SUMMARY 

• Do you know what the number one killer in the world is? It’s not war or violence – it’s high blood pressure because this causes cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes.  In this episode I’ll share how I went from having high blood pressure, to normal and sometimes even low blood pressure without the use of any medications at all.
• The very first thing that I did was buy a blood pressure machine. What gets measured gets managed and it’s only by measuring your blood pressure and then seeing the impact of the different changes that you make, that you can start to assess what’s working for you.
• The second thing I did was start drinking an organic blend of hibiscus tea first thing in the morning, which is proven to lower blood pressure significantly. I brew five bags of the stuff and drink it down in one gulp as though I’m taking my daily medication. 
  
• The next thing I did was to eliminate salt from my diet. This involved eating out much less at restaurants, since restaurant meals often have high amounts of salt. I also stopped adding salt to any of the meals that I made at home, eliminated dairy and lowered my consumption of meat, which are causes of high blood pressure. 
  
• The next thing that I did was I eliminated alcohol. Alcohol creates an inflammatory environment in our bodies, which restricts the arterial passageways and increases blood pressure. By eliminating alcohol, I noticed a big drop in my blood pressure but just drinking less will also definitely help.
  
• The final thing I did was to focus on losing about 10 pounds of belly fat. Like most modern workers I spend a lot of time in a sitting environment and find myself not moving around much. So I’m determined to have an exercise routine, which is five times a week in the morning to making sure I’m getting regular exercise in. 

TRANSCRIPT

Do you know what the number one killer is of people in the world? It’s not wars, it’s not violence. It’s actually high blood pressure. High blood pressure leads to more deaths in the world than anything else. It’s because it results in cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes. Today I wanted to share with you how I went from having high blood pressure, to actually normal, sometimes even low blood pressure without the use of any medications at all. The reason I’m sharing this is because this is known as the silent killer. A lot of us don’t realize that our blood pressure is solely elevating throughout life, and then suddenly something bad happens. And I wouldn’t want something like that to happen to you.

Hi, my name is Eric Partaker and I help coaches, CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders, and individuals reach their full potential in life. When I look at peak performance, when I am trying to help someone achieve their highest potential, I can’t just look at what’s going on on the field. If we use sports as an analogy, I have to look at what’s going on off the field as well. So that’s why I very regularly pull health in as a domain in a coaching relationship with someone. I need to give you a very important disclaimer for today’s share here. I’m just sharing what I’ve done. I am by no means saying that you should do all of these things yourself. And there’s a very important reason for that. If, for example, you’re on blood pressure medications, and if you were to implement some of these things and suddenly lower your blood pressure, which your blood pressure medications are doing as well, it could get to a dangerously low level.

So today I’m sharing what I’ve done to lower my blood pressure. I hope that it’s something that might inspire an idea for you. And if you are in a situation where you’re on blood pressure medications, then take these ideas to your doctor and come up with your plan for how you might experiment with these ideas in a controlled, safe way. Then if that creates a situation where you’re able to come off of your medications, brilliant, amazing. But you have to do that in combination with a consultation from your doctor. So let me go ahead and share with you how I went from high blood pressure to normal, without any medications whatsoever. The very first thing that I did, and I know this sounds quite basic and perhaps not super insightful, but I bought a blood pressure machine.

You can go on to Amazon, you’ll find loads of machines on there, just get one, get it delivered to your house, what gets measured gets done. And it’s only by measuring your blood pressure and then seeing the impact of the different changes that I’ll be discussing today, that you can actually start to see the improvement or see what’s working for you.

Number two – the second thing I did was I discovered hibiscus tea. I use an organic blend of hibiscus tea. I also just get that from Amazon and I drink five teabags in a single tea. I don’t drink this tea as if it’s a sipping tea, or as if it’s something like, “Oh, I’m just going to enjoy this for the next hour.” I kind of think of it as medication, I’m taking a pill and I’m not going to sit there with a pillow or a tablet or with some cough syrup and swish it around in my mouth and drink that or cut it up and eat it over time.

It’s kind of one and done. So that’s the same thing I do with this. In the morning I take five bags of hibiscus tea. I put it into a tea cup. I actually use room temperature, filtered water. I don’t use water that’s too hot or boiling, because that can damage some of the organic properties within the tea. And I just let that set for about five minutes. It gets quite strong. I take a spoon, put it into the teacup. I squeeze the bags against the inside of the teacup to get even more of those positive effects of the hibiscus tea out. Then I literally just kind of take it in one go, and then I refill it with some water and I let it sit there and I let it seep again for another 30 minutes. Now, the first one just takes a few minutes, but after another 30 minutes, it’s almost like a second dose. Then I go ahead and drink that tea as well. 

The next thing that I did was that  I eliminated salt from my diet, I mean zero added salt. So let me explain what I mean there. So if you go out and if you’re eating a meal in a restaurant, or if you’re buying a readymade meal, it’s very difficult to get away from all the salt that restaurants use and that you’ll find in packaged goods. One of the things that you could be doing of course, is eating less of that, but also not adding any additional salt to the meals that you’re making, because you’re getting more than enough and all of those other instances. So I just stopped adding salt to any of the meals that I made at home.

