Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 32 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for quite a while now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of what became a three part series discussing blood pressure. If you have not yet listened to part one of this series, make sure to check that out. We discussed mineral balance and the importance of energy as far as blood pressure regulation goes and in today's episode, we'll be talking about the underlying causes of hypertension or high blood pressure, and whether the blood pressure drugs effectively address these causes. And we'll also be talking about what is involved in the physiology of a dysfunctional vascular system, and how this involves various processes like swelling and edema and fibrosis and calcification, and if you're not familiar with those terms, we'll be explaining what those things mean. And then we'll also be talking about some nutritional recommendations for hypertension in regard to dietary minerals and electrolytes and the best types of fats for high blood pressure, and also how anti nutrients in our food affect our blood pressure regulation. And again, just as a disclaimer, none of this is medical advice, so if you are dealing with any medical conditions, make sure to discuss any of these things with your health care professional. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to the studies and articles and anything else that we discuss throughout today's episode. And if you are dealing with hypertension or you have other issues with blood pressure regulation, or if you are dealing with low energy levels and fatigue or chronic pain, or joint pain, weight gain, gut symptoms or other gut issues, cravings and hunger, hormonal imbalances, poor sleep, all of these are low energy symptoms and can be improved by maximizing your cellular energy. And if you want to learn some of the basics, as far as how you can do that, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and sign up for a free energy balance mini course where I will do just that. I'll walk you through some of the most important things to do as far as nutrition and lifestyle are concerned, including exercise and stress as well, in order to maximize your cellular energy and help you resolve all of those low energy symptoms. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course. Head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.

Mike 3:09
This is anecdotal. It's not necessarily experimental research, but in the hospital, working with with certain patients, apart, particularly one patient in in in specific, he had a stroke. He was he was pretty young, and the doc the stroke was a hemorrhagic stroke, so and so. And the reason I say that specifically is because in embolic strokes, where the vessels have been blocked off by an embolism, or essentially a clot, they allow something called permissive hypertension up to a certain level, to allow perfusion, to some extent, to those tissues. So it's okay. So basically, we don't control their blood pressure so much. We don't bring their blood pressure down drastically to like 100 over 70 or or lower than 120 over 80, which is the the generally accepted level that that everybody should be at or below, and so they allow it to be a little bit higher. And so, but his blood pressures were insanely high. So since his wasn't an embolic, he was hemorrhagic and so the thing for him was his blood pressures were insanely high. They were off the charts high, and they would aggressively treat his blood pressure like, very aggressively, multiple, uh, multiple blood pressure medications and diuretics. A lot of he had a lot of things on board, basically, and when his blood pressure was very high, his mental function was great, interestingly enough, so he would talk, he would, he would he was a phasic, which means and he had a expressive aphasia, which means that he couldn't really, he couldn't express himself. So basically, where he had the stroke, it damaged part of his brain that allowed him to form words. So he wasn't able to form words or sentences or coherent sentences. He could say words, and he could not. Not yet so, but he can understand you. And so when his blood pressure is very high, it would be very easy to interact with him and be Hey, sir, I'm going to take your blood pressure, I'm going to take your vital signs, I have your medications, and he'd be fine. And you know, I would be a little bit suspect, because his blood pressure would be in the two hundreds, and that's problem. The doctors knew they were addressing it, but as soon as he got all his blood pressure medications, and we got his blood pressure back into range, his mental function would go so he wouldn't be he wouldn't be very he wouldn't be talking at all. He could sort of just nod a little bit, and he wasn't very interactive. And so this may or may not have been the case, but from my understanding of the situation when I'm when I'm looking at him, I was essentially thinking to myself, like, Hmm, I mean, we dropped his blood pressure down to range. We got him. He was still hypertensive. But for him, that was pretty good, down into the 130s 140s on systolic, which is the top number. And so basically what I was thinking to myself was, okay, so now he doesn't have so much perfusion to those tissues. So they're not really, they're not really functioning very well anymore. He's, he doesn't have that blood supply, those nutrients, that oxygen. So he's is the mentation is going down. His function is decreasing a little bit. And so I was, my thought process was that he was elevating the blood pressure to allow for that perfusion. And so, and that's understood, as I mentioned before, with people who have embolic strokes or clots, is that having a higher blood pressure may be helpful to allow for perfusion. And so if we extrapolate this idea, whether or not my anecdote was it was actually what's going on, but even if we go with the idea of permissive hypertension, which is where you allow the higher amount of blood pressure when you have a embolic stroke or you have a clot. Do you can see that perhaps the body is actually elevating blood pressure, As Jay mentioned previously, when you have times where the tissue is under hypoxia or isn't getting enough oxygen, an oxygenation from decreased blood supply. And so that, I think that's that's a really important piece to point out, because if you have anywhere where your blood supply is poor and your tissues are acquiring it, the body may be elevating it for that particular reason. And in some cases, that's and specific to people's kidneys, especially when they have diseases where they have scarring of the vessels that lead to the kidneys. The kidneys elevate blood pressure drastically because of their decreased perfusion. And so these are examples where we see, okay, that what's actually causing the elevated pressure and it's because of perfusion issues.

