High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious symptom which can lead to strokes and heart attacks, so we don’t want to have high blood pressure.
I have had that problem for a number of years, but mostly ignored it which you should not do.
The Keto * Low-Carb eating plan of itself usually lowers your blood pressure just fine, to the point that experienced doctors often advise high blood pressure patients starting lowcarb to cut their blood pressure medication dose in half to prevent overly low blood pressures.
But what if you still have high blood pressure, or develop it later into your Keto life? You may have to go with a prescription medication. You will probably find that your medication does its job best when you are ALSO faithful to your lowcarb plan.
I have a home blood pressure machine which measures at the wrist. I measure my blood pressure every morning when I measure my blood sugar (T2 diabetes) and check my state of ketosis with a Ketonix breath ketone analyzer. I write these measurements down in a notebook.
When I go for an appointment with my PA, I copy down about a week's worth of blood pressure and blood sugar readings to give to her.
I have been on the medication amlodipine since my stroke last February. My PA thought my blood pressure was still too high, so doubled my dose recently. It really helped.
Another thing that really helped is garlic. I had purchased Kyolic garlic capsules and took them until I ran out. When I ran out, my blood pressures went a little higher. I tried eating garlic cloves, but I couldn’t face another raw garlic clove and tried roasted garlic cloves. I could actually face eating these, but they didn’t have as nice an effect on my blood pressure.
I estimate that the Kyolic garlic lowered my blood pressure by about the same amount as the earlier, 5mg dose of amlodipine did. Since I have been taking garlic in some form all this time, I don’t know for sure whether the numbers I get now on the 10mg amlodipine are just from the amlodipine or from the amlodipine plus garlic, but the evidence would seem to support that it is both.
Since I don’t care to be on more medication than I have to be, I’m looking to buy a new bottle of Kyolic once I have the money to do so. Sadly, Medicaid does not pay for a supplement, even if recommended by a doctor, like it pays for prescription drugs.
I also want to keep up eating my roasted garlic cloves. I am going to roast them for a shorter time the next time, to preserve the medicinal elements. One reason for doing this is that I like doing things in a natural way or a home-made way. The second reason is that my Food Stamp benefits can be used on garlic, and in addition when spring comes I plan to plant some garlic and grow my own.
For practical reasons I also want to keep taking the Kyolic garlic. I can take that even if my health deteriorates to the point where regularly roasting garlic is a chore.
I also plan to keep taking my amlodipine even though taking prescription meds chains me to the medical-industrial complex. My stroke showed me that high blood pressure is nothing to ignore.
Healthy days to you,
Nissa Annakindt
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