Meet Milan. He’s a 34-year-old client of ours, who lives in British Columbia, and works as an engineer. Why did he come to us? Because he read my book on high blood pressure, and needed help lowering his.
Despite being pretty young, fit and strong, he had family history loaded against him. But after reading my book, he saw that exercise and nutrition for high blood pressure is not the same as exercise and nutrition for strength, or fat loss and others. He saw the need for specificity in exercise and nutrition recommendations for high blood pressure.
And during his 4 months of working with us, he got exactly what he wanted: lower blood pressure. When he first started with us, his systolic blood pressure was in the 130s (mostly ranged in the 132-138 range), and nowadays, it hovers around 115-120. His diastolic blood pressure was in the 85-95 range, and nowadays, it hovers around 75-80. Basically, he normalized his blood pressure.
How did he do this? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this article. But if you want to hear Milan tell his own story, check out this video:
In more detail, we’ll cover:
- What Milan has tried in the past to help him lower his blood pressure
- Milan’s hesitations before starting personal training
- The exercise strategies that Meagan (Milan’s trainer) used to help him lower his blood pressure
- The nutrition and supplementation strategies that Meagan used to help him lower his blood pressure
- The side benefits that came from lowering his blood pressure.
And if you need help lowering your own blood pressure without medications, we have a special program called “Better Blood Pressure.” If you want to see whether you qualify for this program, just respond to this email with the words “Better Blood Pressure” in the subject line.
What Milan Has Tried in the Past
Even before Milan was working with us, he was pretty active and fit. For about a year and a half before he started working with us, he was already exercising both on his own, and with his personal trainer. And although he saw improvements in his physique and his strength, his stubborn blood pressure wouldn’t budge.
No surprise to me, because exercising for high blood pressure is different than exercising for strength or endurance.
Besides exercise, he’s tried a few other things to help him lower his blood pressure, most of which were unsuccessful, like:
- Reading on the internet… but there’s so much conflicting information, he wasn’t sure what was correct, and what wasn’t. I get it. That’s why I wrote a book on the topic, using medical studies to figure out what worked and what didn’t… instead of just theory and opinions.
- Breathing techniques
- Wishful thinking… as he says in his video.
Nothing really worked.
Eventually, he bought my blood pressure book on Amazon, and the engineer in him liked how systematic and methodical my approach was to lowering blood pressure.
He liked how it threw dogma out the window, and relied strictly on evidence – you test an approach to lowering blood pressure (exercise, nutrition, supplements), and see the results. If it worked, do more of it. If it didn’t work, dump it.
Sounds logical, but one of his greatest fears or hesitations going into training with us was regularly measuring his blood pressure.
But you know my shtick already: “if you’re not assessing, you are guessing.” But we’ll get into that in greater detail later in this article.
Anyways, after reading my book, he got in touch with me, and I paired him up with one of my team members (Meagan), to help him normalize his blood pressure.
And away they went.
Milan’s Hesitations
Despite getting started, Milan did have one big hesitation before he started. And that’s the fear of taking regular blood pressure measurements.
It’s understandable. You know that it’s high, so you see the need to measure, and yet it’s scary when frequent measurements tell you that some things that you really like aren’t good for your body.
But Milan understood the necessity and benefit of frequent measurements, and the results showed it.
Milan’s Exercise Strategies
At the time he started working with us, Milan was concurrently working with another personal trainer 3 times a week. But that was more on his strength. Not his blood pressure. You’d think that what helps your strength also helps your blood pressure, but that’s not always the case. If it was that simple, I wouldn’t have written my book.
So what Milan really wanted help with is exercise for blood pressure reduction.
Being a busy guy, Milan wanted to figure out what’s the least amount of exercise he can do that would lower his blood pressure. Meagan and Milan tested different durations, and it appeared that the minimum was 15 minutes. Not bad.
It appeared that just 15 minutes of cardio lowered his blood pressure by 2/4 mmHg.
Of course, he got greater reductions with longer durations (for example, 60 minutes of cardio lowered his blood pressure by 8/9 mmHg), but it was nice to know that in a pinch, he could squeeze in a 15-minute cardio session, and still have a small reduction in his blood pressure.
Much better than having the “all-or-nothing” mentality of “I either exercise for 60 minutes, or not at all.”
In addition to the physical exercises Milan was doing, he also tried breathing exercises, which really moved the needle for him as well (although to be fair, we made a number of different changes at the same time – breathing exercises, sleep and nutrition).
The breathing exercises took his blood pressure from the low 120s over 80s, into the 108-115 range over 70s.
For all intents and purposes, he now has normal blood pressure.
Milan’s Nutrition Strategies
Eating for high blood pressure is different than eating for a healthy weight, because, well… Milan was already at a healthy weight to begin with.
When it comes to fat loss, the only 2 things that matter are total calories, and total protein. Nothing else. Not your quantity of carbs (as long as it’s within the caloric budget), not the number of meals per day, and not whether or not you eat after 6.