Jay Feldman 7:37
So what you're basically saying is that the increase in blood pressure is a protect, protective, adaptive response. And in this in some cases, maybe it allows for proper oxygenation, maybe it allows for better blood flow, maybe allows for better perfusion in the kidneys, and allows for, you know, nutrient delivery, whatever it is. And so if we just look at that as the problem and then try to reduce the blood pressure with drugs, we're going to also reduce that protective, adaptive response, and then we're left functioning with less oxygen, less nutrients, less perfusion, and just because we're treating this symptom.

Mike 8:13
Yeah, exactly. And then again, it with that said, though, having that blood pressure consistently elevated doesn't mean that that's a good thing. It that over time, that could still be an issue.

Jay Feldman 8:25
Right. And it's the the problem is, what's leading to it exactly. It is a symptom of some sort of dysfunction. So we want to treat that dysfunction, fix the dysfunction, which we talked about, a lack of energy, being one of those main problems there, and then mineral imbalance being another one that that are some of those, you know, kind of primary underlying dysfunctions. And along with that, is like excess stress, for example, which goes directly, is directly tied with that energy side of things, where, yeah, when you're under a lot of stress, you're not gonna be producing energy well.

Mike 8:57
Exactly, and it will do and even psychological stress will elevate sympathetic nervous system activity, which will cause basal constriction and can increase blood pressure as well. So those are factors to look at, and then the other thing I want to point out, and I'm pretty sure about this, and increase endotoxin from the gut and bacterial components from the gut, another factor to look at can also raise blood pressure directly by interfering with vascular compliance and also, and also elevating sympathetic nervous system and the RAS system directly as well, and also affecting things like antidiuretic hormone. So I think it's important to there's these are what we're basically talking about now, are underlying factors to look at for why the blood pressure would be high. So we have things like like stress, and that could be psychological. That could be whether you're not surviving enough nutrients as salt or electrolytes or things like that. It could be you have areas in the body that have hypoxia or decreased blood supply, causing a need for increased blood pressure, and. That could be from eating large amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids for years on end and having damage within the vasculature. And so these are just some general ideas to look at for areas to address. Maybe you have damage in the vasculature, causing hypoxia, again, what we said, the electrolytes, or you have some type of gut issue or infection, raising those adaptive systems. And what I want to point out from here that's important is that, while addressing the blood pressure may it can actually be helpful to inhibit some of those adaptive pathways to some extent, with drugs in some circumstances, the question is, why are they happening in the first place? So how, and then, how can we address that underlying issue, whether it is, if it is any of those things that I mentioned before, and then the question, the other question from there is, what is the balance between inhibiting that adaptive pathway while also addressing the issue itself? Because if the pathway is going crazy and you're just getting ridiculously high blood pressures, and you're putting yourself in territory of having a stroke or having a heart attack or something like that, because of excessively high pressures, or because the system, the adaptive system, is causing damage itself because it's been activated for such a long term. Adjusting those with drugs may be helpful. I'm not saying that it's not, but the question is, where does it become helpful, like, where's the balance between using those systems but then also addressing the underlying problem as well? Because you may have to do both, depending on what the context is. So it's not that you should never use ACE inhibitors or blood pressure medications or anything like that. The question is, are you fixing the underlying problem as well, and then how do you find that balance between addressing those symptoms with drugs and fixing the underlying problem.

Jay Feldman 11:47
Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say on the drug side of it, or on the medication side, using the things that will be the closest to fixing the underlying problem, the better. So using thyroid hormone, for example, using clonidine to inhibit the stress system, as opposed to an ACE inhibitor, I think would be a better option. But, I mean, that's kind of minutia there.

