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LOWERING YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE IN THE AGE OF ZERO |
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Written by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw
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Wednesday, 25 March 2009 |
Living in the "Age of Zero," where every action of Congress
and the White House seems designed to ruin our economy and expand government
control, can definitely raise your blood pressure.
It turns out that there may be a very simple and very
inexpensive way to reduce (often dramatically) your blood pressure - and much
more. Studies of potassium bicarbonate
supplements in humans report:
*Reduced Blood Pressure
*Increased Muscle Mass
*Decreased Bone Loss
*Reduced Risk of Stroke
*Improved Endothelial Function
*Reduced Dietary Acid Load
As we all know, the risk of many troublesome-even
deadly-health problems can be reduced with a good diet and increased by a bad
one. Let's look at this in an
evolutionary context, for as T. G. Dobzhansky, the founder of evolutionary
biology combined with genetics, explains:
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of
evolution."
Our diet has changed radically from what our ancestors ate
50,000 years ago, and not all of these changes have been for the good. Our
modern diets are likely to contain far less potassium, far more sodium, more
acid forming nutrients, and less base forming nutrients than those enjoyed by
our ancestors when our species evolved.
Fortunately, an inexpensive potassium bicarbonate dietary
supplement can help you to eat more like a Caveman without all that Stone Age
food hunting and gathering work.
Modern human dietary requirements were encoded into our DNA
during evolution starting with the Paleolithic diet, which contained about 35%
meat and about 65% plant foods.
(The Paleolithic begins with the first use of stone tools by
hominids such as Homo habilis some 2½
million years ago, and ends with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 years
ago.)
The type of meat (more monounsaturated, less saturated fat)
and of plant foods (more omega-3 fatty acids and far more fiber) eaten by early
man was different as well.
One of the most important differences was that there was far
more potassium (from fruits and vegetables) and much less acid-forming content
(because of the increased ratio of plant to animal foods) in the early human
diet.
The change to a low potassium, high acid-forming content
diet has had a profound impact on many aspects of wellness and healthy aging,
including those listed above.
According to one study,1
"the Stone Age human potassium intake averaged 400 ± 125 mEq/d [about 15 grams per day!], which exceeds
the NHANES III [Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,
1988-1994] age-grouped averages (~60-85 mEq/d) [2.3-3.3 grams/d] by factors
greater than 4."
This amount also "exceeds the 120 mEq/d set for adequate
intake by the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine in 2004 and
2006 and the same value, 120 mEq/d recommended by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture in 2005 [4.7 grams per day]."1
Note that the potassium content of the average American
adult diet is only 50% to 70% of the amount recommended. This means that most
American diets are officially deficient in potassium. Worse yet, we believe
that the official RDA is too low.
The Paleolithic diet contained much lower levels of sodium
than our modern diet, typically only a fraction of a gram per day. By
comparison, our modern diet contains far more sodium, about 2.5 to 5 grams of sodium per day.10 This means that the ratio of potassium to
sodium in our diet has changed from about 5 to about 0.7, a change toward less
potassium and more sodium of 700%.
Our kidneys are not evolved to deal with such a radically
changed dietary ratio of potassium to sodium.
They may be thus losing too much potassium and retaining too much sodium
with potentially serious adverse health consequences, such as some cases of
hypertension.
The Institute
of Medicine also reported that ". .
. Fruits and vegetables, particularly leafy greens, vine fruit [aka, vegetable
fruit, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant, and pumpkin] and root
vegetables, are good sources of potassium and bicarbonate precursors. Although
meat, milk and cereal products contain potassium, they do not contain enough
bicarbonate precursors to balance their acid-forming precursors, such as
sulfur-containing amino acids."
The results of a high net-acid producing diet include1 increased urinary calcium excretion,
increased bone resorption markers (indicative of bone loss), and increased
urinary nitrogen excretion (negative nitrogen balance as occurs with loss of
lean body mass).
Reduction of Stroke Risk by Potassium
One paper reported on the potassium dietary intake
(estimated from a 24 hour recall of dietary foods) versus occurrence of stroke
during a 12-year follow-up of 356 men and 503 women who were 50 to 79 years old
at baseline and without pre-existing history of heart attack, heart failure, or
stroke.2
The results showed that the relative risks of
stroke-associated mortality in the lowest tertile (third) of potassium intake,
as compared with that in the top two tertiles combined, were 2.6 (p=0.16) in
men and 4.8 (p=0.01) in women. The effect was partially independent of known
cardiovascular risk factors, such as age, sex, blood pressure, blood
cholesterol levels, obesity, fasting blood glucose levels, and cigarette
smoking.
