Why would your systolic pressure be higher than your diastolic, well there’s a condition for that called isolated systolic hypertension. Normally the blood pressure is 120 over 80. that top number is the systolic which is the measurement of the contraction of the heart and the diastolic which is the relaxation phase. This condition is defined as the top number systolic going above 130 but sometimes you see it really high like 160 or 180, this is the most common type of hypertension over the age of 65 reported by the Mayo Clinic. The question is what causes this, well if you do Google researches, you’ll see that it could be anemia hyperthyroid diabetes, but you won’t find high cortisol unless you dig into other references like this book Endocrine System and Selected metabolic Diseases by Frank H. Netter, M.D. which is the simple collection of medical illustrations volume 4 endocrine system page 86 and this is under the section of a condition where you have high cortisol I’m going to read this to you:
“Cortisol may be responsible for the moderate hypertension, which is characteristically more of the systolic type first, gradually becoming diastolic.”
Now this information is very difficult to find if you just do a general search on high systolic blood pressure but if you type in high cortisol and blood pressure then you get a lot more information. But you must know the link between the two before you even knew to research it. So, what’s up with this high cortisol, well first of all it causes significant sodium retention and
it also creates significant potassium suppression. Anytime you suppress potassium you can start getting a high blood pressure just from that alone and you can also affect the sympathetic nervous system which is part of the nervous system that controls systolic blood pressure.
Sympathetic nervous system controls systolic blood pressure, and parasympathetic controls the diastolic blood pressure.
High cortisol will cause suppression of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a natural thing that our cells produce as a vasodilator, to relax the blood vessels, to reduce blood pressure, so cortisol suppresses that.
Now in addition to that you can also consume certain foods that are high in nitric oxide like: beets, garlic, meat and dark leafy green vegetables. Here are a few things you can try: use more vitamin D and I’m talking about at least 20,000 IU of vitamin D. Of course, when you take that much you also want to take 200 micrograms of vitamin K2 you always want to take those together. Here’s the thing vitamin D is one of the most magical things to reduce blood pressure and the relationship between vitamin D and high cortisol is anytime you see people with high cortisol you usually always see them with a vitamin D deficiency. When you take vitamin D you can help to lower cortisol so that is the relationship there.
I think the reason for that is that vitamin D is not really a vitamin it’s a hormone that acts like cortisol in the body, just to a certain extent it gets rid of inflammation it’s helpful in autoimmune conditions but it’s helpful in hypertension.
The other thing that is recommend is start taking potassium and start consuming more leafy greens to get more potassium and nitric oxide. That alone might greatly help you.
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