Mike 12:08
I've seen some blood pressure medications like Carvedilol. I think that's the one specifically that I looked at, besides, because again, when we talk about drugs, Everybody focuses just on the generally advertised pharmaceutical effect. So when you look at Metformin, it's like, oh, Metformin, it has a blood glucose lowering effect and it but when you look at the pathways and how it has that effect, it's not good, like the pathways that it does it by are ridiculous. They're terrible. But at the same time, it also has an antibiotic effect and decreases endotoxin, which is good, which is a beneficial effect. So with a drug like Carvedilol, it does lower blood pressure by inhibiting being a, I think is a beta a beta blocker. Blocker, yeah, exactly. So it blocks the beta, the beta receptor, in the adrenergic system, part of the stress system, exactly and but it also had a strong antioxidant effect and prevented lipid peroxidation within the bloodstream. And so, as we talked about before, when you have if you're eating a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are vulnerable to lipid peroxidation, when you take a drug that's inhibiting that lipid peroxidation, besides lowering blood pressure, it also may have a beneficial effect by inhibiting that lipid peroxidation, and especially because most people are taking it every single day, um, then you can also inhibit some, maybe some of the vascular damage from the lipid peroxide products.

Jay Feldman 13:34
Sure, yeah, yeah. And similar to how you know what we had talked about with the statins, where there are certainly costs associated with them. If there are benefits, they're likely associated with other effects that they have. And you know, in the case of some of these RAS inhibitors, or some of the, you know, some of these blood pressure drugs, you could say that there are benefits even from their direct effects, but there are certainly costs as well.

Mike 13:56
Exactly, even in the textbook, it doesn't say that high blood pressure necessarily is causing, like cardio cardiac hypertrophy or anything like that. It says that cardiac hypertrophy is induced by extended exposures to angiotensin two, causing inflammation, and then the excessive inflammation over time, leading to like fibrosis and things like that. So and then when they talk about cardiac hypertrophy, they don't just say it has basically, what they're saying is there's actually a loss of cardiomyocytes and, like a cardiomyocyte apoptosis and an increase in fibrosis. So it's not that the heart muscle is getting hyper hypertrophic, like a muscle would from exercise. It's actually becoming, fibrotic. So it's like, it's, it's a degenerative process. And I mean, I mean, obviously it is, you see it in heart failure and things like that. So, but, yeah, it's interesting, because even the textbook says that that under the influence these extendedly, and I've pretty sure hate it posted studies about aldosterone and. And and different things like that, increasing um calcification within the vasculature over time. And that would make sense. That would make sense because cortisol, especially because things like cortisol over time can cause features of diabetes and damage to the liver and things like that. So I wouldn't be surprised if the adaptive processes directly do that as well, because they're they are inhibiting the the, to some extent, the energy production of the those cells along the along the vasculature and and affecting the vast and affecting those cells within the vasculature in a negative way over time.

Jay Feldman 15:36
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as far as I mean, definitely the overall goal here is to address the factors that are leading to the high blood pressure you had mentioned earlier, to just, you know, maybe be careful with, you know, having too much salt and things if you have kidney disease or heart disease or things, which definitely check with your doctor for sure if you're In any of those circumstances. But we're not saying that these things don't apply in those scenarios. We're just saying to make sure that you consult with a medical professional beforehand if, if you're in a scenario where you would need to.

Yep, and yeah, just check with your medical professional before implementing anything. None of this is advice. It's just ideas. So to mention another thing that you had, you were talking about endotoxin and lipopolysaccharide. Well, same thing, but you're talking about endotoxin and it contributing to increased blood pressure, and we know that serotonin is a major part of that endotoxin, nitric oxide cascade of stress, and serotonin is a major part of the RAS system and does increase blood pressure. So we do have a pretty, pretty good mechanism there of that happening. And as I know you've pointed out in a previous episode, serotonin literally has to do. Well, go. I'll let you go ahead and say it like sero is blood and toning is increased. Tone,

Mike 18:39
yeah, increasing. Tone, yeah. Tone in right?

Jay Feldman 18:42
So the name of serotonin literally means that it is increasing blood pressure, increasing vasoconstriction.

Mike 18:48
Yeah, it is a vasoconstrictor. If you inject serotonin, vasoconstricts. yeah.

