How Chinese Medicine Views and Treats High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure is caused by the inflammation of the artery inner lining. Once the artery is inflamed, the inner layer of the artery, called endothelial lining, becomes swollen and narrows the artery opening. Blood cannot pass through the artery easily. It requires the heart to work harder to push the blood flow through the narrowed artery. This is what causes high blood pressure.
What Causes the Arteries to Become Inflamed?
An unhealthy lifestyle causes this condition. This includes smoking, drinking too much alcohol, lack of sleep, too much stress, working long hours without catching up on rest, keeping emotional stress inside for a long time, and lack of physical activities (exercise). A poor diet also causes this condition. This includes eating fatty, greasy, deep fried and processed foods as well as canned foods. All of these unhealthy lifestyles will hurt our bodies over a period of time including our internal organs, tissues, and arteries.
How Does Chinese Medicine View and Treat High Blood Pressure?
In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), we categorize high blood pressure as excess heat elevation in the liver and heat-phlegm toxins clog the blood vessels. So acupuncture and Chinese herbal treatments are focused on detoxifying the body and reducing the inflammation level in our body by removing the heat and phlegm toxins. We first treat the cause of the high blood pressure. Once the inflammation is under control, the blood pressure is under control. We not only lower the blood pressure for patients, we also help patients maintain healthy functioning arteries.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbs for high blood pressure are effective because they can reduce stress hormone (which can cause the arteries to over contract leading to high blood pressure), and stimulate the natural production of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins which function like natural pain killers, tranquilizers and antidepressants for us. Acupuncture and Chinese herbs promote the internal organ’s energy flow, remove toxins from our body and restore general well-being.Acupuncture and Chinese herbs can reduce stress hormone (which can cause the arteries to over contract leading to high blood pressure), and stimulate the natural production of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins which function like natural pain killers, tranquilizers and antidepressants for us. Acupuncture and Chinese herbs promote the internal organ’s energy flow, remove toxins from our body and restore general well-being.
Help Yourself by Living a Healthy Lifestyle: Eat, Rest and Exercise Well
If you think toxins may be causing health issues in your body such as headaches, acne, eczema, fatigue, food allergies or environmental sensitivities, you should seek out professional help for detoxification from a TCM doctor. Acupuncture and Chinese herbs are a safe and effective treatment for detoxification.
Avoid taking prescription drugs for a long tern unless it is absolutely necessary. Most of prescription drugs can damage our bodies. They are absorbed by the stomach into the blood vessels and can damage the arteries by causing inflammation over time. This includes over the counter medicine like Advil. If you have any chronic health issues, it is a time to consider getting help through natural medicine.
I believe that western medicine (i.e. prescribed medicine) to lower the blood pressure shouldonly be used when the blood pressure is dangerously high. It can save a person’s life. To treat high blood pressure and help people return to a healthy condition, we need to remove the toxins from the body and ask our patients to adhere to a healthy lifestyle.
Read more about acupuncture for high blood pressure by clicking here.
