peace and blessings people welcome back to the channel once again today we're going to be talking about a topic that is not only near and dear to my heart because that's how my healing Journey started but it's also very important to billions of people out there in the world because it is the number one risk factor for the number one cause of human death okay that being cardiovascular disease and that number one risk factor is high blood pressure if you don't have it you know somebody who has it and the statistics show that if you don't have it now a large majority of people are going to develop it and so it's very near and dear to me so I know it's very near and dear to you as well if not for you for somebody you love now if you're a current subscriber thank you so much for your support if this is your first time to my channel make sure you go ahead and subscribe hit that notification button so you'll get notified whenever content like this comes out in the future okay so without any further Ado let's get started so my journey started out in terms of like my healing journey I got diagnosed with high blood pressure when I was actually 16 years old in high school okay this is despite the fact that I was an athlete only had about five to seven percent body fat so I was really fit and I still got her diagnosed with high blood pressure okay I lived with high blood pressure for over a decade into my late 20s and I finally decided to do something about it after multiple visits to doctors who were telling me not only did I need to take medications but I needed to take at least two to three different medications because my blood pressure was commonly around about 160 170 over 90 100 okay so blood pressure is that top number which is systolic over diastolic systolic is when your heart is Contracting so when you hear that beat that is the contraction of the heart okay and that number is representing the pressure that is in the heart whenever you're in the blood vessels whenever your heart is Contracting okay all right and then the bottom number is when your heart is relaxing there isn't a b okay and so if that number is higher and you're supposed to be relaxing again the pressure in the blood vessels are higher than it should be okay so mine was routinely 170 over a hundred okay which is approaching stroke level okay and so I realized that after working in the hospital and seeing people who are now in their early 30s and I was at the time in my late 20s who were having heart attacks and strokes I realized that this was going to be my impending doom at some point and so I said you know what I got to do something about it and I'll I'll be the first to tell you Healthcare professionals are probably the worst patients and what I mean by that is I would get my prescriptions and I wouldn't rarely ever take it okay and so I wouldn't take it and then I wouldn't do anything about changing my lifestyle so it left me Saddle in the same position so I continue with this sort of back and forth for over a decade now I'll tell you before we get started into a lot of the things that I did and the recommendations that I give to people I'll tell you that first this is a disclaimer this is not medical advice this is simply what I did and what I do with people I work with in terms of like giving them things that work for me and that have worked for other people that I work with so this is not medical advice this is a holistic approach to living your life such that your body actually heals and rebalances itself okay so this is not medical advice okay so and when I realized and being a healthcare professional in the hospital I realized that the vast majority of people who were coming into the hospitals who had heart attacks who had Strokes many of them were actually on medication when they had the heart attack and they had a stroke so that also told me that even if I take the medication like it's helping to reduce my blood pressure but I still can have a heart attack or stroke so that even scared me even more so that was what made me say all right I gotta I gotta really change my lifestyle okay so what I decided to do was go on this healing Journey and that Haley Journey consisted of uh trial and error I mean I tried everything I tried everything from you know changing how it worked out you know during different types of exercises CrossFit and hit training and aerobics training with Billy Blanks you name it I tried that I tried all different types of diets and I'll tell you this is why I discovered diets don't work because diets don't change your lifestyle okay and so after a lot of trial and error I finally figured it out but before I get into what I did that literally took my blood pressure from 170 over 100 to literally 117 over 80 Sometimes some 117 115 over you know 70. um before I share with you what I did with that let's first dive into a little bit of the statistics behind high blood pressure because I think it's important to first get informed so you understand what high blood pressure is because a lot of people do exactly what I did the blood the the doctor tells them that the blood pressure is a little bit high and they brush it off because most of the people in the family have high blood pressure and they they see them walking around no problem and so in their mind they're thinking like well a little high blood pressure won't kill you but again it's the number one risk factor for the number one cause of human death that's the first thing the other thing is high blood pressure has a nickname and that nickname is the Silent Assassin okay because most people who have high blood pressure don't even know they have high blood pressure and most people who have a stroke or a heart heart attack have a stroke or a heart attack without even knowing they have high blood pressure okay so this is why it's so important to first get informed