Blood Pressure

Food producers are taking a new tack in their long-running effort to sell products with less salt. Instead of offering foods labeled as low salt that few people eat, they are gradually reducing the salt from some of their most popular menu items – but not making a point of it on the lable. Source Wall Street Journal.

This is finally a good step in the right direction and none too soon.

Why not taper the salt content to zero? We’re past the days when it was needed as a preservative. If someone wants the stuff, they can always add it.

This is a great idea. By a slow reduction in salt content people will adjust to it without cutting back on purchases of the product. That will allow producers to make further cuts in salt content until we reach a more healthful level. Unfortunatley restaurants will need to make reductions as well.

The elimination of salt in most prepared food products would be a welcome development. I note with interest that so called chefs on cooking shows seem to use entirely too much salt in preparing their dishes. I have cooked salt free for my entire adult life and find my food as flavorable as any other food preparations. Salt is far from the only effective seasoning. The use of proper herbs and other non-salt spices can provide a tasty and enjoyable
palate.

But what about the sugar?

It matters not to me how much salt is removed from prepared foods. They can remove all of it as far as I’m concerned. I can always replace it, and then some, at home. But I can’t remove the sugar that food manufacturers add to foods that normally would not require sugar at all. That is, I don’t know of any recipes that call for putting sugar in tomato soup. But Campbell’s sure adds it. And so do almost every other soup and prepared food manufacturers. And it can’t be removed when you bring it home. I’m much more concerned about the arbitrary addition of sugar and other sweeteners to prepared food. And not only healthwise. It just ruins the taste of otherwise reasonably good food.

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A new surgical procedure is being hailed as a breakthrough in high blood pressure treatment in more than 50 years.

By following the advice to smoke less, take regular exercise and eat properly you are less likely to be affected by high blood pressure however there are still millions of people who take this advice but are still affected by hypertension and take a combination of drugs to treat it.  It is these people, whose blood pressure remains high even though they eat little salt and take medication that are likely to benefit from this new surgical procedure to cure high blood pressure.

Cure for High Blood Pressure

The one-hour operation called renal sympathetic-nerve ablation attempts to cure high blood pressure by disrupting signals from the brain that keep it raised. The procedure  involves inserting a wire into a blood vessel close to the kidneys to burn through nerves which carry signals that stimulate high blood pressure.

“This is the most exciting development in hypertension since the advent of anti-hypertensive medication 50 years ago. It is hard to forecast the limitations and it could eventually be compared to medication”,

said Mel Lobo, a doctor and specialist in clinical hypertension with the UK’s NHS

The tiny burns just one millimetre across are the equivalent of snuffing a candle out between the fingers. A series of four or five burns are carried out in a spiral pattern along the inside of the artery to each kidney.

The blood vessel itself does not sustain serious damage as the blood flowing along inside it cools the burn, like running a burned finger under a tap. But the burn is deep enough to affect the nerve on the other side of the vessel.

Once the connection between the brain and kidneys is distrupted the signals to raise blood pressure should stop source

Still A Need for Blood Pressure Monitors

Although it is hoped that it will help some patients stop taking medicines for high blood pressure completely it is important to note that the diagnosis of high blood pressure can only be achieved by regular and proper measuring with an accurate blood pressure monitor.

Already there are misguided reports that the operation to cure blood pressure will lessen the need to follow lifestyle guidelines suggesting that patients can forget about healthy diets and excersise for good.

Results of the Operation to Cure High Blood Pressure

Early results show it can take between one and three months for the procedure to have an effect on blood pressure.

The first person to have this operation to cure his hypertension was found to have much lowered blood pressure after two weeks

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