The epidemiologist will label people with high blood pressure as a risk of metabolic disease.
This makes sense and correlates to what we understand from a biochemical standpoint.
The blood is a transport system where various compounds can enter and exit at almost all contact points. Some more than the others.
For example, the vessels that run along our intestines may pull up more of a certain thing, depending on what we eat, while those at the kidney may release certain compounds based on a combination of factors.
The vessels can constrict and expand, also based on a number of factors.
What is being measured?
When we take a blood pressure test, the method used is to apply external pressure on the artery and listen for a heart beat.
When we hear a heart beat, this means that the arteries are constricted as the vibrations of the force from the pumping of the heart are hitting the walls of the artery.
We take 2 values, one when we have fully cut off the artery and we begin to hear the blood pumping again. Then a lower value for when we no longer hear the blood pumping, which means that the blood is flowing freely without pressure interference.
These 2 values tell different stories but in our case, we care about both values together, a general blood pressure reading.
What is pressure?
Just as with a garden hose, the pressure is how much force does the content within the hose are applying to the walls of that hose.
If you turn on your pipe but have a sprinkler at one end, then you can increase the pressure in the hose that may cause it to burst if the main line from the metal pipes are very high.
A similar thing happens in our body.
The heart can increase the pressure. The arteries may expand or constrict which impacts that pressure. And the removal of the goodies being transferred may not be removed fast enough to maintain that pressure.
The pump and vessels
The heart is primarily electrically controlled. It can increase or decrease its beats per minute based on signals from the rest of the body.
It can increase under various stressors.
Some stressors can also dilate the vessels.
If a certain area is inflamed, or the body is fighting off something, the body will elevate its temperature and releases molecules that causes the vessels to dilate, so we can move resources faster.
Where are many mechanism to dilate the vessels. So man have utilized some of these mechanism as a way to lower their blood pressure.
The intake system
Since the content of the vessels can cause the pressure to build up, we should take a look at how things get into the circulatory system.
One primary way is from the intestines and lungs.
These are just one of many ways as every touch point of the vessel acts as a bidirectional transfer.
When a cell used up the glucose and oxygen, it will move CO2 back into the vessels.
But the intestines is what man seems to focus on mostly. They seem very caught up in the food we eat and what we put in our mouths. Specifically, what we should not put in our bodies as those are determined to be the cause of our pressure issues.
We will hear primarily of two compounds that we must avoid. Glucose and sodium. Why those two? What are they observing here? Remember that pressure is increased as more things are in the blood. So what about the other things? What about fats and proteins?
The more of a certain molecule in a solution, there is a principle called osmosis that takes place.
These compounds in the blood will attract water. The fundamentals of this is polarity and the structure of water is important to understand here. This is why I’m reading the book Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollack.
The negative oxygen part of the water is being pulled to the positive ions like sodium, while the positive hydrogen part is attracted to the negative part of other stuff like the positive parts of the glucose.
In the universe, it seems systems tend towards balance. As the compounds in the blood attracts the water molecules, that leads an energy imbalance where more water will be pulled from the surrounding areas into the vessels. This can drain the cell of water.
When the cell is low on water, this is how we “feel” thirst. So glucose without the water, or salt without the water, proteins without the water will make us thirsty.
Any compound in the blood will pull water and increases blood volume until those compounds are moved to where they need to go.
The body has mechanisms to achieve balance, which the biologists calls homeostasis.
The combustion system
One main way of the compounds leaving the blood is for them to go into cells. But cells are tricky creatures. Sometimes they have many systems in place to allow things in and out of them.
Certain compounds can pass through its membranes while others need to go through gates. These gates are controlled by many things. Some are opened and closed by voltage, other molecules and atoms, light, etc.
Some cells such as fats and muscles cells would require insulin to move these gates in place so glucose can flow in.
Some cells such as the brain doesn’t require this instruction as the transporters are there and ready for glucose to flow right into the cell.
I think because muscles and fats are the majority cells, this mechanism came into us so we don’t deplete the blood entirely of glucose.
The pancreas plays a majors role in regulating glucose here. It will release insulin and glucagon based on the amount of glucose it senses in the blood and. More insulin for more glucose and more glucagon for less glucose. Glucagon tells the liver to release its glucose storage and produce glucose from whatever sources it can use.
But for many people who are metabolically unhealthy, the glucose is not going into the cells. So they have lots of glucose and lots of insulin in the blood.
Why is there a glucose lockout? Some say the cell is full. Based on the ideology, some say the cell has too much fat so it locks out glucose, others will say the cell has too much glucose already and is damaged.
Why is there too much fuel in the cell? Is the machinery not working properly to utilize the energy? Why does a fat person feel tired? This will take us further into something called the mitochondria, different chemical cycles and biophysical systems such as the movement of electrons and protons to generate electricity.
Metabolic disease becomes a multidisciplinary approach the more deeper you go into the cell to trace where the glucose is going and what is it doing.
So the brute force way of dealing with this is to eat less and exercise more. Which works and then it doesn’t work because the machinery is not so simple as energy in energy out. Or as some would call it, calorimetry, where they hold the belief that the body operates from calories as energy.
The exhaust system
After combustion, we need to release the excess. But if we put something in the system that it was not trained on and had time to adapt to, it will need to maintain balance in any ways it can.
For example, foods that come with calcium typically comes with some vitamin D or some other compound where the calcium can get into the blood stream from. If we take supplement form of vitamin D, it will pull up more calcium and then a similar homeostasis system like glucose homeostasis needs to kick in to keep balance.
So you will find that they pair K2 with vitamin D so the calcium can go into the bones. That is one way how calcium gets out of the blood.
Some of it is also released by the kidneys and that same vitamin D will tell the kidneys to hold unto the calcium.
So just like with insulin and glucagon, vitamin D is a molecule that signals to different organ systems what they should do. These signaling molecule is what they refer to as hormones.
Hormones help to maintain balance. And here we have a hormone that is primarily created by sunlight and some by food. Sunlight, and lack of light, is a signal to many systems in the body and outside of the body.
It tells the plants to put water with the glucose along with the right balance of other compounds like sodium, potassium and magnesium.
The kidneys should release many other compounds too, such as the electrolytes, of which are sodium, potassium, chloride and others.
It cannot just release sodium by itself. Just like with the gates on the cells that is instructed by insulin to let glucose in, for electrolytes to move in and out of the cells, they need other electrolytes around with different charges.
These charges are what triggers the voltage gates to open and close so the ions can flow in and out.
The right balance of potassium and chloride must exist for the body to let the sodium out. Sodium is not found isolated in nature like that so often when consumed from real food. Sea food will have sodium chloride and potassium, fruits will have many others along with the water.
So when we consume any isolated food stuff such as glucose and sodium extracted out of nature and far from what nature intended, the internal systems become imbalanced. Many things get thrown off.
The light matches the calcium, the glucose, the sodium and potassium. The light controls the temperature that also activated other mechanisms that works with the food.
They can see trends and associate high blood pressure with diabetes and cholesterol (fat metabolism) issues because the entire thing is connected back to metabolic issues caused by a mismatch in the signals from the environment.