Jay Feldman 18:54
Yeah. So, yeah, so, and just, you know, again, kind of, I want to transition to talk about some of the some of the details that go on in this dysfunctional situation. So we have serotonin, aldosterone, the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, and then also nitric oxide. All of these playing a role in the rest system as basically being emergency systems to increase blood pressure. And on the nitric oxide, nitric oxide side, you have an emergency kind of vasodilator when you don't have CO two available, or when you're under stress and don't have enough CO two relative to your needs. So when you have this stress system active, it does, as we've talked about, it's helpful in the immediate sense, where it restores oxygenation, blood flow, all of those things. And it helps to restore that, you know, initially, it helps to restore that easy charge as well. If we're talking about that side of it, where the stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, act as emergency backup energy production, uh, stimulators, where in the short term, they're going to increase energy production, which. In this case, would maintain that exclusion zone in the vasculature and maintain blood flow in that way. So we have all these different mechanisms of basically maintaining nutrient delivery and circulation, but in the long term, they cause a lot of damage. And we talked about a lack of potassium and sodium being a big part of it. We talked about, in the long term, these stress hormones, both the adrenaline, cortisol, but also aldosterone, for example, inhibiting energy production and causing swelling. And that's another huge part of this process where the inflammation, specifically in the vasculature, and the permeability and swelling or edema are all kind of a concerted process where when you have damage to the cell, or you have excess sodium inside the cell and the lack of potassium and magnesium in the cell. Or you have a cell that isn't producing a lot of energy and isn't able to keep its water structured, what happens is you have an inflow of of you have an inflow of sodium and inflow of water, both due to the permeability of the cell, well, due to the permeability. Basically, permeability is like the just the characteristic, and that leads to cell swelling or edema. And when this is happening in the vasculature, this is another mechanism where you have reduced blood volume, which is, you know, we talked about that happening when you have too little sodium, which furthers this whole process, contributing to further increases in blood pressure and the kind of secondary processes here, which we talked about as far as atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is the hardening of the arteries, the calcification and the fibrosis, which you You talked a little bit about, as far as collagen goes, and not having enough vitamin C being a major part of kind of that hardening, so that calcification and fibrosis are basically sequential processes that happen after the initial inflammation and edema, when those things are continuing on in the long term. And so in the long term, that is like the we've talked about, kind of the underlying processes and how they contribute to this high blood pressure system. And this is the I feel like it's important to elucidate this as a viable mechanism as to how you end up with atherosclerosis and hardening of arteries, while the high blood pressure is just a symptom, and so you have these other processes that all directly cause that, without actually needing to blame any of it really on the high blood pressure itself, yeah.

Mike 22:23
And I think it's the one of the things that you pointed out that was that's important to mention, is, and a lot of people who have heart issues or have heart disease, one of the main symptoms they seem to get is swelling, um, and so your plot, your and even within the swelling, even when you have swelling, they can have high blood pressure, and so the blood pressure is high, not necessarily because there's too much water within the vasculature. The vasculature is most likely basal, constricted, but what's actually going on is the water is actually within. The cells are taking up water, and they call it third spacing, because you have the intracellular compartment and then the extracellular or then the extracellular compartment, and the water is sort of just like moving into, they call it the third space. Or you have the intracellular compartment, and then you have, like the lumen, or the vasculature, where the weather flows, and then the extracellular compartment is. They call it third space, where the fluid just sort of accumulates there. But what within the model that we're looking at was probably more likely is that the cells themselves are having an energy failure, or basically an energy failure, and then the water is they can't maintain that specific gradient between potassium inside the cell and sodium outside the cell. So the sodium is moving within the cell, and then, essentially, their tissues are swelling, and so a lot of times what and you can also find this in people with lung inflammation and things like and any diseases within the lungs or and inflammation in the lungs, particularly especially within chronic diseases, they develop water within the lungs, and a lot of times, doctors will pull, put a lot of diuretics on board, and that will that can get some of the water out. But this the problem underlying is that when you have those inflammatory states, especially the systemic ones, you're having those energy failures, then the cells aren't able to structure themselves appropriately, and then they're going to take up water. So you can take the you can try and take all the fluids out of the body with a diuretic, and that may remove some of the water from those cells, because there's nothing for the cells to take up. But it still doesn't fix the underlying problem of the of the energy destruction, or that the destruction and energy production by the cells and then the subsequent swelling. So even when you look at it, the problem is a is an energy problem. It comes down to an energy problem when the cells don't have the ability to produce energy for whatever reason. That is, whether they don't have enough blood supply, supplying them nutrients and oxygen, or there's it basically all comes down to having adequate nutrients and oxygen, to a large extent. Percent. And so whenever that any of those processes are interrupted over the long term for a variety of reasons, and you get that energy breakdown, then you're going to have the cells well, because of the loss of structuring from the energy production. And whether that's in our the model that we talk about, which is structure of water, or even within the mainstream traditional model that that current modern medicine runs under, it is understood that when you have the mitochondria within the cells fail, then you have an adjustment of the potassium, and which is inside the cell, and then the sodium, which is outside the cell, having the sodium move into the cell and bringing water with it. It is a key, key function or process that occurs in both models, and it is a function of energy failure. And it's directly stated in any in any biology cellular biology book, you'll look into it, and it'll say, What Happens enter, mitochondrial function fails, potassium and sodium pump on the cellular membrane fails. Water moves into the cell. Cell cell swells, and you have and then you have intracellular calcium move into the cell, and then the cell starts to die. And so that's the general process. So when you see people with swelling to in a lot of cases, especially in chronic heart failure, it is energy failure, and it ties directly within the model that we're talking about.

