February is heart health month –

..so over the next few weeks we are going to be having a look at the ways in which natural medicine may help you achieve a healthy heart. Starting with high blood pressure.

IN THE DIET

Most people are aware that salt is linked to high blood pressure, so obviously you should try not to add it to your cooking or at the table. Also be aware that certain foods like bacon, ham, cheese and tuna in brine, will have a very high salt level, so try to limit their consumption too.

On top of this we would suggest that you want to limit your intake of caffeine, as this can raise the blood pressure. You may also want to make sure you are drinking enough water. Becoming dehydrated is another common cause of higher blood pressure.

HELP FROM SUPPLEMENTS

There are two supplements that are often used by people who are trying to reduce their blood pressure naturally. Both are actually made using concentrated amounts of really common foods!

BEETROOT: Beetroot is these days, often the first choice for people with high blood pressure. This is thanks to reports in the newspapers that people who were drinking a big glass of beetroot juice every day found that their blood pressure decreased dramatically within a few days!

The problem with this though is that beetroot juice is not to everyone’s taste. Plus if you do start drinking a full glass every day your wee tends to turn red – which can be disturbing! This is why Beetroot Capsules were brought out – to give people the benefit of beetroot, without having to take the juice everyday. We have had some great feedback on it, with one gentleman informing us that after using beetroot for two weeks his blood pressure was the best it had been for years!

GARLIC: The other favourite natural remedy for high blood pressure is Garlic! Again you do need a strong dose though and many people do not like the potential that they will smell of this most pungent food.
It is for this reason that we often suggest those looking for a good strong garlic supplement try Quest Kyolic 600. This is a concentrated aged garlic. The ageing process actually gets rid of a lot of the smell, so no worries about bad breath! Plus each tablet has 600mg of garlic – a great amount. There has been a lot of research done on Quest Kyolic, but I always tend to prefer customer feedback and I have to say, that is consistently good. So many people return to buy another pot each month, that I know it must be helping them – after all no one carries on buying something that isn’t helping, do they?

If you have high blood pressure and want some help:

We are running a blood pressure challenge – challenge us to help you reduce your blood pressure in two weeks! Is it possible? We want to find out!

: seyed mostafa zamani / Foter.com / CC BY

This month our focus is on healthy hearts. One of our key remedies works to lower cholesterol, a word that most of us are familiar and many of us are medicated for.

A number of dietary factors influence cholesterol. Most people are aware that a diet high in animal fats is linked to high cholesterol levels and as such we avoid foods like bacon, cheese, sausages and greasy burgers. But there is much more to cholesterol than steering clear of the greasy spoon!

Making sure your diet contains plenty of good fats is essential. Intake of healthy oils like omega 3 can help to achieve a healthy cholesterol reading. These healthy oils can be found in oily fish like sardines, mackerel and salmon; in walnuts and pumpkin seeds; or in flaxseed and hemp powders or liquid oils.

The other major influencing factors in your diet are sugar and fibre. Eating a diet which is high in sugar, or refined carbohydrates like white bread can also increase cholesterol levels, so keep all sugars to a minimum if you are making dietary changes to help the heart. Instead fill your plate with fibres from oats, oat bran, brown rice, fresh vegetables, beans and pulses which help carry cholesterol from the body.

High cholesterol is a common problem and for some people dietary changes alone are not enough to achieve a reading low enough to be considered acceptable by their GP. This could be due to the fact that their cholesterol was very high to begin with or the fact that genetically they simply produce a higher amount of cholesterol than other people.
There are a range of medical drugs, collectively referred to as statins, which are prescribed for high cholesterol. There are also a number of side effects associated with statins, including, muscle pain, fatigue and even breathlessness. For this reason there are a number of people who do not want to take statins. There are also a number of people who have tried statins but have found the side effects so bad that they have been unable to continue with the medication. So we do see quite a lot of people who are looking for a natural alternative to stains which do not have the same side effects.

The good news is that there is a fantastic natural product which we use to bring cholesterol levels down and we have real confidence in it having achieved over the years a 99% success rate while using it and that product is Cholesterol Maintenance by Solaray. Cholesterol maintenance is made using something called red yeast rice, which has achieved a reasonable amount of publicity over the last few years. Red yeast rice helps to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol being produced by your liver and as a result naturally decreases your cholesterol levels. The even better news is that it works quite quickly with most people seeing an improvement in their cholesterol reading within eight to twelve weeks of starting to take the cholesterol maintenance. On top of this we have never seen a side effect from taking this product either!

We sell loads of cholesterol maintenance and have many great stories about it, but one of my favourites is of a lady who came to us on her doctors recommendation. She had been using statins, but had had terrible side effects from it. The pain she had been suffering with in her leg muscles had affected her mobility and her energy levels were at an all time low. Because the side effects had been so severe her doctor had taken her off the statins and told her to see if there were any natural products which could help her. When she came in we explained about dietary changes, but she said she had tried them all and her cholesterol had stayed stubbornly high, so they presumed that she naturally produced high levels of cholesterol. As there was heart disease in her family, she wondered if it was possibly a genetic problem.

We then told her about Cholesterol Maintenance and the results we had seen with it. Although she was keen to try it she was also worried about the possibility of side effects as she had suffered so badly on the statins. We assured her that no one who had taken it had yet reported a problem to us, so she decided to give it a go. After twelve weeks on it with no problems she returned to her doctor to tell her what she was taking and to have a cholesterol test to see if cholesterol maintenance was doing it’s job. The results that came back were better than we could have hoped for, after just twelve weeks her stubborn cholesterol had reduced from 8.7, which is a high reading to 4.8. Everyone concerned was thrilled. Her doctor has even sent other people along for cholesterol maintenance if they have been unable or unwilling to take statins. It is for this reason and the many many similar stories, that Cholesterol Maintenance is one of our favourite products year after year.
To try Cholesterol Maintenance for yourself, click here.

Category: Heart Health

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE?

February is heart health month –

IN THE DIET

HELP FROM SUPPLEMENTS

If you have high blood pressure and want some help:

Natural Ways to Reduce Cholesterol