okay so first sort of statistic that's really important to understand is one in four adults between the ages of 40 uh and 20 I would say 20 to 44 have high blood pressure one in four okay that's one in four adults and if you start to get into age brackets that are between 40 and 50 and then between 50 and 60 that number goes up exponentially okay so that's really important if you walk into a room now and the room is filled with people between the ages of 20 and 44 one out of four people 25 percent of the people are going to have high blood pressure and most aren't going to know it the other thing that's really important is high blood pressure isn't just this thing you can brush off let me give you a few examples of what high blood pressure is doing to you all right I'll first start with what should have been telltale signs to me even at 16 years old that something was wrong with my blood pressure I would notice that I would get headaches okay I was no I was noticing that I was getting more fatigued than usual okay I was noticing that I was getting that headache in a particular area of my uh my head as well too so those are some of the things that were telling me that it was high blood pressure even before I got diagnosed the other thing that's really important as I mentioned before is that you know high blood pressure isn't just PL pressure that's high and the body is not doing anything okay high blood pressure stiffens the blood vessels it makes the blood vessels more stiff instead of being more elastic and movable and just think about it if you had a tire on a car and that tire got very very stiff it would at some point crack okay and when it begins to crack now you lose all the pressure okay you can have a heart attack you can have a stroke Etc okay all right the other thing that's really important about uh having high blood pressure is that it promotes the buildup of plaque in the arteries okay not plaque on the teeth but plaque in the arteries okay and that plaque can eventually break away uh from the the the walls of the arteries and block off that artery or blood vessel and that will lead to you having a heart attack okay that can potentially even lead to you having a stroke okay so having high blood pressure increases plaque inside of the arteries as well too and then the other thing is it again isn't the leading cause of Strokes it's a leading cause of heart attacks okay so it's not something you can just walk off the other thing that's really important about high blood pressure it ruins your kidneys okay because again when you have high blood pressure it's not just in the heart it's everywhere in your body and particularly in the organs is where it's most dangerous um think about the kidneys okay the kidneys will have high blood pressure in in the kidneys inside of the vessels inside of the kidneys as well too and that will lead to the kidneys beginning to break down which is really important so high blood pressure ruins the kidneys which causes you to to develop uh cardiovascular disease your kidney that and that that's the big point that I want to sort of make to you guys is that everything is connected okay it's not just ruining your heart it's not just ruining your blood vessels just ruining your kidneys it's ruining your brains okay it's ruining you know the flow of blood throughout the entire body okay so it's really important that everything is connected okay so once your kidneys get ruined by the high blood pressure it's going to affect your heart and cause you to eventually have cardiovascular disease and as we can see especially in our community in the black and brown Community you can see that car kidney disease is going up exponentially every day okay we're starting to see dialysis clinics and um our neighborhoods to the same tune of McDonald's we see as just as many dialysis planets as McDonald's and that makes sense now right when you're eating that type of food okay it's going to ruin your kidneys and we'll talk about why that happens when you're eating that type of food why it ruins your kidneys and raises your blood pressure in just a moment the other thing is it is the it high blood pressure according to the World Health Organization is also considered the number one contributor the number one contributor um to all causes of mortality okay the number one if they were to rank what things contribute to mortality or death high blood pressure is the number one contributor okay so again that's why it's so important the other thing that is this is probably something that most people don't know but when I found out this statistic it really changed everything for me the leading cause of death for a cardiologist which is a heart doctor the leading cause of death for a heart doctor is cardiovascular disease now imagine that you know you go you they go to school for 12 14 years residency you know like all of these things and put in all of this work and um their expert at the heart and the number one cause of death for a cardiologist cardiovascular disease okay now that doesn't mean that they don't know anything about the heart but that that definitely means that as a group as a whole they don't know much about healing the heart okay so it's really important for us to understand that and if you look at doctors like Dr Dean ornis who put us multiple studies in multiple peer-reviewed journals very respected journals and publications he literally has been doing things with the Whole Foods plant-based diet to heal people of not only high blood pressure but even congestive heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases so it's really important we get those statistics out of the way first and then let's go into some risk factors things that actually cause you know um your blood pressure to be high okay so some of those risk factors would be being overweight or obese so the more adipose