PPI #37: How To Avoid the World's #1 Health Risk

Do you know what the number one killer is of people in the world? It's not wars, it's not violence. It's actually high blood pressure. High blood pressure leads to more deaths in the world than anything else. And it's because it results in cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes. And today I wanted to share with you how I went from having high, high blood pressure to actually normal, sometimes even low blood pressure and without the use of any medications at all. And the reason I'm sharing this is because this is known as a silent killer. A lot of us don't realize that our blood pressure is slowly elevating throughout life, and then suddenly something bad happens. And I wouldn't want any of that, something like that, to happen to you. Hi, my name is Eric Partaker, and I help coaches, CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders, individuals reach their full potential in life. And when I look at peak performance, when I am trying to help somebody achieve their highest potential, I can't just look at what's going on on the field. You know, if we use sports as an analogy, I have to look at what's going on off the field as well. And so that's why I very regularly pull health in as a domain in a coaching relationship with someone. But I need to give you a very important disclaimer for today's. Today's share here, and that is, is that I'm just sharing what I've done, right? I am by no means saying that you should do all of these things yourself. And there's a very important reason for that. If, for example, you're on blood pressure medications, and if you were to implement some of these things and suddenly lower your blood pressure, which your blood pressure medications are doing as well, it could get to a dangerously low level. So today I'm sharing what I've done to lower my blood pressure. I hope that it's something that might inspire an idea for you. And if you are in a situation where you're on blood pressure medications, then take these ideas to your doctor and come up with your plan for how you might experiment with these ideas in a controlled, safe way. And then if it, you know, creates a situation where you're able to come off of your medications, brilliant, amazing. But you have to do that in combination with consultation from your doctor. So let me go ahead and share with you how I went from high blood pressure to normal without any medications whatsoever. The very first thing that I did, and I know this sounds quite basic and perhaps, you know, not super insightful, but I bought a blood Pressure machine. You can go onto Amazon, you'll find loads of machines on there. Just get one, get it delivered to your house. What gets measured, gets done. And it's only by measuring your blood pressure and then seeing the impact of the different changes that I'll be discussing today that you can actually start to see the improvement or see what's working for you. Number two, the second thing I did was I discovered hibiscus tea. Now I use an organic blend of hibiscus tea. I also just get that from Amazon and I drink five tea bags in a single tea. I don't drink this tea as if it's a sipping tea or as if it's something, oh, I'm just going to enjoy this for the next hour. I kind of think of it as medication. You know, I'm taking a pill and I'm not going to sit there with a pillow or a tablet or with some cough syrup and swish it around in my mouth and kind of drink that or cut it up and eat it over time. Right. It's kind of one done. So that's the same thing I do with this. So in the morning I take five bags of hibiscus tea, I put it into a teacup. I actually use room temperature filtered water. I don't use water that's too hot or boiling because that can damage some of the organic properties within the tea. And I just let that sit, I let that sit for about five minutes. It gets quite strong. Take a spoon, put it into the teacup, I squeeze the bags against, you know, the inside of the teacup to get even more of those positive effects of the hibiscus tea out. And then I literally just kind of take it in one go and then I refill it with some water and I let it sit there and I let it seep again for another 30 minutes. Now first one just takes a few minutes, but another 30 minutes, it's almost like a second dose and then I go ahead and drink that tea as well. The next thing that I did was I eliminated salt from my diet. I mean zero, zero added salt. So.

Let me explain what I mean there. So if you go out and if you're eating a meal in a restaurant or if you're buying a ready made meal, it's very difficult to get away from all the salt that restaurants use that you'll find in packaged goods. But one of the things that you could be doing, of course, is eating less of that, but also not adding any salt, additional salt to the meals that you're making because you're getting more than enough in all of those other instances. So I just stopped adding salt to any of the meals that I made at home. Some people in my family still prefer to have salt, but they add that in separately after the meal is made, rather than adding it to the meal as part of the meal. The next thing that I did was I stopped adding sugar to any meals or just eating sugar on a daily basis. Full size. Yeah, occasionally I'll have that donut or that piece of cake or the ice cream or the candy bar. But I became a lot more conscious of making sure that I wasn't doing that every single day and that it was becoming more of a once in a while experience. And the reason this is important is because sugar promotes inflammation in the body. And if you think about what's happening from a high blood pressure point of view, when you have high blood pressure, the, you know, the insides of your arteries.

