Natural ways to lower blood pressure
Q: My husband takes medication for his high blood pressure. He’d like to find ways to lower it more naturally, so we are intrigued that you have written about beet juice for blood pressure control.
Unfortunately, he also gets kidney stones. From what I have read, beets and beet juice are high in oxalates. Is that true? It would mean we have to find a different way to lower his blood pressure.
A: Four decades ago, scientists found that a handful of foods can increase the oxalate content of the urine (Clinical Science, April 1981). They include chocolate, peanuts, beets, rhubarb and spinach. People prone to oxalate containing kidney stones should avoid such foods.
There are many other natural approaches to blood pressure control, however. Unsweetened pomegranate or cherry juice can lower blood pressure. Volunteers in a randomized controlled study drank 2 cups of tart cherry juice or a placebo beverage every day for three months (Food & Function, June 20, 2018). Those consuming cherry juice had lower systolic blood pressure and LDL cholesterol.
Other strategies include eating magnesium-rich foods, learning how to breathe slowly and relaxing in a hot tub or sauna. For lots more information about controlling hypertension, you may wish to consult our eGuide to Blood Pressure Solutions. You will find it in the Health eGuide section of PeoplesPharmacy.com.
Q: I used to have to use the bathroom three or four times a day at a moment’s notice. This is part of my history of ulcerative colitis.
About two weeks ago, I started taking a couple of tablespoons of blackstrap molasses daily. Since then, my urge to poop is under control. In addition, I need to use the bathroom only once or twice a day.
I am not constipated, and I’m pleased with these changes. Do you have any insight why it is happening?
A: People with ulcerative colitis have an inflammatory disease of the digestive tract. There is some evidence to suggest that the immune system of these individuals is reacting to the microbiome of the gut.
A fascinating article in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine (December 2019) may offer a preliminary answer to your question. A pilot test-tube study suggests that sugarcane molasses may enhance the body’s natural anti-inflammatory reaction. It may do this in part by enhancing the good bacteria in the colon. Perhaps the blackstrap molasses is modifying your microbiome in a favorable way.
Q: You have written about rosemary water improving performance on some cognitive tests. What is rosemary water? I have never seen it. Where could I get it?
A: We wrote about a study in which 80 people were randomly assigned to drink a cup of commercial rosemary water (No. 1 Botanicals, a British brand) or plain water. The differences in cognitive performance were small but statistically significant.
We don’t know if it is possible to purchase rosemary water in the U.S. Shipping it from London would be very pricey.
You could make your own rosemary water, but we don’t have a way of standardizing the active compounds such as rosmarinic acid. When we make it, we use six 6-inch sprigs of fresh rosemary from the backyard bush and steep it in a quart of water for an hour. We boil the water first. Unfortunately, we don’t know how this compares to No. 1 Botanicals rosemary water product.
Most of the medications taken by Americans used to be made in the United States. That all started to change about 20 years ago. Now, the vast majority of medications we swallow are made in whole or in part outside our borders.
This happened in large measure because manufacturing costs, including materials and labor, are far less expensive in places such as China, India, Slovakia and Brazil. The generic drug industry relies on low prices to sell its products.
The Food and Drug Administration has embraced this move. On its website, the agency brags that generic drugs save Americans billions of dollars every year.
Four years ago, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that “more than 40% of finished drugs and 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredients are produced overseas.” These APIs are the defining compounds in all our medications.
Is there a downside to this huge shift in the pharmaceutical supply chain? Over the past decade or so, we have heard from many readers who complain that their medications appear to be of substandard quality. When manufacturing is located abroad, the FDA has a harder time inspecting pharmaceutical facilities to ensure quality.
But there is another complication when the pharmaceutical supply chain originates overseas. In a crisis such as a worldwide pandemic, there can be shortages of essential medicines.
FiercePharma is an online news service that tracks the pharmaceutical industry on a daily basis. In an April 13, 2020, report, it shared this concern: “The novel coronavirus has put an enormous strain on the pharmaceutical supply chain, with spot shortages of certain meds increasingly common. Now, with thousands of COVID-19 patients flooding U.S. hospitals, drugs used during treatment and ventilation are growing scarce.”
Critical medications such as propofol and midazolam are in short supply. Some antibiotics and albuterol asthma inhalers also are running low.
It’s not just the manufacturing process that has been affected. According to FiercePharma (March 31, 2020), “The production of Chinese active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) slipped by 10% to 20% during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in China but is quickly recovering. The bottleneck in the global supply chain for APIs is now shipping, particularly ocean freight.”
Quality also may suffer during the pandemic. That is partly because FDA inspectors have been called home from China and India. The honor system has replaced FDA oversight.
Katherine Eban is the author of the book “Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom.” In a story for Reuters (April 16, 2020) she reports that one of the foreign companies supplying the drug chloroquine to the U.S. market has been cited for manufacturing failures.
This is a medicine that some doctors are using to treat COVID-19. The FDA has lifted its import ban on the company to allow both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to continue to flow into the U.S. market from India.
Disruptions to our drug supply chain because of the pandemic may encourage U.S. lawmakers to reevaluate the appeal of less expensive foreign-made medicines. Maybe it is time to reward companies for making medicines at home where they can be regularly inspected by the FDA.