Happy Valentines Day

To close the discussion on high blood pressure on Valentine's day is wonderful. What a great gift for your loved one to know that you are working toward lowering your blood pressure so you can lower your risk of heart disease. The following is from an article 15 natural ways to lower your blood pressure, medically reviewed by Atli Arnarson Ph.D., Written by Kerri-Ann Jennings, MS, RD, Updated on July 26, 2020. It was printed in Medical News Today Online version.

8. Lose weight

According to a 2016 study, losing 5% of your body mass could significantly lower high blood pressure.

In previous studies, losing 17.64 pounds (8 kilograms) was linked to lowering systolic blood pressure by 8.5 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure by 6.5 mm Hg

Losing weight can help your blood vessels do a better job of expanding and contracting, making it easier for the left ventricle of the heart to pump blood.

Bottom line: Losing weight can significantly lower high blood pressure. This effect is even more significant when you exercise.

9. Quit smoking

Every puff of cigarette smoke causes a slight, temporary increase in blood pressure. The chemicals in tobacco are also known to damage blood vessels.

Surprisingly, studies haven’t found a conclusive link between smoking and high blood pressure. Perhaps this is because smokers develop a tolerance over time.

Still, since both smoking and high blood pressure raise the risk of heart disease, quitting smoking can help lessen that risk.

Bottom line: There’s conflicting research about smoking and high blood pressure, but what is clear is that both increase the risk of heart disease.

10. Cut added sugar and refined carbs

There’s a growing body of research showing a link between added sugar and high blood pressure.

In the Framingham Women’s Health Study, women who drank even one soda per day had higher levels than those who drank less than one soda per day (.

Another study found that having one less sugar-sweetened beverage per day was linked to lower blood pressure.

And it’s not just sugar — all refined carbs, such as the kind found in white flour — convert rapidly to sugar in your bloodstream and may cause problems.

One study on people undergoing statin therapy found that those who went on a 6-week, carb-restricted diet saw a greater improvement in blood pressure and other heart disease markers than people who did not restrict.

Bottom line: Refined carbs, especially sugar, may raise blood pressure. Some studies have shown that low carb diets may help reduce your levels.

11. Eat berries

Berries are packed with polyphenols, natural plant compounds that are good for your heart.

Polyphenols can reduce the risk of stroke, heart conditions, and diabetes, as well as improving blood pressure, insulin resistance, and systemic inflammation.

One study assigned people with high blood pressure to a low-polyphenol diet or a high-polyphenol diet containing berries, chocolate, fruits, and vegetables.

Bottom line: Berries are rich in polyphenols, which can help lower blood pressure and the overall risk of heart disease.

12. Try meditation or deep breathing

Both meditation and deep breathing may activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This system is engaged when the body relaxes, slowing the heart rate, and lowering blood pressure.

There’s quite a bit of research in this area, with studies showing that different styles of meditation appear to have benefits for lowering blood pressure.

In one study, participants were asked to either take six deep breaths over the course of 30 seconds or simply sit still for 30 seconds. Those who took breaths lowered their blood pressure more than those who just sat.

Bottom line: Both meditation and deep breathing can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps slow your heart rate and lower blood pressure.

13. Eat calcium-rich foods

While calcium supplements haven’t been conclusively shown to lower blood pressure, calcium-rich diets do seem linked to healthful levels.

For most adults, the calcium recommendation is 1,000 milligrams (mg) per day. For women over 50 and men over 70, it’s 1,200 mg per day.

In addition to dairy, you can get calcium from collard greens and other leafy greens, beans, sardines, and tofu.

Bottom line: Calcium-rich diets are linked to healthy blood pressure levels. You can get calcium through eating dark leafy greens and tofu, as well as dairy.

14. Take natural supplements

Some natural supplements may also help lower blood pressure. Here are some of the main supplements that have evidence behind them:

Aged garlic extract: Researchers have used aged garlic extract successfully as a stand-alone treatment and along with conventional therapies for lowering blood pressure.

