anxiety. Balance for Nerves then seems to offer the full package for people who struggle with stress and anxiety. Many people who have used it have told us that they have felt the benefit of using this product after the first week of taking it. We have also seen improvements in blood pressure readings after two weeks with those people whose blood pressure seemed to be linked to their anxiety issues.