There is more. Benicar was given to my mother who is diabetic and has no blood pressure. The doctor said this will protect her kidneys. I asked both the doctor and the pharmacist if there are any side effects that I need to worry about and both said no, these drugs are very safe. Just after one month of taking it she felt very weak one day and when she got up she fainted. It happened 3 times and we called 911. By the time she got to the emergency room her heart was at 20 beats per minute and was dying. The doctors told us that her potassium was through the roof and too much potassium will stop the heart. Long story short, she almost died and her heart was permanentaly damaged and got a pace maker. She had a mild damage to the brain because every time she fainted there was no blood getting to the brain. She is like a little child now that needs constant care. Please know that if you are on benicar and you feel weak lie down and stay horizontal and call 911 right away. It is a matter of life or death.

Recent study at Harward demonstrates, over again, that cocoa will lower the blood pressure, including cocoa products i.e. dark chocolate.

Thanks for this informative article. Yes, salt gets a lot of blame for hypertension. And in some cases, it’s true. Excess salt intake in salt-sensitive individuals equals increased blood pressure. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. Excess salt causes the retention of fluid and actually triggers a mild surge of our stress hormones. If our blood pressure is creeping up, cut back on the salt is an answer. We can normalise high blood pressure with good food, exercise, appropriate weight loss and good stress management, the causes are junk food, inactivity, overweight, and poor stress-handling skills. The cornerstone of our blood-pressure-lowering effort consists of good food, exercise and stress management. It’s what the doctors call ‘cleaning up ones stuff,’ and this trio is many times more powerful and ultimately a lot cheaper than any pills we take. And taking supplements made from natural sources can help move things along while we fix the underlying problem.

And I want to quote what Dr. Alan Inglis wrote about taking niacin and magnesium. ‘The RDA for niacin is 20 mg daily. But prescription doses of up to 2gram per day are used to boost HDL and bring down triglycerides (a pattern typically found in people with, or at risk for, diabetes). It’s effective, but it causes unpleasant flushing. We can start at 250 mg per day with dinner. That dose can then be increased by 250 mg per week. This needs professional supervision, as liver and blood sugar tests need to be followed.’ However, synthetic niacin should be avoided. Niacinamide is co-natural, and the best is yeast, or the niacin sourced from yeast. ‘Deficiencies of this key mineral (Magnesium) are rampant thanks to our diet, with over 50 percent of the population not getting enough. It has mild ‘calcium-channel-blocker’ effects, which means it’ll help to relax tight, narrow blood vessels and reduce blood pressure. We should add 400 to 600 mg from food-form vitamins or up to 1.2gram of the widely available magnesium citrate capsules.’ Magnesium is found in fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains, and especially, in pumpkin seeds.