Berberine: Traditionally used in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, berberine may increase nitric oxide production, which helps decrease blood pressure.

Whey protein: A 2016 study found that whey protein improved blood pressure and blood vessel function in 38 participants.

Fish oil: Long credited with improving heart health, fish oil may benefit people with high blood pressure the most.

Hibiscus: Hibiscus flowers make a tasty tea. They’re rich in anthocyanins and polyphenols that are good for your heart and may lower blood pressure.

15. Eat foods rich in magnesium

Magnesium is an important mineral that helps blood vessels relax.

While magnesium deficiency is pretty rare, many people don’t get enough.

Some studies have suggested that getting too little magnesium is linked with high blood pressure, but evidence from clinical studies has been less clear.

Still, eating a magnesium-rich diet is a recommended way to ward off high blood pressure.

You can incorporate magnesium into your diet by consuming vegetables, dairy products, legumes, chicken, meat, and whole grains.

Bottom line: Magnesium is an essential mineral that helps regulate blood pressure. Find it in whole foods, such as legumes and whole grains.

Take home message

High blood pressure affects a large proportion of the world’s population.

While drugs are one way to treat the condition, there are many other natural techniques, including eating certain foods that can help.

Controlling your blood pressure may ultimately, help you lower your risk of heart disease.

Lower your blood pressure naturally1

 I have high blood pressure, so I am always on the lookout for ways how to reduce my blood pressure naturally. The following is from an article 15 natural ways to lower your blood pressure, medically reviewed by Atli Arnarson Ph.D., Written by Kerri-Ann Jennings, MS, RD, Updated on July 26, 2020. It was printed in Medical News Today Online version.

1. Walk and exercise regularly

Regular exercise can help lower your blood pressure.

Regular exercise helps make your heart stronger and more efficient at pumping blood, which lowers the pressure in your arteries.

In fact, 150 minutes of moderate exercise, such as walking, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, such as running, per week, can help lower blood pressure and improve your heart health.

Bottom line: Walking just 30 minutes a day can help lower your blood pressure. More exercise helps reduce it even further.

2. Reduce your sodium intake

Salt intake is high around the world. In large part, this is due to processed and prepared foods. For this reason, many public health efforts are aimed at lowering salt in the food industry.

Many studies have linked high salt intake with high blood pressure and heart events, including stroke. However, more recent research indicates that the relationship between sodium and high blood pressure is less clear.

If you already have high blood pressure, it’s worth cutting back your sodium intake to see if it makes a difference. Swap out processed foods with fresh ones and try seasoning with herbs and spices rather than salt.

Bottom line: Most guidelines for lowering blood pressure recommend reducing sodium intake. However, that recommendation might make the most sense for people who are salt-sensitive.

3. Drink less alcohol

Drinking alcohol can raise blood pressure. In fact, alcohol is linked to 16% of high blood pressure cases around the world.

In the U.S., moderate alcohol consumption is defined as no more than one drink a day for women and two for men. If you drink more than that, cut back.

Bottom line: Drinking alcohol in any quantity may raise your blood pressure. Limit your drinking in line with the recommendations.

4. Eat more potassium-rich foods

Potassium is an important mineral.

It helps your body get rid of sodium and eases pressure on your blood vessels.

To get a better balance of potassium to sodium in your diet, focus on eating fewer processed foods and more fresh, whole foods.

Foods that are particularly high in potassium include: vegetables, especially leafy greens, tomatoes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, fruit, including melons, bananas, avocados, oranges, and apricots, dairy, such as milk and yogurt, tuna and salmon, nuts and seeds, and beans

Bottom line: Eating fresh fruits and vegetables, which are rich in potassium, can help lower blood pressure.

5. Cut back on caffeine

There’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that drinking caffeine regularly can cause an increase in blood pressure.

