The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition he...

No, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, we finish our three-part series on the heart, will give you the latest information on how you can control your blood pressure, plus later we'll find out what's happening around town, but first up, we continue our series on heart health. And joining us today is nutritional consultant and certified natural health professional, Valerie Hall.

Valerie appears in front of thousands of people each year and speaks on a variety of topics, as well as giving many seminars at mother's market, she's such a wealth of health and nutritional knowledge, we wanna get right to her.

Welcome back, Valerie, how are you?

I'm doing great, thank you for having me back. Before we get to today's topic, please feel our audience in on your background in nutrition. I've been studying for about 17 years, and the longer I study nutrition, the more I realize that everything we've been told is wrong, so I'd like to clarify things and tell people what the real deal is for food and for supplements and ways we can support our health naturally, today, we conclude our series on heart health, heart disease is the leading cause of death among men and women in the United States, we've tackled circulation and cholesterol. Today we're going to learn about blood pressure balancing, our blood pressure is a common problem, are... What are some of the factors that influence blood pressure?

Well, there are quite a few things, food, in fact, one study showed that about 80% of people see a benefit in their blood pressure when they give up starch and sugar and increased vegetables, so there's strategy number one change what you're eating. The next thing that can really involve blood pressure is stress, because stress is supposed to raise blood sugar, it's a normal physiological response when the cortisol hormone, the stress hormone gets released, that gets us ready for fight or flight, and it clamps down the little muscles around the capillaries and the blood vessels, so that automatically raises blood pressure, the problem arises when we're stressed out all the time, and then blood pressure stays high all the time, plaque in the arteries, when that cholesterol plaque gets out of control, it really starts to narrow the tubes through which our blood can flow, and then that can raise the blood pressure... Hardening of the arteries also will raise blood pressure, this is a calcification issue where calcium can get into the arterial walls and the cholesterol plaque, and then it's like the arteries are lined with cement and they can't expand and contract the way they're supposed to, and there's a new study on vitamin K2 as menace, which shows that it helps to remove calcium from the arteries and get it back on the bone, so you can find that brand under doctor's best vitamins at mother's market, they're vitamin K-2.So if you already have calcium in the arteries, that's an excellent nutritional strategy to benefit, and then the other thing is salt intake, salt, sodium and potassium are influenced in what they call the sodium, potassium pump, sodium pump fluid into cells and potassium pumps it out.

So if you have too much sodium or not enough potassium, then you can really end up putting too much pressure in the cell, which actually raises pressure throughout the whole system, so very interesting that that sodium can sometimes be involved, and then the thickness of blood is also involved if the blood is getting thicker and stickier, either because of dehydration or high blood sugar or too much fibrin and sticky guide in the blood itself, then that can also raise blood pressure, so those are some of the main causes of high blood pressure.

Wow. Well, it sounds very detailed then you gave a good description, what are the potential problems in the body itself that can lead to high blood pressure, one of the issues is how much blood volume, or in other words, how much blood we have in the body, one of the issues for people as we gain weight, if we become larger, then we have more blood because we need it to get oxygen nutrients to all those cells, and that increases blood pressure, that's why weight and blood pressure are very strongly linked, the resistance of the walls of the blood vessels, so if you've got a lot of uneven, a lot of gunk in there, plaque perhaps, or calcium in the arteries, that causes more resistance to the blood flow itself, and that can also raise be a problem for high blood pressure, the thickness of the fluid as I mentioned earlier, so we wanna keep that blood flowing smoothly, we want it to the right viscosity and not too thick, so those are some of the actual body features that might lead to high blood pressure, so when you talk about... Wait, you're actually talking about my physical body weight, so blood volume, weight physical, that's why I should keep my body weight down.

Absolutely, in fact, there's a huge link between weight gain, blood pressure and heart health in general, and blood sugar, those three are all very interconnected.

Okay, okay, I understand. So how has blood pressure measured and what are the number ranges... Blood pressures sometimes refer to his arterial blood pressure, and it's actually the pressure exerted by circulating blood upon the walls of the blood vessels, it's what in the principal of Vital Signs, and during each heartbeat, the blood pressure varies between a maximum, which is called the systolic, and a minimum called the diastolic pressure, there are a lot of things that affect this and people can have varying blood pressure even during the same day, if they get stressed out, then their blood pressure will go up, gravity can also affect blood pressure, so that's why sometimes people feel faint when they go from sitting to standing, and that's a blood pressure variation that can happen, and then it's actually too pronounced when that's happening, the valves in the veins and how well they're able to return the blood up to the heart can also be involved. Breathing also affects our blood pressure, deep breathing is one of the best things we can do. Nice slow, deep breaths, very calming for blood pressure, and then also the pumping from our Skeletor muster, so when we exercise, that tends to influence the pressure in our veins as well.