tissue you have on the body the higher your blood pressure the other thing is a sedentary lifestyle okay the less you move and the reason why this is so important because today we move much less than our ancestors you know our ancestors walk to work our ancestors you know uh most of the jobs were actually manual label labor jobs and not only that most of them were manual label jobs that were outside okay so our ancestors our great grandparents our grandparents were much more better at movement okay and we have a much more sedentary lifestyle compared to our grandparents I mean you know everything has changed in the last 50 years and we'll dive a little bit deeper into that but a sedentary lifestyle will increase your blood pressure as well because life is about movement I mean circulating blood through your body is a constant thing is happening right now as we speak and the less you move the less you circulate okay and that is true because the lower half of our body doesn't have a pump like the Hat the top half of our body a top half has a heart that is pumping the blood the bottom half doesn't have a pump so if you don't move you don't get that blood flowing back up through the veins okay so it's important to have movement okay other things the standard American diet will dive into that a little bit deeper but the standard American diet is 60 to 70 percent processed foods and that processing comes with food chemicals and a large majority of those food chemicals are things like salt okay not the salt you use with the Shaker but they're putting salt in it to preserve it okay and most people don't know how to read food labels so they don't even know how much salt is in it okay and most people eat so much processed food they're not actually adding it all up throughout the day so they don't know how much salt they're consuming throughout the day as well too and we'll dive a little bit deeper than that because most people think when you have high blood pressure it's always attached to you having too much salt in your diet that's not always the case the other thing is drinking too much alcohol stress um taking a lot of NSAIDs NSAIDs are non-steroidal um anti-inflammatory drugs okay these are like things you can buy over the counter um Advil ibuprofen Motrin naproxen these are often painkillers that people are using people use them commonly like I know people who use them daily if not every other day and these things will raise your blood pressure not only raise your blood pressure but also kill the good bacteria in your gut with some of that good bacteria is actually there to help monitor your blood pressure to keep your blood pressure normal okay so that's really important too low vitamin D low vitamin D and roughly 70 percent of African Americans and people of color have low vitamin D or at least sub-optimal levels okay and vitamin D plays a key role in converting an enzyme into kidneys okay because when you get vitamin D it hits the skin as they have magnesium to convert it there it then has to go through the liver to be converted that sunlight when it hits the skin goes to the liver to be converted then it has to go through the kidneys to be converted and now you have vitamin D active the active form of vitamin D where if you don't have healthy kidneys as I mentioned before now you can't convert this you know uh sunlight into Vitamin D the active four okay so you can see how having low vitamin D and you won't have this enzyme now you're going to have high blood pressure because now it's going to start to affect your kidneys as well too okay dysbiosis and that's what I just mentioned before dysbiosis is having um a lot of bad bacteria in the gut and not enough good okay so having dysbiosis in the gut can cause your blood pressure to be high also kidney issues as I mentioned before one in three uh one in three patients in the U.S um have kidney disease okay and that's one in three African Americans have kidney disease that's about 33 so we got three people here one of them are uh who are African-American one of them are going to have some form of kidney disease and that is crazy when you think about the fact that African-Americans only uh represent about 12 percent of the American population okay but we represent 33 percent of kidney disease like that's crazy so we got to do something all right so let's jump into some things that we need to eliminate what do we need to eliminate all right you gotta eliminate things that are causing stimulation to the body things like caffeine coffee okay that will increase your heart rate which will increase your blood pressure so eliminate and not only that coffee will also be dehydrating to you and dehydration will dehydrate the kidneys put more pressure on the kidneys increase the blood pressure in the body Okay so getting rid of dehydrating uh and stimulating beverages like coffee and caffeinated you know drinks like energy drinks okay getting rid of processed foods as I mentioned before processed foods uh relatively a new thing they didn't really come into play into like the 1950s after World War II when you know they were using scientists to create processed foods for the soldiers who were fighting because one of the big things about wars that they knew was that a lot of the soldiers died not from you know being shot stabbed or killed they were being they were dying as a result of malnutrition okay so they created a lot of these processed foods so that when they dropped them they would last long enough okay and then they sold that or gave that information to the food industry and then you had this big boom uh processed foods but ever since that time the 1950s you have seen an increase in cardiovascular disease that's when you saw cardiovascular disease become the number one cause of death in the U.S and then later on become the number one cause of death for human being