Some people in my family still prefer to have salt, but they add that in separately after the meal is made, rather than adding it to the meal as part of the meal. The next thing that I did was I stopped adding sugar to any meals or just eating sugar on a daily basis, full stop. Occasionally, I’ll have that donut or that piece of cake, or the ice cream, or the candy bar, but I became a lot more conscious of making sure that it wasn’t doing that every single day and that it was becoming more of a once in a while experience. The reason this is important is because sugar promotes inflammation in the body. If you think about what’s happening from a high blood pressure point of view, when you have high blood pressure, the insides of your arteries are narrowed and that’s creating more pressure going through the pipe.

The blood is flowing through a narrower space, and sugar just promotes more inflammation throughout the body, so as things become more inflamed, those passageways can become even more narrow and that can contribute to even higher blood pressure. Sugar also promotes weight gain, which we’ll get to later, which is another contributor to a high blood pressure. 

The next thing that I did was I eliminated dairy and lowered my consumption of meat. So animal products are essentially what I’m talking about here. In the book that I referenced earlier, How Not to Die, he draws an evidence-based related relationship between the high consumption of animal products and higher blood pressure. The more animal products you eat, the higher your blood pressure. Now I had eliminated dairy, not just for this reason, but also because it just helped me from a congestion point of view.

I felt a lot more clear in my airways. Then the meat consumption is whereas meat used to be a big part of every single meal. There will be days when I have no meat. Then when I do have meat, I try to make sure that it’s almost like more of a secondary role on my plate rather than the primary role. I believe this has had a positive impact on my blood pressure as well. 

The next thing that I’ve done, these are several things in combination here. Shortly after I have that hibiscus tea, every morning I just have in a small bowl three tablespoons of ground flaxseed. Why ground flaxseed? Because flaxseed contains Omega threes. Omega threes are a particular type of fatty acid, which fight inflammation.

One of the things that we’re trying to do here is fight inflammation throughout the body, which can have a positive effect on lowering blood pressure. So I add three tablespoons of the flaxseed, put a quarter teaspoon of turmeric and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. Why these two things? Because turmeric also has strong anti-inflammatory properties and we need black pepper to really make sure that that’s being activated properly in the body. Then I just put a dash of oat milk in there – again, non dairy – and I eat that as part of my daily routine. Put enough oat milk in there, you can kind of swish it around and literally almost just drink it down. 

The next thing that I did was I eliminated alcohol. Now I know that you might be thinking, “Oh gosh, how can I do that?” Well, any reduction that you can make in alcohol consumption will have a positive impact on your blood pressure. Why? Because alcohol, once again, creates an inflammatory environment within our bodies. As we have inflammation in our bodies, we’re getting more restriction of the arterial passageways, so the pipe that the blood is going through is becoming more constricted, which is increasing the pressure or the flow. As you can imagine through that pipe, just take for example, a water hose. We all know that if you take a water hose and if you suddenly kink the end of it, we’re narrowing the passageway and it increases the pressure, the water comes out. The same thing as going on with the blood pressure in the water hose, in the arteries within your body. So by eliminating alcohol, I also noticed a big drop in my blood pressure. But again, any less amount, any moderation that you can bring to alcohol, drinking less will definitely help.

So think about that as well. And then the final thing that I did was I just focused on losing about 10 pounds of belly fat. So I’m working a lot in an office, in a sitting environment, I find myself not moving around, as I’m sure many of you can relate to, as much as I would like. And without a conscious effort to exercise that fat, it starts to accumulate and it just stays there. So I’m really proud and determined to have my exercise routine, which is five times a week in the morning, making sure I’m getting some cardiovascular activity, maybe together with some strength training. It doesn’t need to be going to the gym necessarily. It can be sit ups, body squats, pushups, whatever you prefer just to get some movement going in your body and make sure that we’re losing some of that fat around the waist.

That also has been shown to help lower blood pressure and the result for me is that I went from having a blood pressure that was regularly over 140 over 85, which is high, all the way down to at times, 103 over 65, often around 110 over 70, sometimes up to 115 over 75. But the key thing is, I got it below 120 over 80, which is the marker for where you want to be to have normal blood pressure. We want to be lower than that. Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because once again, blood pressure is the silent killer. High blood pressure is the number one killer for people throughout the world. You don’t know that it’s happening. If you haven’t checked your blood pressure, please do.

If you found out anything that I shared today with how I lowered my blood pressure, then you might want to think about pursuing something similar for yourself, trying something out. Again, quick disclaimer – if you are on any blood pressure medications, you should absolutely consult your doctor before doing any of these suggestions. But I hope you found this useful. Entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, people really striving to reach their full potential in life, those type A personalities can also attract that high blood pressure. So we have to make sure that we’re managing this as well in our quest to become our very best.