In fact, people who drink caffeinated coffee and tea tend to have a lower risk of heart disease, including high blood pressure, than those who don’t drink it.

Caffeine may have a stronger effect on people who don’t consume it regularly.

If you suspect you are caffeine-sensitive, cut back to see if it lowers your blood pressure.

Bottom line: Caffeine can cause a short-term spike in blood pressure, although for many people, it does not cause a lasting increase.

6. Learn to manage stress

Stress is a key driver of high blood pressure.

When you’re chronically stressed, your body is in a constant fight-or-flight mode. On a physical level, which means a faster heart rate and constricted blood vessels.

When you experience stress, you might also be more likely to engage in other behaviours, such as drinking alcohol or eating unhealthful food that can adversely affect blood pressure.

Several studies have explored how reducing stress can help lower blood pressure. Here are two evidence-based tips to try:

Listen to soothing music: Calming music can help relax your nervous system. Research has shown it’s an effective complement to other blood pressure therapies.

Work less: Working a lot, and stressful work situations, in general, are linked to high blood pressure.

Bottom line: Chronic stress can contribute to high blood pressure. Finding ways to manage stress can help.

7. Eat dark chocolate or cocoa

While eating massive amounts of dark chocolate probably won’t help your heart, small amounts may.

That’s because dark chocolate and cocoa powder are rich in flavonoids, which are plant compounds that cause blood vessels to dilate.

A review of studies found that flavonoid-rich cocoa improved several markers of heart health over the short term, including lowering blood.

For the strongest effects, use non-alkalized cocoa powder, which is especially high in flavonoids and has no added sugars.

Bottom line: Dark chocolate and cocoa powder contain plant compounds that help relax blood vessels, lowering blood pressure.

Cut Your Caregiver Some Slack

In a couple of days, I will give a workshop on “Care for the Caregiver”. This is an important workshop as it addresses how to care for seniors who are caring for others without pay.

A close family member or friend who takes the role of “caregiver” cares for most seniors in need of care. The job description of a caregiver is pretty wide and can include anything from buying your groceries to making sure your Medical paperwork is all correct, to do your taxes, to cleaning your apartment. In fact, there really is no list of jobs that makes a resume of a good caregiver except for the one job of doing “anything you need her to do.”

Caregiving is an unpaid position. Your caregiver does what she/he does for one reason–to take care of you. If you can step back and look at it objectively, that’s a pretty amazing job, especially because as age advances, the demands on your caregiver can get more and more stressful.

While it’s not something we talk about, some senior citizens have a reputation for being demanding. Part of this reputation is the many challenges we face just when we are least able to handle them. Medical problems, fatigue and depression can be so debilitating that we are less able to tackle the issues of life just when they really need to be tackled.

The most common caregivers are one of your children who lives closest to you, or a partner or spouse. Since this important person is a family member, it’s easy to “unload” on them when you don’t feel good, when you are confused, when you feel angry, or when you need something done.

It’s easy to get impatient with them when something needs attention and they are not there to attend to it. It is also easy to want your caregiver to stay with you and never go home. This may be because you get lonely or you wouldn’t have to worry about something coming up that needs attention.

We need to have a reality check with each other about who your caregiver can be to you and what they cannot be. Your caregiver is not (a) a live-in maid, (b) your personal slave, (c) responsible for everything wrong in your life or (d) a person who lives only for your needs. If this wonderful person is one of your children, he or she may have a family and a job. You cannot expect them to drop those things to attend to you only. By being a little realistic, you are on the right track to having the right relationship with your caregiver.

If you looked at the role of a caregiver through the eyes of that person who cares for you, they have a lot of stress in their lives. Your caregiver knows you want her to stay with you all the time. He/she knows you are angry about your situation and about your limited resources and about things that don’t work the way they should. The weight of your impatience and anger weighs heavily on her.