Jay Feldman 26:17
Yeah. And in talking about that swelling a much like a swollen muscle that is like normally hard after working out. For example, swollen vasculature is in a contracted state, or at least a semi contracted state, and it can't dilate, it can't relax. So you have that same feature. When you do have that cellular edema due to that permeability, due to the energy failure, you do then have a lack of ability for the vasculature to relax, causing constriction and leading to that symptom of of high blood pressure.

Mike 26:45
Exactly you will have by when the and I think it's important to point out here with that, that when you have a if you so say, we have a tube, and it's you have water running through the tube. If we have the same amount of water running through the tube, and the lumen gets smaller, there's more pressure within that tube, even, and at a certain point, even if there's less fluid running through that tube, but the the whole or the lumen of that tube is small enough you'll still have a high pressure so you can have contracted vasculature and still run high blood pressures it. And that's purely by the fact that you have a certain amount of fluid moving through a certain through a certain size of lumen, or certain certain size too. And the thing

Jay Feldman 27:29
I think you meant low blood volume and still high blood pressure.

Mike 27:32
Yeah, you can have low blood volume and still have high blood pressure Exactly. So it because at a certain point the tube is the lumen of the tube is small enough that even a small amount of fluid is going to exert a decent amount of pressure against the wall because of how and and our the our tubes in our body, our vasculature, our our arteries, mostly, most specifically, our arteries have the ability to contract and change size. Pretty, pretty significantly. Um, right, depending on what the stimulus is. So you can so it's not really, it's not really a question of how much fluid necessarily, you have in your vasculature. I mean, because a lot of times under a nurse or a patient will have a low blood pressure, and nurses or whatnot will tell them, Oh, just drink some water. Just drink some water. I'll raise the blood pressure. It's like, that is one factor that can affect it, yes, but you also have the compliance of the vessel, and then the viscosity the blood, which the drinking water, will also affect. But there's, I would say that besides just how much fluid you have on board, it's also also how what the size of the lumen is is important.

Jay Feldman 28:38
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so we have this larger view where, at Essence, energy failure is one of the main problems. Here. We also have the electrolyte imbalance is kind of one of the other main ones. You had mentioned. Some things that affect that energy production process, being nutrients and oxygen, which are huge parts of it. There are a ton of other things that inhibit energy production, like endotoxin that you mentioned earlier, like various parts of these stress systems, aldosterone is another one of them, all these things that can block our ability to produce energy and that will all contribute to this process of hypertension. So basically, the you know, we want to restore energy production, restore the streaming of energy and our general metabolic function and keep inflammation low and maintain a good mineral balance that'll allow us to maintain good blood volume and good blood flow, which is also affected by the energy systems as well. So considering all that, hopefully people have at least some some decent picture of kind of what's going on there and what happens when those things go wrong. Hopefully is clear enough. Let's talk through what that actually looks like. As far as okay, you have high blood pressure, what are the things that make sense to implement in order to bring it down in a healthy way and fix some of those things that are underlying, as opposed to just addressing the symptom?

