Lower Your Blood Pressure Naturally

Lessons From My Mama

I learned most of my book smarts from university, but all of the best homemaker skills from my mama. She has been an amazing inspiration in my passion for holistic medicine and recently we teamed together to share this wonderful video on how to make hibiscus tea from your garden to lower your blood pressure naturally. 

How It Started

My mom grew up in Compton in a working class family, the eldest daughter of 6, and largely raised her younger brothers. She was a caretaker for many elite households in the country club, and she is still married to my father after 45 years. They live out in the country side and run a business together, which many couples know could naturally raise anyone’s blood pressure. 

My mom studied herbs, raised garden beds, chickens, and my brother and I on homemade meals from scratch. She has the greenest thumb of anyone I know and though I try to grow food in my urban garden, the plants love when my mom comes to revive them. My husband loves when she comes to visit because she leaves us with a happy garden, a cleaner house, and homemade food in the freezer.

Sounds pretty peaceful right? 

How It’s Going

But, this last year in quarantine my mom went to the doctor’s office, and the bedside manner of the visit was not like her polite upbringing. Instead of using phrases like “wow, your numbers are improving, keep up the good work, they used phrases like “you’re overweight”, “you need to exercise more”, and “your numbers are high.” So, naturally she developed a little white coat syndrome and became nervous to see the doctor, wouldn’t you? 

These are words that can raise anyone’s blood pressure and they were totally inappropriate. My mom is over 60 and not on a single medication. She drives 45min to get to the doctors office and waits an eternity to get those precious 15 minutes in front of her doctor. I think she deserves a gold medal for being able to lower her lab numbers on her own and to be able to lose weight during quarantine, but the white coat syndrome set in and her blood pressure was a little bit high (wasn’t everyones a little higher last year)? 

Maintaining A Healthy Blood Pressure

My mom's blood pressure is not normally high as you can tell when you watch the video, but we're still taking these extra measures to make sure that it remains low. High blood pressure is a serious threat that we want to address, and luckily hibiscus tea has been as effective as medication in a few small studies. In this small study of 46 people, hibiscus tea not only lowered BP equal to medications, it also had a positive effect on lipids and blood sugar, so it’s a win win. 

If you're already skimming this article and racing down to the video, I encourage you to take a moment and consider that this “hurry up and get to the end” mentality may be part of the dis-ease. 

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Before I share with you this video, I want you to consider that the footage is slow and tranquil and if you give yourself the full 5 min to watch the video, take a few deep breaths, and see how the tea magically transforms into a natural blood pressure reducing elixir, you will have already started the real work. It’s about slowing down and being in the moment, because racing is one of the 3 main reasons why we have high blood pressure in the first place.

3 Reasons Why We Have Blood Pressure

1. Hurry Up Mentality - racing from one place to another keeps you in a state of 'fight or flight'. It raises cortisol, the natural adrenaline and races your heart beat. If you do this constantly, it isn't like exercise that conditions the heart for a race, rather it's like crying wolf and exhausts the heart from over exertion all of the time. 

2. Too Much Salt - this is a tough one, because we need salt, and too little salt does not allow the body to stay in balance or stay hydrated. This is a problem if you fall into the “low sodium” camp. Do you buy processed foods that say “low sodium” because this is the worst way to confuse your body into thinking it will get the salt it needs, and instead offers synthetic chemicals that can raise your blood pressure. 

3. Dehydration - the easiest way to picture this is to imagine your blood is tomato sauce. You want more water to make it more like tomato juice, not less water to make it like tomato paste. The heart cannot pump tomato paste throughout your body as easily and it will work much harder to do so. 

3 Things You Can Do Now To Prevent High Blood Pressure 

1. Slow Down - we need to get out of ‘fight or flight’ and into the ‘rest and digest’ phase. Think of the last pose of yoga, lying in savasana, or the last thing we do each night, lying down to sleep. These restful phases are critical for the body to recover and restore health. It’s not always about how quickly you move from 0 to 100. The real practice is how smoothly you can return to 0 again. Ask yourself, why are you in such a hurry? Where are you going? You only have one life, so try not to pass through it too quickly. Take a few deep breaths, try to be more in the moment, and you will watch your heart rate come down and put less pressure on the circulation. 

2. Eat Real Salt - avoid all processed foods that have added table salt, especially “low sodium” synthetic salts, and other additives and preservatives that do not offer your body the real compounds you need from real salt. Even table salt is only sodium and chloride (both measured in your blood labs to check on your status), but sea salt can have so many more electrolytes and minerals like potassium, iodine, phosphorus, calcium, and more. When you salt your own foods with real salt, you will use much less than most restaurants and processed foods. 

3. Drink Water and Herbal Teas - we know we need water, but some of us start with coffee, move on to soda, and finish with wine or beer thinking that they are hydrating.  These are all not hydrating and though I know plain water can be boring, hibiscus is an amazing way to jazz up your hydration. Adding herbs to your water can boost the flavor, help you drink more, and have amazing health benefits !

Hibiscus Tea

So, I ask you to slow down, take a few deep breaths, and watch this video. This is my mom’s first kitchen video and I think it’s perfect. She picked the hibiscus flowers right out of her garden, boiled water, added lemon, honey, and voila! Easy peasy hibiscus tea for a refreshing elixir that can lower blood pressure naturally, both through hydration and through polyphenols in the flower that reduce oxidative stress in the body. 

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Try it, I think you will love it, and it's very safe to drink. If you don’t have access to fresh hibiscus in your yard, you can find the dried flowers in many ethnic grocery stores or online. 

If you love the video, let me know. You can find my fabulous mom on her new website built by her talented god daughter. My mom is an amazing quilter, a hobby she chooses to do to relax, and help support lowering her blood pressure naturally.

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