But when it comes to high blood pressure, there are other nutrition considerations, like:
- Alcohol
- Potassium intake
- Food sensitivities
So Meagan addressed all those items with Milan. When he started working with us, in July, he had 33 drinks. Despite not really addressing alcohol initially (we would save that for later), his diastolic blood pressure dropped from the 90s, to the 80s.
In October and November, his alcohol intake was only 10-15 drinks throughout the month, and he was able to normalize his blood pressure.
Additionally, Meagan had Milan keep a food log, and weigh himself every day. Now, you know that the scale is not a great tool for body composition, because it doesn’t tell you what the weight is composed of: muscle or fat.
But the scale is a pretty useful tool for helping identify food sensitivities, by tracking water fluctuations. After all, if you wake up one morning, 2 or more pounds heavier than the previous day, you know it’s not fat or muscle. Neither fat or muscle are gained that quickly. That’s water. For some reason, something you ate the day before made your body think that it needed to retain water.
And if you just look over your food log for the previous day, it’ll give you a clue as to which foods your body doesn’t like (even though you might like them).
Using that low-tech, but high-accuracy method, Meagan was able to identify Milan’s food sensitivities.
After he reduced the foods that caused his weight to spike, what do you know – his blood pressure came down as well.
Besides those 2 strategies, Meagan had Milan preparing more of his meals, instead of eating out. Since he prepares his meals, he puts more thought into them, and therefore, they have a higher protein content.
Milan’s Supplements
Our supplement recommendations are based on a few factors:
- A thorough, 321-symptom questionnaire that we give to most clients
- Whether it’s proven to work in people (there are lots of ingredients on the market that are ineffective… but that doesn’t stop supplement companies from adding them to pills). In all of the books that I write, the supplement chapter explains which ingredients are proven, which are unproven, and which are disproven. And about 70% of the supplements that claim to do something, there’s either no evidence of that, or worse – evidence to the contrary.
- Actual results – the client takes it, and we see what the results are. Just because a supplement works in a large population, it doesn’t mean that it will work in that specific person. Hence why you need to measure something to see whether indeed what you’re giving is working. In Milan’s case, it was easy. He measured his blood pressure.
So even before Milan started working with us, he loved supplements, but he took a bunch of things at the same time. So he wasn’t sure what was having an effect, and what wasn’t.
But using the systematic approach of only taking one supplement at a time, and testing the results seemed to be very beneficial for him.
All in all, the supplements he was taking (some were recommended by Meagan, some, he got from my book, and some were recommended by his naturopath) were:
- Garlic (AKA allicin AKA aged garlic extract)
- Potassium
- Fish oil
- Vitamin E
- Mukta vati
The garlic, fish oil, and vitamin E appeared to be effective. The potassium wasn’t, so they stopped using it. Hence the need for measurements – works in a large population, but doesn’t work in this specific person.
The mukta vati (it’s a combination of herbs and spices) worked particularly well. He used it when he knew there would be long stretches when he couldn’t stick to his diet (like on a holiday). Despite his diet not being perfect during this time, his blood pressure stayed good.
That’s one benefit that I really like about supplements – contrary to people whose religion is “nutrition”, who say that you have to make dietary changes first for supplements to be effective, Milan’s case study (and in general, scientific evidence) shows that even when the diet isn’t perfect, this supplement worked to preserve a healthy blood pressure.
Once he was able to get back on a good diet for high blood pressure, he stopped using the supplement.
It’s nice to know that in a pinch, there’s an effective supplement out there.
How Milan’s Life is Different Now
So how is Milan’s life different now that he went from a blood pressure of around 135/90, to nowadays, 115/75? Quite significantly.
- Now, Milan has a better understanding of how his body works. He knows what conditions (foods, and otherwise) raise his blood pressure, and what he needs to do to lower it.
- He’s motivated! Lifestyle changes were pretty hard in the beginning, but results came pretty quickly. When you see results, you feel like your efforts are paying off. So you do more of them.
- Now, things like cooking at home is second nature, whereas before, it was a struggle.
- Now that his blood pressure his normal, his stress levels are lower. One thing that previous stressed him out is his high blood pressure. Now, that stressor is off the table. But along with the behaviors that brought about normal blood pressure came reductions in stress in other areas of his life, like work.
Despite being a smart, educated, driven guy to begin with, he couldn’t get a handle on his blood pressure, for the simple reason that he lacked both accountability, and a methodical approach of getting him there. There’s lots of free advice on the internet about how to lower your blood pressure. But what Milan needed was:
- Out of the many different ways to lower blood pressure (my book alone covers 4 methods), which of those is likely to yield the largest results, in the shortest period of time, with the least effort.
- An accountability partner: someone who will be by your side, to whom you have to report how you’re doing with your exercise and nutrition.
- Certainty that what you’re doing is working. Certainty comes from regular measurements.
And that’s why Milan enrolled in our “Better Blood Pressure” program. If you want help with your own blood pressure, just respond to this email with the subject line “Better Blood Pressure.”