Mike 29:55
Before we go there, I want to say that if we did not explain something. Enough and people want us to explain something with more clarity, whether that's this podcast or any other podcast, just leave a comment and let us know, and we'll do like, a deeper dive into something, or we'll clarify something, or maybe we'll throw a chart up on there and explain things like if, for example, if we talked about the RAS system, and somebody wants to know specifically how the RAS system works, and then how the different drugs, specifically blood pressure medications like ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers or beta blockers, work within that system. Will we can explain it just, just let us know. I mean, so I know we haven't said that before, but if we're like, going too fast through something, or we're just glancing over because I know specifically for that, I tend to just glance over things sometimes. And I know you've you helped fill in for me a lot, because I just like, oh yeah, endotoxin. And you're like, well, endotoxin is because for us, it's something that we that we talk about with each other all the time. And so it's like, it's like, a common, commonly understood word because we're so interested in reading about this stuff. I mean, it's just, it's become like just another everyday Word, and the system is understood automatically. But I know a lot of people, they don't talk about this stuff that often, so we have no problem explaining it, and we'd like to explain it if people, if people need that, it's like, we, we'd be fine doing that. It's not a problem. I just want to put that out there.

Jay Feldman 31:21
Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you mentioning that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's what we're here for. So if you, if you do, if there's any aspect of yeah, this podcast or others where you'd like some clarification, or other topics you'd like us to talk about, where you have particular questions, you can leave those in the comments on the YouTube videos, or send me an email at Jay Feldman wellness.com that's j, A, y. At Jay Feldman wellness.com Okay, so at this point, let's talk about what we should, you know, what somebody should be doing if they do have high blood pressure, hypertension, or if they're just looking to make sure that their blood pressure is regulated, or if they've been told that, you know they should be keeping an eye on it. Of course, with all of this, as we mentioned, talk with your doctor. It's not actual advice or recommendations. We're just talking through some some ideas here. But you know, we've, we've discussed how so much of this comes down to mineral balance and the energy side, and as far as mineral balance goes in regard to salt especially, I mean, the first thing that I think, you know, we would say is, is to salt your food to taste. You know, we alluded to those, or referenced those studies earlier showing that, you know, about two to three teaspoons of salt per day is typically ideal for card of cardiovascular health. And so I think that that's generally a good recommendation. But, you know, because we have such tightly regulated blood pressure regulating systems, our our blood pressure so tightly regulated our, you know, the salt concentrations in our blood are so tightly regulated. Our taste is really, our taste for these sorts of things is really the best indicator, because there may be a reason why somebody wouldn't want to have as much salt, in which case they might not have a craving for it. And that can have to do with other minerals as well. Maybe there's some sort of a potassium deficiency, or a lack of magnesium or calcium or something like that. And that has been shown where, in a potassium deficient diet, salt will cause eating you know, a regular amount of salt will cause high blood pressure, but if there is enough potassium, it won't so, so, yeah, I mean, I think that that's one of the main reasons why I would say just a salt to taste. But then, of course, also make sure that you're getting enough of those other minerals, the potassium, magnesium and calcium, and as far as some of the foods to focus on there. I mean, as long as you're eating whole foods for the most part, you know, and eating good quality foods, you should be getting enough of these minerals, you know, especially high quality fruits, cooked vegetables, cooked root vegetables, dairy, yep, juice, exactly. And you know, anything related to fruit, whether it is fruit itself or juice or dried fruit, but yeah, I mean, those are all going to be really great sources of all these minerals, of course, calcium, especially from dairy, and then also cooks. Leafy greens are another source of of calcium. So I mean, I would say as long as those are those sorts of things are making up a good portion of your diet, you should be pretty balanced as far as mineral minerals go.

Mike 34:18
And then I would say it's also important once you have your minerals in line and you're getting an adequate amount of all the different types of minerals, not only salt, but or sodium, but also potassium, calcium, magnesium, as you mentioned, and those are all great foods, is avoiding an excess of polyunsaturated fatty acids so you don't damage the lining of the vasculature and an overtime effect compliance and things like that, vascular compliance and basically form plaques. Or even further down the line is to form plaques. So avoiding those polyunsaturated fatty acids and focusing more on the saturated fatty acids, which also fall in line with a lot of the foods you mentioned, like dairy or. Using butter fat or or beef tallow, or cocoa butter or coconut oil, those types of fats will will have a significantly less amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids and will basically, over time, should cause less plaque formation and hardening or sclerosis, which is extended inflammation of the vasculature.