Another study3 of
5,600 men and women older than 65 years and who were free of strokes, followed
for 4 to 8 years, reported that a lower serum potassium level was associated
with an increased relative risk of stroke (RR:1.5, p<0.005); a lower serum
potassium level in those taking diuretics (presumably for high blood pressure)
was associated with an even greater increased risk of stroke (RR:2.5,
p<0.0001).
In fact, "for each SD [standard deviation] decrease in serum
potassium in a diuretic user, there was a 38% increase in the RR (relative
risk] for stroke. For each SD decrease in dietary potassium in a nondiuretic
user, there was an 18% increase in the RR for stroke."3
Alkaline Diets Favor Lean Tissue Mass in
Older Adult Humans
Chronic metabolic acidosis can result from eating a diet
whose metabolism yields acids (such as sulfuric acid) in excess of bases (e.g.,
bicarbonate).
In fact, this type of diet is typically consumed by
populations of industrially developed (Westernized) countries, where animal
foods rich in acid precursors are consumed disproportionally to that of plant
foods rich in base precursors.5
One result of chronic metabolic acidosis is an acceleration
in the protein degradation of skeletal muscle; moreover, diet-dependent
metabolic acidosis tends to increase in severity with age.5
One recent study6
reported that increased potassium urinary excretion (derived from alkaline
potassium salts found in dietary fruits and vegetables) was associated with
increased lean body mass in 384 men and women 65 or older who participated in a
calcium and vitamin D versus placebo study of osteoporosis.
The authors concluded that ". . . subjects with a potassium
intake of 134 mmol/d [5.2 grams/d] can expect to have 1.64 kg [3.6 lbs] more lean tissue
mass than subjects with half that potassium intake."5
In a separate paper,6
researchers studying the effect of an oral potassium bicarbonate supplement
(60-120 mmol/day for 18 days) in 14 healthy postmenopausal women found that the
supplements reduced urinary nitrogen excretion, an indicator of preserved lean
body mass.
The authors concluded that "[t]he magnitude of the KHCO3 [potassium bicarbonate]-induced nitrogen
sparing effect is potentially sufficient to both prevent continuing age-related
loss of muscle mass and restore previously accrued deficits."
The amount of potassium bicarbonate supplement used in this
study was 6 to 12 grams
per day, which supplied 2.34 to 4.68
grams of potassium per day.
Decreased Calcium Excretion Helps Protect
Bones
In another paper,7
the effect of potassium bicarbonate on calcium excretion in postmenopausal
women was reported.
The authors note that potassium bicarbonate has been shown
to potently reduce urine calcium excretion in adult humans, including patients
with hypertension or calcium urolithiasis, and postmenopausal women.
As the authors note, "[t]he [Western] diet-induced low-grade
metabolic acidosis that persists further contributes to the external losses of
calcium by direct impairment of renal [kidney] calcium reabsorptive efficiency,
a characteristic of metabolic acidosis."
They, therefore, studied the effect of 30, 60, or 90 mmol/d
potassium bicarbonate treatment in 170 postmenopausal women for up to 36
months. (3, 6, or 9 grams
per day of potassium bicarbonate supplying 1.17, 2.34, or 3.51 grams per day of potassium,
respectively.)
All doses of potassium bicarbonate reduced urinary calcium
excretion throughout the study. Interestingly, in the 28% of the subjects that
had high baseline urinary calcium excretion, 60 mmol/day of potassium
bicarbonate decreased the urinary calcium excretion by an amount that, over a
36 month period, would accumulate up to 55,845 mg of calcium or nearly 5% of
bone calcium content.7
Potassium is Vasoactive, Increasing Blood
Flow, Helping Regulate Blood Pressure
It has been reported that potassium depletion in normal
humans increases blood pressure, as well as reducing the ability to deal with
an acute sodium load and sodium retention.8
In borderline hypertensives (140/90), "a low-potassium diet
(16 mmol/day) for 10 days increases systolic and diastolic pressures by 7 and 6
mmHg, respectively, relative to 10 days on a high-potassium diet (96
mmol/day)."8 Indeed, potassium
supplementation lowers blood pressure in established hypertension.
"Potassium is vasoactive; when infused into the arterial
supply of a vascular bed, blood flow increases."8
Potassium release is regulated by the Na+-K+-ATPase [sodium-potassium-ATPase)
enzyme in the plasma membrane.
