I happen to think that blogs like this one are a public service, because they at least try to get people thinking. However, even a cranky old sort like me likes to talk about something more immediately useful once in a while.

I’m… um…. past the halfway point (how’s that for a euphemism) and showing some signs of wear and tear. A lot of them, I must simply put up with. Some are dangerous. Most are inconvenient. When I find a product or a service or a method that alleviates the dangerous or the merely inconvenient aspects of getting older, I like to pass them on.

Now, I am not a scientist and never have been (I’m also not a lawyer, but that’s another discussion), but the wanna-bee inside me does respect evidence-based, repeatable, statistically valid claims and assertions. From a scientific perspective, anecdotal “evidence” is not worth the electrons it is printed on (so to speak).

The problem is that not everything that shows signs of possibly being useful is likely to be rigorously investigated and brought to market before I kick the bucket. Or contrarily, if it’s not as good as claimed (or is actively harmful), it’s also not necessarily going to be debunked by good science before I’m past caring. I care right now. Therefore, like many other people, and perhaps foolishly, I pay attention to some of the anecdotal health-related stuff, when it seems to suggest it could do me some good. Besides, the scientific powers-that-be (PTB) are stretched thin enough that they can’t investigate everything, so they pay more attention when things become popular or are shown to have interesting possibilities. Thus, there’s at least some value in pursuing the anecdotally helpful herbal (and other alternative) approaches to this-and-that health concern - whether it turns out to be truly, verifiably, statistically significantly useful, or whether we foolish adopters turn out to be the horrible example that finally convinces other folks that a particular remedy or nostrum was a bad idea.  Ahem.

So, the title of today’s blog entry refers to blood pressure. My wife’s is low, and mine is high. Too bad we can’t just split the difference and both be healthy.  More accurately, mine used to be high.  I’m a tad chubbier than I should be, and that’s no help.

Doctors and others will be glad to inform you that elevated blood pressure - even a little elevated above “normal” - is a bad thing. In my lifetime, “normal” has been redefined a few times… always downward.

Anyway, probably the biggest day-to-day problem with elevated blood pressure is your kidneys. Your kidneys are filters. They filter out byproducts of your metabolism that need to be eliminated. They do it by running blood, under pressure through lots of tiny passages, against selectively permeable membranes. As the word membrane might suggest, these tiny passages and associated bits are delicate. The processes by which your blood is filtered and the unwanted bits end up on the bladder/ureter side requires a certain minimum pressure to work. If your blood pressure is too low, your kidneys can’t function and they shut down. That’s a bad thing.

At the other end of the spectrum, if your blood pressure is too high, the kidneys certainly work, but they are under constant stress. The delicate bits begin to literally fray and shred. When enough of your kidneys have shredded, they stop functioning. That’s a bad thing.

Of course there are other places where it’s not good to have constant over-pressure in the vessels. The eyes are not happy about it, for example, but the classic one is the brain. Too much pressure on the vessels in the brain can cause a blow-out or a leak. Either way, blood getting into brain-spaces where it shouldn’t be (and not getting where it’s expected) - stroke - is a bad thing. My Mom has been missing half her field of vision for at least ten years, from a stroke, and has recently lost a lot more function from several subsequent strokes - amusingly (not) some were from bleeding and some were from blockages (clots) as the various doctors tried to adjust her meds.

But you knew all that stuff. Where was I going with this?  I started by mentioning non-standard (non-pharmaceutical) or alternative approaches to health concerns, so you might imagine that I’m going to mention one that addresses elevated blood pressure. Well, OK, I will. Thanks for asking.

SKIP DOWN TO HERE FOR THE USEFUL STUFF 

When I came across it, it was called “Holistrol” and you can still find it using that search term. However, a couple of years ago they re-branded it to Hi-Qi Healthy Blood Pressure. That’s supposed to be pronounced “High-Chi” (hy-chee), but I like to annoy the purveyors by calling it “hickey” or “heechee”.  The marketing approach might not be the smartest, but the product seems to work.

Seriously.  I’ve tried a lot of different vitamin and herbal concoctions over the years, mostly for curiosity’s sake, and 99 percent didn’t seem to do much of anything. Or, if they did, you could just barely tell. The wind had to be at your back, the moon in the right phase, the stock market in… well, let’s not go there.  Only a very few herbal items have _ever_ made a real impression on me by actually working.  This is one of them.

I read the stories on the website and said “yeah, yeah, yawn”. I read the claims of actual studies and reproducible results with somewhat more attention. I ordered some. I tried it.

My blood pressure had been routinely in the range of 170/95 with occasional excursions higher - both systolic and diastolic. That’s not good in the short term, and it was positively scary as an ongoing condition. So, um, you can see that I might have been motivated.

When the (as it was then called) Holistrol arrived, I took a challenge dose and kept the dose higher than maintenance for the first few weeks. By the end of the first week my pressure had dropped significantly. By two weeks it was down more than twenty points, and it kept dropping. By about six weeks, it was down in the 140/80 range. It’s been in the 120s over 70s and gone up a bit when I’ve gotten stressed… or fat, but overall it’s been below 130 over 80 for the past three years.

There are no side effects.

Despite my doctor’s initial urging (OK… insistence), I never started diuretics and other pharmaceutical remedies. It’s all the Holistrol. I even tried discontinuing it for more than a month. My pressure basically remained stable. I’m on the bare maintenance dose, and often skip one or two, and it just keeps working. So, as they say, I think it’s working on the causes and not just the symptoms.

Marvelous.

So I recommend it.  If you have high blood pressure, I at least recommend that you try it. It’s not expensive, so you have little to lose - did I mention no side-effects!?!

I freely admit that it might not work as well, or at all, for everybody. But jeez!  If it does, it’s golden, isn’t it?

I also recommend …..  LOSE THE LARD!

It makes a difference in so many ways. But! The only way to lose fat and keep it off is slowly. While you’re doing that, Holistrol/Hi-Qi gets your BP to safe levels so you don’t croak or stroke-out while you’re still (as I am) half-way too fat.

After getting the startlingly good result that I did, I cautiously recommended the product to a few co-workers who had mentioned having elevated BP or having relatives/spouses with the problem. A couple tried it and had pretty-much the same results that I did. Some were already on pharmaceuticals and their doctors weren’t impressed by the notion of any herbal concoction, so those people declined to try. I’ll note that at least one of those people is on at least two additional “medications” (why can’t they just say “drugs” or “medicines”…?) only to control the side-effects of their BP-control drugs.  Oi!  I just don’t see it.

I have no connection to the company except as a very satisfied customer. Long may they prosper.

Well, if I set up a real website, I might see about some kind of click-through arrangement. As of November 2008, I don’t have any connection.  If and when I do… well, it’ll be obvious, but perhaps it’ll carry weight that it’s been more than three years that I’ve been recommending the product and not getting any compensation other than the knowledge that I’m doing a good deed.

Here’s the home-page link:   http://www.pharmeast.com/

I’ve tried one of their other products with some positive reaction (nothing as dramatic as the Holistrol… er, I mean Hi Qi Healthy Blood Pressure), and I’ll talk about it in another post. As for anything else that they sell, I can’t really say. Haven’t had reason to try them, yet.

Again, you are reading anecdotal evidence. The only experimental “control” in my personal “study” was me before I started taking the product, versus me afterward. So, make up your own mind. Grain of salt and all that. I hope I’ve helped - this is, after all, serious shit. It’s your health, you own it, you decide what to do about it.

Well, that’s the way I see it, anyway.

Copyright November 2008