Jay Feldman 35:22
Yeah, yeah. I mean those, those polyunsaturated fats, are one of the best ways to block our ability to produce energy and directly cause damage because of how fragile they are and how unstable they are. And as you said, that's really good way to cause vascular damage and prevent the ability for our vasculature to relax, which is really important for blood pressure regulation. When they're not relaxed, when they're constricted, that's going to increase blood pressure. And normally that's kind of the system through which that's happening. So yeah, I mean, avoiding the polyunsaturated fats is huge, of course. These are the fats that we're told are heart healthy, suggested for somebody who has high blood pressure, you know, the vegetable oils, nuts and seeds, fatty fish, and they're also found in fatty chicken and pork that are not fed good food, that are not pastured. And so, yeah. And so, instead favoring the saturated fats, and you had mentioned cocoa butter and chocolates and other good a good source of magnesium there and saturated fatty acids. Yep, right, right, exactly, yeah, yeah. And you could also get some magnesium from coffee as well.

Mike 36:27
Yeah, leafy greens have a decent amount of magnesium. Some of your fruits have a decent amount of magnesium.

Jay Feldman 36:34
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the ones that we mentioned, as far as potassium go, also have magnesium too. Dairy and fruits and Yeah.

Mike 36:42
The other thing to add, too is a lot of a lot of people like to mention nuts as a great source of magnesium or minerals in general, and well, on paper, based on daily recommended percentages and whatever else you see on labels for nuts, they may look like they have a decent amount of potassium and other minerals, but considering the other factors within nuts, their term tend to be termed anti nutrients. They wind up binding a lot of the a lot of the minerals and vitamins within the nuts, and making them relatively indigestible for us, and that goes along with their with the protein content as well. A lot of people list beans and nuts as a solid source of protein, and this is semi tangential, but it at the same time it's the protein is not very absorbable. It usually doesn't have a complete profile of amino acids, and it also is bound up with a bunch of other anti nutrients that are inhibiting the absorption and digestion of not only the protein, but the minerals and vitamins within those foods. Not to mention that if they're in their raw form, it's even more difficult to absorb those foods. And the problem is, is when you cook or you roast nuts, because most nuts, there are some nuts that don't have a high amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, but most nuts have a high amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, and roasting them actually damages those fatty acids. So you may make some things more digestible with cooking, marginally on some areas, but at this but at the same time, you might also be creating a bunch of damaged polyunsaturated fatty acids. So it's important to to really look at the food sources from from that perspective, and start to say, Okay, what am I actually absorbing? What am I actually taking in from my food into my body, versus what is just arbitrarily on the label that's really important for looking at take getting in enough vitamins and enough minerals, which is very important for maintaining vascular health, as we talked about in this whole past episode.

Jay Feldman 38:40
Yeah, yeah. And those oxidized polyunsaturated fats are the ones that are associated with plaque and are found in our plaques, which we talked about in those cholesterol episodes. And even if you're taking in those polyunsaturated fats on, you know, and an unroasted not recede, there's still a pretty good chance that those fats will become oxidized internally, anyways. But it's even worse, if, if you're already getting them oxidized and but, yeah, and so it's a really good point that the legumes, you know, beans and and then nuts and seeds and grains are all often touted for having a ton of these nutrients. And as you said, you know, protein and a lot of times, just because, you know, just to kind of reiterate, just because it's shown that those things have the vitamins and minerals and protein in there does not mean that we actually absorb them, and that's because there are those anti nutrients in there that block our ability to digest them and block our ability to absorb them. So so that's a reason not to necessarily favor those foods. However, if those are foods that you that you like a lot or fit well into your diet, at the very least, preparing them in a traditional way, meaning either fermenting them or soaking and sprouting them, in addition to often cooking them, depending on on which one we're talking about, is, is a good way to at least deactivate most of those anti nutrients and make them. Not, you know, make the minerals and vitamins and protein in there much more digestible and absorbable. So that would be a much better option than just having the them in..