They'Re narrowed and that's creating more pressure going through the pipe, right? Because the blood is flowing through a narrower space. And sugar just promotes more inflammation throughout the body. So as things become more inflamed, those passageways can become even more narrow. That can contribute to even higher blood pressure. Sugar also promotes weight gain, which we'll get to later, which is another contributor to a high blood pressure. The next thing that I did was I eliminated dairy and lowered my consumption of meat. So animal products is essentially what I'm talking about here. In the book that I referenced earlier, the book how not to Die, he draws a relationship, an evidence based relationship between the consumption, a high consumption of animal products and higher blood pressure. The more animal products you eat, the higher your blood pressure. Now, I had eliminated dairy not just for this reason, but also because it just helped me from a congestion point of view. I felt a lot clearer in my airways. And then the meat consumption is. Whereas meat used to be a big part of every single meal, there will be days when I have no meat, and then when I do have meat, I try to make sure that it's almost like more of a secondary role on my plate rather than the primary role. So that has, I believe, has had a positive impact on my blood pressure as well. The next thing that I've done, and this is like a bit of a several things in combination here, so I have, every morning.

Shortly after I have that hibiscus tea, I just have in a small bowl, 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed. Why ground flaxseed? Because flaxseed contains omega 3s. Omega 3s are a particular type of fatty acid which fight inflammation. One of the things that we're trying to do here is fight inflammation throughout the body, which can have a positive effect on lowering blood pressure. So I add three tablespoons of the flaxseed and then I put a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. Why these two things? Because turmeric also has strong anti inflammatory properties and we need black pepper to really make sure that that's being activated properly in the body. And then I just put a dash of oat milk in there, again non dairy, and eat that as part of my daily routine. Put enough oat milk in there, you can kind of swish it around and literally almost just drink it down. The next thing that I did was I eliminated alcohol. Now I know that you might be thinking, oh gosh, how can I do that? Well, any reduction that you can make in alcohol consumption will have a positive impact on your blood pressure. Why? Because alcohol once again creates an inflammatory environment within our bodies. And as we have inflammation in our bodies, we're getting more restriction of the arterial passageways, right? So the pipe that the blood is going through is becoming more constricted, which is increasing the pressure or the flow, as you can imagine, through that pipe. Just take, for example, a water hose, right? We all know that if you take a water hose and if you suddenly kind of, you know, kink the end of it, right? We're narrowing the passageway and it increases the pressure, the water coming out. Same thing is going on with the blood pressure in, in the water hose, in the arteries within your body. So by eliminating alcohol, I notice also a big drop in my blood pressure. But again, any less amount, you know, any, any moderation that you can bring to alcohol, drinking less will definitely help. So, so think about that as well. And then the final thing that I did was I just focused on losing about 10 pounds of belly fat. So working a lot in an office sitting environment, I find myself not moving around, as I'm sure many of you can relate to as much as I would like. And without a conscious effort to exercise that fat, it starts to accumulate and it just stays there. And so I really, really, really proud and determined to have my exercise routine, which is about five times a week in the morning, making sure I'm getting some cardiovascular activity, maybe together with some strength training. It doesn't need to be going to the gym necessarily. You know, it can be sit ups, you know, body squats, you know, push ups, whatever that you prefer, just to get some momentum, you know, some movement going in your body and make sure that we're losing some of that fat, you know, around the waist. And that also has been shown to help lower our blood pressure. End result for me is that I went from having a blood pressure that was regularly over 140 over 85, which is high all the way down to at times, you know, 103 over 65, often around 110 over 70, sometimes up to 115 over 75. But. But the key thing is that I got it below that 120 over 80, which is the marker for where you want to be to have low normal blood pressure. We want to be lower than that. Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because once again, blood pressure is the silent killer. High blood pressure is the number one killer for people throughout the world. You don't know that it's happening. If you haven't checked your blood pressure, please do. And if you found anything that I shared today with how I lowered my blood pressure, then you might want to think about pursuing something similar for yourself. Trying something out again. Quick disclaimer. If you are on any blood pressure medications, you should absolutely consult your doctor before doing any of these suggestions. But I hope you found this useful. Entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, people are really striving to reach their full potential in life. Those type A personalities can also attract that high blood pressure. So we have to make sure that we're managing this as well in our quest to become our very best. I hope you enjoyed this. And if you head over to my website@ericpartaker.com, you can also subscribe to my weekly newsletter.