There is a genuine problem known as caregiver burnout. People who follow such things have documented many cases where a caregiver has a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with the demands of an ageing parent and their own families and jobs. You don’t want that to happen to your caregiver. So, cut your caregiver some slack.

Ready to retire?

Ten years ago I officially retired, however, I actually retired 16 years ago and worked full and part-time for another six years. In those six years, I finally got around to finishing my retirement planning. I thought about retirement about four years before I retired and then I retired because of my wife’s health problems, not because I was ready to retire. I do not regret that decision. I went back to work and by doing that, I could think about and understand what I really wanted from retirement. Are you ready for full retirement? That is a good question and one that you should seriously consider before deciding to retire. I was not ready, but I was lucky to go back to work. Most will not have that opportunity because of skill sets, because of health, or because of supply.

One of the first things I realized when I retired is that my income and expenses had changed. I followed the rules of thumb, and I thought I would need 70% of my final salary in retirement. I did not need that. In fact, I found I was spending between 50 and 60% of that number. Many of the expenses we have when we are working are no longer a concern. In my case, spending on gasoline, a month was reduced by two-thirds, saving hundreds of dollars.

One of the enormous expenses I have is my property taxes, but our government allows seniors to defer this tax, which many have done, again saving thousands of dollars a year. Auto insurance coverage for seniors who drive for pleasure is another expense that was reduced. So, as you sit down and try to figure out your annual spending, it is important to recognize that many of your costs will be reduced or eliminated. The amount you think you will spend will drive the decisions around how much to withdraw from your investments, and how long your money will last at that spending rate.

Besides your regular after-tax spending, you should also factor onetime expenses into your plan. In my experience, most of these expenses may include vehicle replacement, travel, home renovations, and a big one for most of us, monetary gifts to adult children or grandchildren.

Another interesting aspect of retirement is that when you first retire, your spending will be greater than later in retirement. Over the last few years, my expenses have reduced because of reduced activity, and the Pandemic. Over your retirement, your spending will not be static. It may, over time, go down. Retirement is about designing the lifestyle you want to live. It would be a shame not to use the resources you’ve saved over many years to build your ideal retirement. What you don’t want to do is have a retirement plan, where you have a lot of money in your 80s and 90s instead of spending early and enjoying your retirement while you can.

One of the most popular series of workshops we give is on “Personal Planning”. Personal Planning is end-of-life planning, making sure your will and estate planning documents, including the beneficiaries on your insurance and investment accounts, are up to date. It also includes having a Power of attorney in place along with Advanced Care Planning and Advanced Directives and Representation Agreements in place. These documents may have different names in your location, but they allow for your voice to be heard about the medical care you want in your last days.

One of the biggest areas of concern we see as we give our workshops is “what do I do now” because it’s common for one spouse to take the lead on financial matters for the household. This can be problematic if something happens to the chief financial officer of the house. They may die first or become cognitively impaired and can no longer manage their finances or investments.

Men are statistically more likely to die earlier than women. If the surviving spouse has never been involved in the finances or investments, you could leave them with an unwieldy mess. One way to resolve this issue is to make a file for when I die.

In that file include a checklist of items like notifying Service Canada of your death (for CPP and OAS), transferring registered accounts to the surviving spouse’s name, cancelling credit cards, removing your name from joint accounts and other bills, to name a few.

There’s a lot to think about in planning your retirement. When you are 1-5 years away from retiring, start thinking about your retirement. One important decision I didn’t address is how to decide on an actual retirement date. By thinking about retirement and potentially getting help from a financial planner, you’ll find out how prepared you are both psychologically and financially for retirement.

You might find you need to delay your retirement by a year or two to shore up your finances. Or you might find that you can meet all of your retirement goals and can retire much earlier.

The danger in not thinking seriously about retirement is falling into the “one-more-year” trap and continuing to work when you don’t have to, or being fixed on an early retirement date even though you won’t have enough resources to sustain your needs in retirement.