in general around the world okay and you can go back during that time and you'll see that the American president Dwight Eisenhower has a heart attack and then now they're trying to figure out what is going on with heart disease and cardiovascular disease because it was a new thing it wasn't this thing that was common as it is today okay so getting rid of processed foods okay a lot of these man-made Foods is a big thing okay eating more Whole Foods foods that have one ingredient an avocado kale Etc um getting rid of those insays that I talked about before the Motrin the Advil naproxen etc those things raise your blood pressure and take and using some more natural options or correcting the issue okay stress managing stress now that you can't completely eliminate stress but you can't manage stress because stress does increase your blood pressure also removing white flour and refined carbohydrates the reason why this one is so important is because white flower refined carbohydrates increase insulin in the body okay and this now when people think about insulin they think about diabetes they don't think about high blood pressure but here's why this is important insulin increased increases in insulin will increase blood pressure why is that because an increase in insulin causes renal sodium to be reabsorbed so you absorb more of that salt sodium salt okay you absorb more of that salt back into the body okay so that's the first thing the other thing is when you increase insulin it will activate your sympathetic nervous system your sympathetic nervous system is that fight or flight nervous system in your body making you more jittery more active okay you want to be chill okay but if you eat a lot of refined carbohydrates a lot of white flour is going to increase your insulin which is going to stimulate your sympathetic nervous system make you more excited okay the other thing is it Alters the membrane of the cell so that when you're having this exchange of ions which we'll talk about when I say ions I'm talking about things like potassium and sodium it will disrupt the flow of those things and here's why that's so important because in every cell in the body we have a sodium potassium pump that sodium potassium pump it does a lot for our blood pressure and what what I mean by that is this that sodium potassium pump will pump three sodium out of the cell and it will pump two potassium into the cell okay now here's why that's so important potassium relaxes the blood vessels okay so when you have this disruption of that sodium ion you know transport system now you're going to have a disruption between sodium and potassium sodium will cause you to retain fluid think of it like a balloon the more and more water you put in the balloon it creates more and more pressure to the point that the balloon will pop if you add too much water okay so more sodium more salt um you're going to cause more water to come stay in the body the more water you're increasing the pressure eventually that pressure will cause a pop which could be an aneurysm which could be a stroke which could be a heart attack okay really really important now I'm going to talk to you about the 10 foods you need to get rid of if you either have high blood pressure or you have pre-hypertension which is right before high blood pressure but you're right there it's gonna happen okay so here's the 10 foods that you most definitely need to get rid of canned foods all canned foods are going to have a lot of salt salt is there to preserve the food it preserves the food makes the food last longer but it doesn't preserve you to get rid of all canned foods okay number two process and deli meats processing deli meats processing deli meats are going to be high in nitrates which we know cause cancer but it's also going to be very high in sodium okay processing deli meats are going to cause an increase in sodium thereby increase and high blood pressure even red meats as well too number three stay away from microwave Foods again they're going to always put a lot a ton of salt in microwave Foods so you want to you want to start making your own food or if you're going to buy food buy food that is cooked but not in a fast fashion that is not out of a box a bag a can or jar okay you want to eat Whole Foods okay so stay away from microwave Foods number four fried food stay away from fried foods they're going to call cause inflammation inside of the lining of the blood vessels number five condiments stay away from them eliminate them uh as much as possible or get healthier versions of them that don't have all the sodium and the sugar in it okay again it's sodium is sodium isn't the only thing it's also sugar as I talked about with the refined carbohydrates in a white flour number six fast foods you eat fast You're Gonna Die slow okay and as you can see a lot of people you know who eat a lot of fast foods end up getting hypertension then they get high cholesterol then they get diabetes okay then they get heart disease I mean the list just keeps growing growing it's just a slow slow but sure sure death okay so eat fast You're Gonna Die slow okay so don't eat fast eat slow okay eating slow is like eating a salad I mean eating a prepared food food you gotta make takes time you go get fast food they cook it in five minutes okay number seven is salted nuts be careful of the salt and nuts because that type of salt which is the same kind of salt you're gonna see in a salt shaker that type of salt is going to increase the sodium in your and what you really love about the nuts is probably the sodium that's what's keeping you addicted to it it's the same thing with McDonald's fries you know eating those fries the reason why you love the fries is really because the amount of salt that's in it okay number eight okay number eight I'm gonna say is canned suits and broths start checking the labels we're