Okay, well, I never know what those numbers mean. So how do you figure that out?

Well, there's a whole group of different things in the way that they label it, so here's what the normal blood pressure is supposed to be, the systolic, or the first number should be between 90 and 119, and the second number of our diastolic should be between 60 and 79, those are considered normal.

If it is considered low blood pressure, which does affect some people, sometimes from weakness in the heart, but sometimes it's not really considered a problem unless it's causing symptoms, and low blood pressure is considered any systolic that is less than 90, and any diastolic that is less than the number 60, and then they have a variety of different ranges pre-hypertension, which is 120 to 139, over 80 to 89, that kind of thing, and then they've got stage one, two and hypertensive crisis, which they consider the systolic being over 180 and the diastolic being over 110.So those are some of the different classifications, they have a really nice chart on Wikipedia if you want to take a look at that for your own knowledge.

Well, thanks. Thank you, Valerie. Great information, and right now it's time to take a quick break and more on heart health with Valerie, just a minute, stay with us, or welcome back to the mother's market radio show, and we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can always find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the podcast from our website, mother's market dot com, click on the link for radio and listen to past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now, back to our interview with nutritional consultant Valerie Hall, we're talking about blood pressure as it relates to heart health, Valerie, what do you suggest as a strategy to promote normal blood pressure?

There are quite a few things we can do. First of all, we can choose better food, of course, very important, we can avoid those starches and sugars and get a lot more vegetables in that would be an key to supporting normal blood pressure, reduce stress, and we'll talk about some strategies for that here in a moment. Drink plenty of water and avoid that soda pop boy, SOTA is just a destructive force, it's gonna be hurting the blood pressure in terms of creating too much sugar in the blood, which increases the viscosity, which is harder for the heart to pump. Avoid traditional table salt, boy, we shouldn't be eating that at all, I really like a variety of The good sea salts, pink, Kamala assault Celtic salt, very healthy, but even though should be restricted if you've already been... If you already have some sort of an issue with high blood pressure and then... But they have a lot of really good herbal combinations and they have some at mother's market, so you can still give your food a lot of taste without the sodium of the table salt, and then there's of course, a variety of nutritional support that we're gonna discuss, so there's a lot of things we can do to help to promote normal blood pressure in the body, that's all great information. What are some of the things that we can do to decrease stress, first thing, avoid caffeine, caffeine is a huge stress producer in the body, and if you're sensitive, then your coffee and things like that, so to pop, even chocolate, I'm sorry for that piece of bad news but don't cry, it's okay.

Those can be a problem for stress because they put us on edge, we should do only drink caffeine at certain times of the day, and our early risers or... Should be avoided all together. What is your advice there?

It really all depends on the person. We all have varying sensitivities to that, and too much caffeine isn't good for anybody, but it's highly addictive. It's very addictive. So when I was in college, I started drinking coffee, and by the time I was done, I was drinking five cups a day, hoops, and then I learned about nutrition and I gave that up and I am switched to tea, which I only have maybe one or two cups of tea per day, so I've definitely... And I drink a lot of water, and that's really... That's the beverage of choice. When I used to give that to my daughters in their lunch, they'd say, Why can't we have a sugary drink like all of our friends, but if you have to have it, it doesn't matter if you drink it in the morning, what's the best answer?

If you're gonna drink, you're caffeine at night, it's gonna really interfere with your sleep for most people, so definitely... And most people can handle one cup of coffee in the morning, some can't, and if you have blood pressure considerations, it certainly might be a good idea to experiment with your own body and see if you don't do better, if people do have already existing blood pressure considerations I highly recommend they get a blood pressure cuff and do some testing at home, because since stress can raise blood pressure, sometimes people get that white collar effect when they go into the doctor's office and they're stressed out, Oh no, what's my blood pressure gonna be? And they get stressed out and it makes their blood pressure raised, so there's a get one at home and test, because it can be a different... At different times of day, there are a lot of things that influence that the circadian rhythm of our sleep patterns, a lot of things might potentially influence, so figuring out where it is at home, maybe testing after eating certain foods, because food sensitivities can also cause some problems in artificial food chemicals, things like that, some other things we can do to help to avoid stress would be avoiding those food chemicals because those food dye in the particular is an artificial sweeteners end up being extremely detrimental to us in a variety of different ways.

Another thing that's good to keep in mind, don't over commit yourself, My goodness, do we ever fall into that trap here sometimes and... Oh, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that. And soon, ever, you've got so much on your plate, it's hard to get anything done, so don't over commit deep breathing is a great, great help for your blood pressure and for the way you feel, it only takes about a minute for your blood to travel from the heart all the way through the system and back to the heart again, so nothing can help you feel better faster than deep breaths, so it's a wonderful thing when you lay down to go to bed at night and and so forth.

