Monica asked where I figured out how to drop my blood pressure from 160/100 to normal in just a few weeks, and others have expressed interest, too. Comments have also addressed the issues of weight and Type II (or Adult Onset) diabetes.
I’d love to be able to claim credit for figuring out how to get healthy on my own, but in fact, having been forged and tempered in the crucible of traditional medicine, I was as much of a nay-sayer as the rest of the medical establishment. I believed the origins of Type II diabetes and primary high blood pressure were “idiopathic,” (which is the medical establishment’s baffle-’em-with-bullshit word for “we don’t know what we’re talking about”).
About seven years ago, Matt found a book by a guy named Anthony Robbins (yes, he of the bad hair and infomercials), and read it, and tried to convince me to read it. It was about losing weight and getting healthy. I wasn’t having any. He did talk me into buying a program Robbins did called “The Body You Deserve.” I still thought it was bullshit, but I’d been on other stupid diets to lose weight, I was post-partum, and I had a lot of weight to lose. So, scoffing, I went ahead and ordered.
Within six weeks of starting the program, Matt had lost seventy pounds and I’d lost about fifty. I lost sixty overall, and both of us saw our cholesterol levels drop from the 200s to considerably less than our ages plus 100. My resting pulse went from high-eighties, low-nineties to the mid-fifties, low-sixties. My blood pressure was steady at 90/60. I looked great, I felt great.
(Then I had two miscarriages, and used depression and grief as excuses to eat crap, and to gain back everything I’d lost. It’s taken me this long, and a health-related gun to my head, to stop making excuses.)
The problem with the Robbins program is that it’s damned expensive. You can learn the same info (though without Robbins’ admittedly very good motivational techniques) by reading three books. The first is The China Study, the second is Fit For Life, and the third is Juiceman’s Power of Juicing.
The first is for the science behind eliminating milk and meat for health reasons, and why, in doing so, you don’t have to worry about getting enough calcium. It will also tell you what your current diet is doing to your body, and what changing your diet will do to your body, and back both up with massive studies conducted across thousands of villages in China (and with other corollary studies). The second tells you how to get quick and lasting results by eating without milk or meat, and includes such useful information as what foods to buy, how to find them, and some recipes. (The recipes are a life-saver.) And the third is about juicing, which you may or may not want to get into, but which I recommend with lunatic fervor.
DISCLAIMER: I cannot claim that these programs will work for everyone as well as they have for me, my family, and my friends. I can prove my results and I stand by them fully. However, your results will vary based on the choices you make, how well you follow directions, how willing you are to change the foods you eat, and on underlying health problems, either known or unknown, that you may suffer from. Due to the litigious nature of society, I also have to state that you assume full responsibility for any changes you make in your diet, whether for better or for worse, and for the outcomes you receive as a result of making either better or worse choices. Such disclaimers suck, I hate them, but the world is not a friendly place, and I am not a fool.
If you decide to get healthy, let me know how it goes for you. I’ll be cheering for you.
Oh. I scoured the internet trying to find a printable blood pressure chart on which to graph my blood pressures. I found nothing. I ended up making one for myself. If you need a chart sheet for blood pressures and want to copy mine off and print it for your own use, click through the link, save the full-sized JPG to your hard drive, and print off copies whenever you need them.
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