The name “silent killer” tends to get your attention … there are no real symptoms, and most people never even know they’re at risk until high blood pressure strikes.
And then there are those numbers. You have your blood pressure measured and you get a result. But is 126 good? Is 95 bad? What do those numbers even mean? Hard to keep track, for sure.
But a study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston tracked it, and looked into what happened to 88,000 people who had high blood pressure. The researchers were trying to cut through the jargon and the numbers and identify the most frequent ways high blood pressure kills.
Here’s what they found:
Your biggest risk occurs when your systolic pressure is over 150.
Systolic pressure is the top number in blood pressure readings – the force when your heart is contracting. Diastolic pressure is the bottom number, the force when the heart relaxes between beats.
Researchers say that in people whose systolic blood pressures were between 130 and 150, they did not find a significant increase in heart disease risk. But for people whose pressure was over 150, the chances of a heart attack, stroke and dying did increase seriously.
The upshot is that if that top number, your systolic pressure, is rising, you’re riding a wave toward heart attack and stroke.
So what can you do to bring it down?
Don’t ask a doctor. They don’t know how to cure it
Sure, they’ll prescribe you a blood pressure drug … which won’t work so well. Only 42.9% of people actually lower their blood pressure acceptably with these drugs. [1]
Then, instead of trying something else, they double or triple down, prescribing a second or third drug. That’s the protocol they’re taught to follow. [2]
Here’s something much easier. Olive leaf extract
One study gave people 500 mg of olive leaf extract twice a day. After only 8 weeks, their systolic blood pressure went down as much as -11.5 mmHg. [3]
Why? It could be because of the oleuropein content in olive leaf extract, which brings systolic blood pressure under control
One bonus you get with OLE is that it lowers triglycerides. This gives your arteries a huge boost. It allows your endothelium– the one cell-thick lining of your blood vessels that maintains normal blood pressure – to work properly
You can take olive leaf extract in a pill, but it also works if you drink it in tea. Use the fresh leaves, not dried, for best results
[Editor’s Note: Not every solution works for everyone … but there are plenty more natural ways to lower your blood pressure and avoid mainstream medicine’s pill mill. Click here for a special medical report. You’ll learn how to lower high blood pressure naturally even if everything else you’ve done so far has failed, PLUS the five myths that put your heart at risk. Click here now!]
[1] “American Society of Hypertension 15th scientific meeting. Abstracts.” Am J Hypertens. 2000;13(4 Pt 2):1A-346A.
[2] Seedat Y, Rayner B. “South African hypertension guideline 2011.” S Afr Med J. 2011;102(1 Pt 2):57-83.
[3] Perrinjaquet-Moccetti T, et. al. “Food supplementation with an olive (Olea europaea L.) leaf extract reduces blood pressure in borderline hypertensive monozygotic twins.” Phytother. Res.2008;22:1239-42.