And then there are a variety of wonderful slow stretching exercises, particularly yoga and Tai Chi, if I do my yoga a couple of times a week, my stress levels are down for the entire week, so it's an excellent way to help combat stress. I highly recommend those. There's a variety of supplements, we're gonna discuss magnesium, sunshine L trip to fan Kimmel T. there are a lot of things we can do to decrease our stress, magnesium is a nice relaxers in general for both body and mind and for cramping, it's also recommended for normal blood pressure because it helps to relax the little blood vessels that are... The muscles around the blood vessels, so in addition to that, it helps with stress, feelings of stress and anxiety and worry, so I love magnesium. Get the one by doctors best vitamins that is a mother's market called High absorption magnesium. It is head and shoulders above the others when it comes to absorption, and it's very gentle on the digestive tract, so it's a great magnesium, How much magnesium should we take and do we need to take calcium along with it? You don't need calcium if you're taking magnesium, but if you're taking calcium, then you do need magnesium, I like at least 400 milligrams a day, and a lot of people feel better at 600 milligrams a day, but you may wanna start slow and build up if you have a sensitive digestive track and let your body get used to more magnesium even in the more gentle one by doctor's best, but excellent for stress in general. Sunshine is a wonderful one, and you can find this at mother's market by natural factors, and sunshine is a trademark name of the amino acid L, The Anime, which is extracted from green tea leaves, it promotes mental calmness and focus without making you drowsy... Perfect for day time stress, you can drive, you can go to work and go to school. It's great for kids who are a little too active as well, so magnesium in something or excellent supplement for stress.

Now, can we get something... And green tea, how does that work?

You can... That's one of the components, but you do also get a little caffeine with the green tea as well, so they kind of offset each other a bit, but you can get the plane something as a supplement, both as a Coble wafer or as a capsule, El trip to fan is now available, and that's at mother's market as well, and that's excellent for sleep because it promotes a serotonin and then that turns into melatonin when the light stop setting our eyes and helps us with our sleep patterns, and don't underestimate the value of good old fashioned chamomile tea, great for stress, and that's something you can drink at night, and how can you make that taste better for the kids... Yes, you can get some vanilla Devi drops and those are available at mothers and just two drops of vanilla in that chamomile tea makes it taste great, they also make one by celestial seasons, it's called their honey vanilla chamomile tea, and it tastes great.

Yeah. You gotta make it taste better for the kids, it's all about the kids.

So, Valerie, what are the top nutritional supplements you can recommend to promote healthy blood pressure? Well, there's magnesium, which is the first one we recommend it, and I like the one by doctor's best there is very absorbable Albion minerals, and that relaxes the little muscles around the blood vessels, and it's very important for heart beat rhythm as well.

Next large, Arjen is sometimes referred to as a vasodilation, which means it makes the veins and arteries expand, so that really is very helpful for blood pressure.

So L R. Janine is good for circulation in general, and you can find several brands of that at mother's market, does that mean plaque won't build that?

What it means is that it is expanding so that now you don't have as much pressure against the arterial walls and the vein wall, so by expanding and opening up circulation, blood pressure goes up when those things get tight, when the muscles are clamping down, and so this arginine promotes the production of nitric oxide, and nitric oxide naturally relaxes the little muscles around the blood vessels.

So the next one on my list is naoki ese. naoki NAS can really help when there's too much thickness in the blood, it's a specific enzyme from the fermented soy food called NATO, and it eats up the... When there's excessive amounts of fibrin or fibrin that's cross-linking with protein, and that's the building block of a blood clot, so it can really help with the viscosity of blood and keeping it thinner so that it circulates... Well, remember that the thickness of the blood also influences blood pressure because then it becomes more difficult for the heart to pump and it has a pump harder...

Alfalfa is a wonderful support. What a miracle plant alfalfa is, and you can get this in capsules or tablets, it's fairly inexpensive, and it's an excellent potassium donor, so alfalfa helps to... With that sodium potassium balance in the body, it's also very Alain as a nutrient because it's a green... Atop is an interesting plant because the root just keeps growing down lower and lower and pulling up more and more minerals while they chop the tops off all the time, but the roots just keep going deeper and deeper.

And let me ask you, how do you know when you're balanced with, how do you know when you don't have enough sodium or potassium, sometimes testing procedures show that at a doctor's office and sometimes after people have a heart event, doctor says, Yes, you need to restrict and sometimes they don't say that, so it is very... I'm not sure exactly why they come to which conclusion, but sometimes they look at the blood and see that there's not enough potassium or too much sodium, etcetera, but sodium is kind of misunderstood, but when it comes to regular table salt, don't be afraid of sodium and vegetables we need that. It's one of our major alkaline minerals in fact, so it's not that sodium is bad, it's just that it's a flip side of potassium, so when people have either too much sodium or not enough potassium, I really like alfalfa as an excellent supplement for them.