"Potassium increases the uptake of norepinephrine [aka
noradrenaline] into the sympathetic nerve terminals, leaving less in the
[synaptic] cleft. This also promotes relaxation of the vascular smooth muscle
and increases blood flow." In this way, potassium acts importantly to regulate
the excitatory effects of norepinephrine.
In one study,9
reduced dietary potassium reversibly enhanced vasopressor (vascular
contraction, which induces increased blood pressure) response to stress in
African Americans. As noted in the paper, the blood pressure of normotensive
blacks is much more likely to be salt sensitive than that of normotensive
whites:
"In normotensive [but salt sensitive] blacks but not whites
[normotensive and not salt sensitive], a marginally reduced dietary intake of
potassium reversibly enhances adrenergically mediated vasopressor
responsiveness to stress."
How to Take Potassium Bicarbonate
You can easily eat more like a Caveman without having to
become a hunter/gatherer by taking one or two capsules, each containing 1.35 grams of potassium
bicarbonate (13.5 meq or 527 mg potassium) two to four times per day.
If you are an adult eating a typical American diet, you
would need approximately 3 to 4 capsules per day of potassium bicarbonate to
increase your total potassium intake to the RDA. We suggest starting with one capsule per day,
and take a week or two to reach 3 to 4.
IMPORTANT: Take the
capsule(s) by themselves on an empty stomach and wash them down with at least a
full glass (8-10 oz)
of warm body temperature water. (If you take it with food, the alkalinity may
interfere with the action of digestive enzymes that require an acid environment
resulting in indigestion and burping.)
Too little water might result in a stomach ache as the basic
capsule dissolves in your stomach which is supposed to be acid. The warm (body temperature) water will
quickly wash the capsules down into your small intestine which is normally
basic.
WARNING: IF YOU ARE TAKING A
POTASSIUM-SPARING DIURETIC PRESCRIPTION DRUG DO NOT TAKE SUPPLEMENTAL
POTASSIUM!
Our brains evolved to handle situations of emergency stress
with a "fight or flight" mechanism that pumps out lots of noradrenaline (the
brain's version of adrenaline), so you have the energy and alertness to either spear
the saber-tooth tiger or run up a tree away from it.
Continuous stress
is having the flight or flight system always on, continually pumping out excess
noradrenaline, leading to hypertension and stroke. Potassium, in sufficient amounts, will pump
the noradrenaline back into the vesicles where it is stored, not used.
Interestingly, the more stress you are under, the more
sensitive you tend to be to potassium's blood pressure-lowering effects. And aren't we all under continual stress
these days, as Zero and his cohorts in Congress continually assault our wallets
and freedoms?
In response, we developed our formula, Potassium
Basics, as a way to de-stress yourself in the Age of Zero.
[World-famous life
extension scientists Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw have been among Jack Wheeler's
dearest friends for forty years.]
References
1. Sebastian et al.
The evolution-informed optimal dietary potassium intake of human beings greatly
exceeds current and recommended intakes. Semin Nephrol 26:447-53 (2006).
2. Khaw et al. Dietary
potassium and stroke-associated mortality. N Engl J Med 316:235-40
(1987).
3. Green et al. Serum
potassium level and dietary potassium intake as risk factors for stroke.
Neurology 59:314-20 (2002).
4. Xiong et al.
Neuroprotection in ischemia: blocking calcium-permeable acid-sensing ion
channels. Cell 118:687-96 (2004).
5. Dawson-Hughes et
al. Alkaline diets favor lean tissue mass in older adults. Am J Clin Nutr 87:662-5
(2008).
6. Frassetto et al.
Potassium bicarbonate reduces urinary nitrogen excretion in postmenopausal
women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 82:254-59 (1997).
7. Frassetto et al.
Long-term persistence of the urine calcium-lowering effect of potassium
bicarbonate in postmenopausal women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 90:831-4
(2005).
8. Haddy et al. Role
of potassium in regulating blood flow and blood pressure. Am J Physiol Regul
Integr Comp Physiol 290:R546-52 (2006).
9. Sudhir et al.
Reduced dietary potassium reversibly enhances vasopressor response to stress in
African Americans. Hypertension 29:1083-90 (1997).
10. Alaimo et al. Daily Intake of vitamins, minerals, and
fiber of persons aged two months and over in the United
States: Third National Health And Nutrition
Survey, Phase 1, 1988-91. Adv Data 258:1-28 (1994).
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