Mike 40:08
And and seeing which and seeing which nut you're going to choose. I mean, if you do enjoy a salted nut or something like that, then using something like macadamia nuts would be a better option than walnuts or peanuts or some or any of those, or any of these other nuts because of those fatty acids present within the macadamia nut. So you can choose, you can choose which nut you can eat, and you can there are some options that are a little bit better than others. And then the other thing to keep in mind is, if you are craving a lot of nuts, it may be possible that you would be craving the fat and the salt content of the nut. And as we talked about, the salt is, really, is, is important. And if you have that craving, especially because the texture with the fat and the salt together, it has, like a very, very palatable component to it. So but you can meet those demands with other foods, say having chocolate, they have like sea salt chocolate, sea salt caramel, chocolate, things, things like that. Or if you have a nice steak with cooked in butter and you salt it other there's other foods that can also meet those demands. And you can try and see that if you use some other foods and then you stop the craving. Well, maybe the crating wasn't actually for the nut as much as it was for the components that are found within the nut, or even caloric density. Um, even in my own experience, if I work out really hard, I tend, I will tend to crave something very starchy. But once I have a meal that has a decent amount of fat and a decent amount of carbs and a decent amount of salt, then I tend that craving goes away. I don't have the craving at all anymore. So it's just something to keep in mind that the craving may actually be for the certain components that your body or your mind perceives as what that food is, but you're actually looking for those specific elements, and that's something to consider with somebody says, Oh, I just love nuts so much and or something along those lines.

Jay Feldman 42:00
Yeah. Do you actually like raw almonds? Or is it that you like the roasted, you know, oils and salt, yeah, yeah, and the fattiness, in which case, yeah, you gave a few options, as far as other places to get that. And another good one that I know we talked about a lot is potato chips that are cooked in coconut oil or even, like, olive oil or avocado oil would be okay as as secondary options that, you know, is a good combination of of some starch, some fat, and, you know, mostly saturated fat and or at least low proof of fat and salt. Then potatoes are good sources of of nutrients as well, as far as vitamins and minerals go, which I think a lot of people don't recognize. They just think of them as, you know, we're so used to looking at like, people say empty calories, and they're thinking of like refined white flour and, you know, and white sugar and things. But potatoes don't fall in that category. They're pretty No, there's a lot of nutrients in there. That

Mike 42:55
whole idea of the white foods, all right? And it's such an arbitrary I mean, I know it's a shorthand rule, but it potatoes are actually extremely nutrient dense, as long as you tolerate them well. And a lot of people seem to be able, at least that I've worked with or have spent time with, seem to tolerate a potato chip pretty well, if you especially people, if they can't tolerate, um, like a baked potato, so much, or even boiled potatoes, they tend to be, some people tend to be okay with the potato chip. I think that is because the starch is cooked really well and it's saturated with an oil.

Jay Feldman 43:29
Yeah, exactly so.

Mike 43:32
So I guess from there. So right now, we have get an adequate amount of electrolytes. And we talked about where you can get them from those electrolytes being sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, those are the main, the main ones. Obviously, there's other minerals that you can take in, and they will come with the foods that we mentioned. Some of those foods being fruit juice, dairy cooked leafy greens or or any type of chocolate or coffee, if you do tolerate those foods. And then after that, we had avoiding polyunsaturated fatty acids while also focusing on the saturated fatty acids. And the foods that we got from there, again, were dairy, um, any type of beef or ruminant meat. So that would be a beef lamb goat. And then we have chocolate, and then we have coconut oil. And then we have what else about it? Yeah, yeah. So then after that, we have making sure that there's eggs.

Jay Feldman 44:30
Sorry, eggs is another one that we didn't mention, but they're very nutrient dense, especially as far as the vitamins, like the fat soluble vitamins go, which we haven't gotten to you yet, and maybe we should. We're gonna get to Yeah, all right, we are going to pause that discussion on nutrition for blood pressure regulation and pick it back up in part three of this series, where we will also be discussing the relationship between calcium and blood pressure, the relationship between thyroid health and. To blood pressure, how we can raise carbon dioxide to improve our blood pressure regulation, and we'll also be going through supplements that you can use to lower your blood pressure and improve vascular health. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a review, a like a comment or a five star rating on iTunes. It really does a lot to help support the podcast. To check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll link to any of these studies and articles and anything else that we discussed throughout today's episode, and if you are looking to improve various symptoms that we discussed today, particular hypertension, but also anything else related to your metabolic health, excess stress, gut issues, joint pain, fatigue, hormonal imbalances or constant cravings and hunger. Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I will walk you through the main things you can do to resolve those symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. And I'll explain exactly why all of these symptoms really come down to a lack of energy, and talk you through some of the main things that you can do, as far as nutrition and exercise and stress are concerned, to resolve these symptoms and fix things on that energetic level. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, I will see you in the next episode.