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Cognitive Levels Decline With High Blood Pressure

All those Americans from 18-83 suffering from high blood pressure -- about 65 million at last count and especially those between ages 18-47 -- now have something new to worry about. A recent study found those who have high blood pressure, but are otherwise healthy, may still have a measurable decline in cognitive functioning.

Although younger people (18-47) performed at a higher level than older people (48-83), they, like older individuals, showed blood pressure-related declines in cognitive function over time.

Although the blood pressure effects on cognition are not reversible, it is important to prevent an increase in those levels as early as possible in the life cycle, scientists concluded. Moreover, lowering the average systolic blood pressure by 20 millimeters or diastolic blood pressure by 10 millimeters would "have a considerable beneficial effect on the preservation of cognitive abilities in the population as a whole."

The good news is how you get rid of high blood pressure without taking high-priced drugs that cure symptoms but never get to the root cause of anything is actually pretty simple.

The first step is to stop all grains and sweets until your blood pressure and weight normalize. Insulin is a huge factor as to why high blood pressure persists. To that end, it is vitally important to avoid foods like grains and sugars as they will certainly need to avoid them.

Another way to lower your insulin levels would be to use exercise as a drug. Most overweight hypertensive patients require about 6-9 hours of relatively intense exercise per week (hard enough where they have problems comfortably talking to someone). This intensity is required to decrease the sensitivity of the insulin receptors. Most hypertensive patients have insulin receptors that are blunted, they don't work very well anymore and therefore the body needs to generate more insulin to get them to work.

EurekAlert October 4, 2004