***This should not be mistaken for medical advice. You must do your own research and you should speak to your doctor first. All of our content is supposed to be taken as a compliment and not a replacement of any current medical treatment that you may be following.
Ask Padma Bhushan awardee Dr BM Hegde, India's finest doctor and one of the world's most respected medical scientists, what is the standard level of blood pressure in humans, and he would say, “I don't know!”
If you ask Dr Caldwell Esselstyn the same question, his answer would be, “It depends.” So I asked the same question to more than 20,000 children during one of our health awareness programmes in Faridabad.
Almost all of them answered, “120/80.” Again, I asked the same question to more than 500 school principals (during World Health Day – April 7, 2014). They all said, “120/80.”
So, how come two of the greatest medical brains in the world don't know the answer, whereas the common man has learnt it by heart?
Before 1997, the benchmark for blood pressure was 160/100 universally.
But gradually American Heart Association (which gets sponsorship from big pharmaceutical companies) brought it down to 120/80. As a result, more and more people are labeled as high blood pressure patients.
Other major medical authorities, including the British Guidelines has still maintained 160/100 as standard for diagnosis of blood pressure.
It is quite understandable that the pharmaceutical companies will promote 120/80 as blood pressure standard as guidelines, for obvious reasons.
Writes, Dr Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury
Here is a screenshot from google that backs this up too.
So you might now be very confused wondering what is your normal blood pressure?
You may also be taking blood pressure medications and wondering if you need them or not?
Here is a very important presentation from India's leading medical doctor Dr B.M Hegde
According to ayurveda, if you can work well, eat well, sleep well, shit well, piss well, love everyone and dont hate anybody, then you are well.
There was no such thing as normal/average blood pressure in ayurveda as everyone is unique.
Did you know the great Indian freedom fighter, Gandhi's blood pressure was 200/100 most of his life, however he lived till 78, did not die of heart disease, instead it was a bullet to his head. His doctors were freaked out most of his life but he refused medication.
The truth is medical science still cannot explain fully what is the real risk factor for heart disease.
Here is the Renegade Pharmacist's theory of what causes heart disease.
We're not trained or taught how to breathe when we're young. Over the years we experience stress, challenges, chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and so on, so we don't breathe consciously.
Instead, we tend to breathe under control of the reptilian brain, which means our breathing can become erratic, fast, slow, or it can just pause without conscious control. That leads to incoherent heart rhythms, which leads to incoherent functions in the body.
When you expose metal to air for long periods of time, the oxygen in the atmosphere reacts with the metal through a process called oxidation that causes it to rust. The same rusting occurs in the body that can lead to inflammation and cell damage. This is why it is beneficial to consciously control the amount of oxygen that goes into the body.
Too much oxygen as a result of over-breathing leads to oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is like a rusting of your arteries and veins because the oxygen is unable to release itself from your red blood cells. It leads to inflammation, plaque, and corroding. If you exercise too much or do too much physically strenuous work, that can also cause oxidative stress. In fact, just being stressed out in general can cause oxidative stress because our breathing is erratic and inefficient.
Too much oxygen and inefficient oxygen use leads to oxidative stress, which leads to free radicals attacking your system. This leads to protein and DNA injury, tissue damage, inflammation, and cell death. Autoimmune conditions, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer can occur as a result of oxidative stress (Bashir et al., 1993; Uttara et al., 2009; Reuter et al., 2010; Asmat et al., 2016).
Similarly, if you do not use oxygen efficiently, you can experience low moods, depression, low energy, and no motivation (Black et al., 2015).
Thanks to the Bohr effect, an increase in carbon dioxide results in a decrease of blood pH (more acidic), which makes the haemoglobin proteins release their oxygen. When the haemoglobin releases oxygen, it goes to the tissue cells of your body, to the mitochondria, to create ATP energy. You need a certain concentration of carbon dioxide in your body for this to happen.
When you are stressed or anxious, you over-breathe (hyperventilate). This causes you to have too little carbon dioxide in your body, so the haemoglobin is not prompted to release oxygen sufficiently. That means there is not enough oxygen going to our cells where it is needed to create ATP energy – which keeps us alive and functioning!
So inflammatory disease and heart disease can also be the result of over breathing or hyperventilation that happens when you are stressed or anxious which causes you to have too little carbon dioxide and too much oxygen bound to haemoglobin and not enough going into the cells where it is needed to create energy.
One of the aims of SOMA Breath is to help you create the optimum balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide for your body, so that you can experience a consistent flow of energy, increased productivity, better and more regulated moods, and be more resistant to stress.
It can also help you stay physically healthy, and reduce your chances of getting diseases associated with excessive or a lack of oxygen.
Yoga may have been developed to help you become super efficient at burning oxygen, giving you the right amount of carbon dioxide in your body, so that you can survive with less oxygen, creating less oxidative stress on the body, promoting longer, disease free lives.
