In the quest to control blood pressure, doctors around the world write more than 120 million prescriptions a year for what are called thiazide drugs, medication that takes salt out of the body. But in many cases, these drugs don’t do their intended job.
The reason these drugs can fail: They are supposed to move salt through the kidney to relieve the pressure that salt and fluid exert on the heart and blood vessels. But the kidneys, sensing that the body is losing salt that is needed for other functions, can resist the induced elimination process.
Until now, the ways in which the kidneys resisted thiazides was unknown, but now researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine along with scientists at Vanderbilt University and Emory University have uncovered what occurs.
“This is the first time we really understand how this process works,” says researcher Paul Welling, an expert on electrolytes, kidney disease and hypertension. “It’s as if the kidney knows that it’s losing too much salt and activates mechanisms to retain salt in other ways.”
They should have known … the process is called homeostasis. Your body wants to remain stable, and will try to overcome what you’re doing or ingesting by compensating for it. Thiazides are just one example of why using drugs that upset the body’s balance so often go wrong.
In general, to stay healthy, you are much better working with the body than against it. Methods to lower blood pressure that work together with the body’s processes are almost always preferable to drugs.
Three natural ways to lower blood pressure include:
- Cook with sesame oil or rice bran oil. Research in India shows that eating foods with these oils often works to improve blood pressure just as effectively as pharmaceuticals.
- Drink beetroot juice. Tests at Penn State show that beetroot juice contain nitrates, natural chemicals that widen blood vessels and lower blood pressure.
- Cut back on sugary foods. Studies show that over-consumption of sugar raises blood pressure. Particularly dangerous: high fructose corn syrup.
