Blood Pressure Remedies

Let us talk about caffeine. Is it damaging or not? Is it high blood pressure or enhanced psychological awareness? Elevated cancer risk or lowered asthma signs and symptoms? More heart ailments or enhanced productivity? How do the damaging effects of caffeine stack up against the perceived rewards? This might seem to step on lots of toes so I am going to include a number of references to scientific publications – these are not my suggestions.

I’ve been seeing many reports in the media lately about the “rewards” of caffeine. However, the investigation and information on the dangers of and the many damaging effects of caffeine are really well documented. Here are some details about the effects of caffeine.

Caffeine’s short-term effects happen quite rapidly and endure about 4 hours. These might include stability problems, a racing heart, insomnia, fatigue, finger tremor and a sense of anxiousness with severity of symptoms and signs connected to the kind of beverage and the quantity consumed.

Over time, as few as 1 cup of coffee each day is most likely to raise blood cholesterol and blood pressure, and cause the heart to race or have added beats. One to five cups of coffee a day increases the danger of heart attack by 60 percent above those who have none, and six or more cups a day increases the danger by 120 percent!

“Two cups of coffee might raise blood pressure to levels equal to 1 cigarette, but it keeps it there for 1-two hours, vs. just 15 minutes for smoking.” (American Journal of Medicine, 73:348-353, 1982)

Coffee and tea, because of their high content of tannic and other acids, block the absorption of iron. Caffeine also damages the pancreas making diabetes or hypoglycemia significantly worse.

“Coffee increases production of digestive juices even though relaxing the esophageal muscles, and as a result contributing to heartburn and diaphragm pain.” (Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, p 1093)

The range of human miseries and the damaging effects of caffeine (high blood pressure being just 1) looks to be endless:

• allergies
• palpitation
• irritability
• insomnia
• fever

A withdrawal from caffeine causes many of those addicted to it to have serious headaches.

Here is something startling:

“The lethal dose of caffeine is 10 grams or about 70 cups of typical coffee. A lot of people are taking one-tenth of a lethal dose every single day!” (Journal of Family Practice 4(6)1183, 1977)

The explanation for why heavy coffee drinkers are not dropping dead is that their bodies increase metabolism to process the poison out of their systems so they won’t die from it. And, of course, that is the reason – the increased metabolism – for some of the supposed positive effects of caffeine that we are hearing about. However, if you use your “engine” at an increased rate it will wear faster just as running your automobile at high revs will do. You don’t in fact have extra energy (there’s no extra gasoline in the tank) you are just running with the pedal to the metal.

And coffee has a negative synergistic effect in that it increases cravings causing damaging alcohol and tobacco habits to turn out to be almost unbreakable. Some have called it “bad-habit glue.”

“A dose of 500-600 mg (5-6 six-ounce cups) of caffeine a day presents a significant health risk.” (British Journal of Addiction 78:251-258, 1988)

Although it is relatively difficult to conquer the habit of using caffeinated drinks, it is worth the work! It won’t be too long before you feel and function significantly better.

For far more information about caffeine check out caffeine

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