going to talk about this in a second but start checking the labels you'll see how much salt is in there the daily recommendation for salt is less than 1500 milligrams I believe for the American Heart Association and in one of these cans you probably can get that one daily amount okay because you don't understand how to read it and we'll talk about that in just a second pickles man one pickle I mean just one one pickle a lot of times you look at that pickle and you think well it's a pickle it's a cucumber that has been sitting in uh vinegar but like there's a lot of salt in it and that pickle will raise your blood pressure without you even knowing it you're thinking you're eating something that is a vegetable but like there's a ton of salt in it and number 10 alcohol alcohol will raise your blood pressure as well too so that's in a bonus for today is hot sauce for those of you who like to put the sauce on there you like your your stuff a little bit Saucy hot sauce one teaspoon one teaspoon almost 200 milligrams of salt okay this is one teaspoon okay all right so let's get into some solutions and we're gonna wrap it up for today and we're gonna go through these pretty quickly one read your labels okay start reading your labels uh but even most importantly stop as much as possible stop buying things in box back cans jars Etc because when you get Whole Foods in the form of an avocado in the form of a coconut when you're eating things that are one ingredient those things you don't have to worry about the salt content you don't have to worry about the food chemicals in it it only has what nature gave to it okay but if you're gonna buy things inside of box bag cans and jars make sure you read the food label because what you're going to see is the amount of sodium and remember what I said you're supposed to consume less than 1500 milligrams a day um of sodium but what you'll see is you'll see It'll say 200 milligrams of sodium but what you don't realize is that that one container has five servings which means that if it has 200 milligrams it means that you now have consumed 1 000 milligrams and that's just one thing we're not going to talk about all the other Foods you consume so read your labels number two eat foods that are high in potassium remember what I said foods that are high in potassium the good thing about those Foods is potassium lowers the blood pressure because it relaxes the blood vessels okay so foods that are high in potassium that are not bananas okay avocado and avocado has about 700 milligrams in one avocado 700 milligrams of potassium okay dried apricots okay a good two coconut water good two one cup of coconut water has 600 milligrams of potassium so you have some coconut water one cup of coconut oil you have some um avocado you're almost there all right watermelon okay two wedges of watermelon you'll get a sufficient amount of potassium as well too butternut squash is also a good one as well too so get your potassium from Whole Foods as I just mentioned okay not the supermarket but Whole Foods okay um number three adopt the Whole Foods plant-based lifestyle I'm telling you what I did on my journey so I started eating a lot of high potassium foods I started reading my labels I adopted a Whole Foods plant-based lifestyle I said I'm gonna not just eat vegan I'm gonna eat Whole Foods not vegan junk food Whole Foods for 60 days that's what I told myself okay I did it for 60 days okay and I'll tell you my blood pressure change too I started doing a lot of exercise twice a day and most of the exercise I did at home or in my neighborhood okay so when I said exercise I mean movement you can do jumping jacks at home you can do push-ups at home you could do lunges at home uh you can sit down and up and down in a chair at home I did a lot of movement and whenever I did like aerobic activity like running or jogging or walking I did it within my target heart rate okay but then my target heart rate which really helps by the way number five meditation okay because again high blood pressure is really an issue of stress in the body okay it's pressure okay so I did the meditation two to three times a day because meditation is known to soothe the nervous system particularly this the uh sympathetic nervous system that I talked about earlier okay number six stay super hydrated I was drinking half my body weight in ounces okay so I weigh about 2 to 15 okay I'm about six two so I drew a half my body weight in ounces so I was drinking somewhere around four liters a day of water okay coconut water green juices things of that nature okay so stay super hydrated the more hydration you have the more you're gonna keep the kidneys healthy okay and then last thing and probably the most important thing that I did was cleansing and detoxification to get all of that salt that I have been consuming since a child all that salt from the processed foods because most of the things that I grew up on came in a box bag canned jar and they're preserved by salt that preserved by food chemicals okay so doing cleansing detoxification this is where I created my detox so for those of you who know I have a 14 day and 28 day detox full body detox it gets rid of yeast parasites gets rid of all the waste in the guts and the in the gut and a lot of the food chemicals heavy metals mucus things of that nature I created my detox during this time and my blood pressure went literally from 170 over 100 on average to around about 117 115 over like 70 to 80. okay so I hope you guys have enjoyed this I know it was a little long today but I had a lot to share and a very small amount of time so I hope you've enjoyed this I hope it gave you a lot of aha moments and I hope something on here will help you transform your health again if you love the content continue to follow share make sure you subscribe if you haven't and I'll see you in the next video peace