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Hypertension Statistics - What Does Rising Hypertension Statistics Mean to You?
By Jan Oliver

Thousands of Americans have hypertension and don't even know it. In order to understand high blood pressure, you need to understand what causes it and how to interpret hypertension statistics.

The heart, designed to be an efficient hardworking pump, sends thousands of gallons of blood coursing through your body daily and beats about 90,000 times in order to do this. It works to push blood through the arteries with the pressure where necessary. The walls of the arteries also push to aid the flow of blood through the body and to supply nourishment and oxygen to the most distant regions. Sometimes the arteries suffer from blockages and tight constrictions. Blood pressure readings measure how hard the heart has to work to accomplish its task.

When you have a health care professional take your blood pressure, they put a cuff on your arm. The cuff, when filled with air, creates a pressure that cuts the supply of blood. As the air pressure in the cuff releases, the health care professional records the number where they first hear blood moving through the veins. That's the systolic pressure or the top number. Systolic pressure is the maximum pumping pressure of the heart and comes from the heart contracting.

The second number, is determined as the pressure in the cuff lowers and is taken when the health care professional no longer hears the heart beat. This is the diastolic pressure. This is the pressure that occurs when the heart relaxes and is the bottom number of the blood pressure reading.

Sometimes blockage in the arteries makes the heart work harder. Sometimes stress and pressure create adrenaline and other stress related hormones that constrict some of the blood vessels in preparation for fight or flight. The constriction makes the heart work harder and if stress continues over a long period of time, creates changes to your body. Sometimes aging causes changes to the vessels' elasticity and makes the heart pump harder. As women enter menopause, their estrogen levels, often believed to aid in the control of blood pressure, also drops.

The normal range for blood pressure is quite broad.

Normal blood pressure's systolic number is less than 120 mm Hg and the diastolic number less than 80 mm Hg. Mm Hg is the measurement of the amount of pressure and uses the pressure exerted by a column of mercury as its standard. Unless the pressure is abnormally low and causes symptoms such as passing out, or is suddenly low, any numbers lower than 120/80 are within the normal range.

Prehypertension, the time when blood pressure control could be as simple as increasing exercise starts when the systolic numbers are between 120 and 139. The diastolic number is 80-89 when prehypertension exists. When people realize they have the start of hypertension, not only should they monitor their blood pressure more closely but they can also change diet and lifestyle to improve the reading. People with prehypertension caused from stress often don't have permanent changes to the blood vessels.

Stage 1 hypertension exists when the top number is between 140 and 159 or the diastolic or bottom number is 90 to 99.

The most dangerous level or stage 2 high blood pressure has a systolic level higher than 160 or the diastolic level higher than 100. These levels, maintained for any period of time create changes that lead to stroke, kidney failure, an enlarged heart, heart failure, aneurisms and other damage to the body. That's why it's important to check your blood pressure frequently if you see notice that you are at risk of hypertension. Keep these explanations in mind the next time you check your hypertension statistics.

Jan Oliver is an academic, writer and researcher in Natural Health. Discover the genuine natural ways on how to lower blood pressure today. Click Here to get your free report on lowering your blood pressure!

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Inner and Outer Light in the Human Photocell

The Medicine of the Inner and Outer Light in the Human Photocell
By Bernard Fleury

That the human body is a living photocell, energized and controlled by light entering the eyes is one of Liberman's basic and innovative assumptions. 1 Once this light enters the body it has a profound effect on both our physiological and emotional functioning as well as the development of our awareness. Our lives are truly dependent on the sun and the small portion of electromagnetic waves that reach our planet. The approximately one percent of these waves which reach us and are visible, are essential to proper human functioning and evolution.

Liberman repeats physicist David Bohm's postulate that "all matter is frozen light." Light is all in all, the basic stuff of the universe that manifests itself in a variety of forms. He joins Teilhard de Chardin and Arthur Zajonc in asking whether the evolution of humans both individually and collectively, has basically been dependent on our ability to receive and to make use of both the inner and outer lights, the "within" and the "without", the spiritual and physical. As both Teilhard and Arthur Zajonc have stated, the inner light is crucial because it gives meaning to what we physically see.

Liberman describes the eyes as the windows of the soul because our eyes provide the means for the interrelationship of the world without and the world within. We meet persons and objects and show how we feel with our eyes. Our eyes reflect our physical and emotional health by serving as an index of many different physical health functions or conditions, and are accurate indicators of mental states and styles of operation.

The eyes serve as the major gateways through which light enters and affects the body's total functioning including consciousness. The Gospel of Luke relates: "The light of the body is your eye, when your eye is clear, your whole body is clear, your whole body is also full of light; but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness." (Luke 11:34) The present-day clinical science of iridology, which many still consider psuedoscience, is based on the assumption that the iris of the eye is a real map of the body; that each section of the iris correlates with a specific part/organ of the body. Liberman cites the findings of a group of Russian scientists, reported in 1989, that found a one-hundred-percent correlation between the diagnosis of their iridodiagnostic technique and the actual physical conditions of their subjects. 2

It is very interesting to note that the principal conveyors of light to us are really extensions of our brains, the most complex (most parts) of any currently known human system. Brain and eye weight is two percent of our total weight but they require a quarter of our nutritional energy, a major part of our oxygen, Vitamin C, and zinc intakes. Our eyes contain seventy percent of the body's sense receptors, and except in the case of totally blind persons, provide access for approximately ninety percent of all we learn in our lifetime. (16)

As we have already noted, modern science is looking at the eyes as the "gateways of the mind." Liberman believes that specific mental patterns are directly related to the functioning or dysfunctioning of the physical eye, and light has a direct effect on our mental states.(18) Light is the principal nurturer of our bodies having a vital effect on our physical and emotional functions. Although hypothesized and tested since the late 1800's, it wasn't until the early 1970's that it was finally proven definitively, that when light entered the eyes, it just didn't only affect seeing, but also affected the brain's hypothalamus, which in turn is the coordinator and regulator of most of our life-support functions. It also initiates and directs our reactions and adaptations to stress. (22-25) The Greeks and other ancient civilizations knew this and practiced it in their medicine. Now we have scientifically confirmed that the nervous and endocrine systems are directly stimulated and regulated by light to an extent not accepted, until recently by modern science. (22)

Ebdnotes

1 Jacob Liberman, Light-Medicine of the Future (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear and Company, 1991)

p. xxv. This and subsequent direct references from this work are reprinted by permission of Inner

Traditions International, Rochester, Vermont.

2 Liberman, op.cit., p. 14.

Bernard J. Fleury, B.A. History and Classical Languages, Ed. D. Philosophy, Government, and Administration, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Educational Administration. Dr. Fleury's lifelong interest in history and a firm belief in the synthesis of faith and reason (theology and science) as two aspects of a single reality - The Light: God, is clearly evident in his book Called into Life by the Light (website: http://intolifebylight.com).