Does it matter what age you are and how much sodium you intake, I'm glad that you brought that up because age automatically increases our blood pressure, and yet they try to get people who are older down to the ranges when they were 30, and no one's gonna have the same blood pressure at 60 or 70 that they had when they were 30, and so it's a natural thing for blood pressure to go up a little bit, and keep in mind the blood pressure is there to deliver oxygen and nutrients to all of ourselves, and that's an important thing, again, our body is always trying to do what it thinks is right, but managing things in terms of, you know, preventing the interference, preventing the foods that are perhaps interfering, taking a few key nutritional supplements that can really support, I think make a big difference. But yes, it may be a good idea to decrease the amount of salt that you use as you get older, or at least make sure that you're choosing a healthy or salt and not... 'cause some of these salts are actually quite good for us, traditional table salt is not, okay to... Absolutely, and then a couple of other supplements that are really good to promote healthy blood pressure, vitamin K2, as I mentioned earlier, helped to remove the calcium from the arteries in a new study that was published by the trademarked ingredient of vitamin K2 called manicure. And I would recommend going to their website if you want more information on that, I spelled... Manna is Mena, and then the letter queue, and then the number seven menace, and that's the type of vitamin K2 that doctor's best has in mother's market.

And lastly, celery seed, as I mentioned in an earlier program, there are some natural diuretics and diuretics help us to excrete water from the system, and they include celery, so eating salary or using a seller receipt supplement or watermelon is another good natural diuretic and beer that's our good use for beer.

That's why we went to the bathroom all the time when we start to drink beer, so those are some of the nutritional supports that we might use to help maintain healthy blood pressure, so in the words of my classic producer, Mike... So tab on the three-part series on the heart, what are the main things that you can do for your heart, those would be number one fish oil or some sort of an omega-3 from the ocean. I think that's just key, and I like about 3000 milligrams a day of fish oil with a lot of DHA in it, I think those are gonna be some good strategies.

There are a lot of good brands at mother's Nordic Naturals, Carlson ascent, doctor's best has an excellent kalamata factor, so there are some very good ones out there.

Next thing I would like to see is cockpit is such a valuable nutrient for the heart and muscle itself, and number three, magnesium, because of its impact on the heartbeat rhythm on the blood pressure balance in the body on stress, I think it's one of the... It's one of the key deficiencies in our country, so if people just wanted to go with three things that would be very supportive for their health, fish oil, magnesium and Co-Q10 and keep up exercise and don't stress too much. Eat right, absolutely right. We... We wanna be chill, we wanna be having a good time, we wanna be avoiding the starch and sugar and eating a lot of vegetables, that's a great support for overall heart health, so those are some great strategies to promote Healthy Heart in the body.

Thank you so much, Valerie, for your time. We really appreciate your knowledge, and of course we look forward to having you on again, but in the meantime, you can get more information on Valerie on her website, Valerie Hall, nutrition dot com, and learn more about her natural approach to making us all healthier. And of course, we look forward to our next visit.

Thank you so much.

Or if you've ever enjoyed the delicious food inside our kitchen, you may have tried this tasty dish, now you can make it yourself, this recipe is for black being chilly with Lyme cream sauce. The preparation time is about 30 minutes and it makes six servings, you start with a pound of cooked black beans, one half cup, white anion diced, one half cup... Green bell pepper diced one half cup. red bell pepper died, one cup, fresh diced tomatoes, two tablespoons olive oil, one tablespoon human, three cloves of garlic peeled and missed one teaspoon, chilly powder. One teaspoon paprika, one teaspoon a Regina, one teaspoon to VASA sauce, one bunch of fresh cilantro mint and two cups of tomato pre-canned, there's also lime cream sauce, which contains one cup of low fat or cream, the juice from one line and great east from half of a lime.

So the first step is to clean your black beans and place them on a pot filled three quarters of the way with water and you cook them on the stove over a low fire for approximately one hour or until soft in the middle and drain the water and set your black beans aside and in the pot, you're going to place the olive oil and add the garlic and spices until fragrant at all the vegetables and cook Five, 8 minutes or until tender, then add back in the black beans the tomato puree and tabasco. Allow all the ingredients to over low fire for 25 minutes served with two table spoons of the line cream sauce on the top, and it goes great with Mexican-style rice and a salad, this is black being chilly with lime cream sauce. My mother's marketing I... Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition... Oo-In a thano.