John Arts Abundant Living www.johnarts.co.nz

Today, we want to look at the importance of maintaining good circulation by ensuring the walls of your blood vessels allow for good blood flow at normal levels of blood pressure.

If blood vessels lose their elasticity they can offer greater resistance to circulating blood which requires the heart to pump harder to achieve good circulation.
Compare you blood vessels with a garden hose.
The green plastic is supple, allowing for flexibility, while the white webbing provides strength. As a hose ages it becomes less flexible and may crack and leak.
This is much like how free radicals damage elastin and collagen proteins and cause stiffness and weakness in blood vessels.

The loss of elasticity, and subsequent stiffening of major blood vessels, is often caused by reductions in the function of elastic fibres or the cross-linking of supporting collagen fibres.
This loss of elasticity is often a contributor to hypertension.
Primary hypertension is the name for elevated blood pressure where there is no specific cause.
Research does suggest that free radicals (oxidative stress) play a role in damaging blood vessels thus causing an increase in blood pressure.

A paper published in Hypertension Research (Rodrigo, 2007) compared free radical activity in 30 people with primary hypertension, and 30 healthy people.
The study confirmed that markers of oxidative stress were significantly higher in those with hypertension.
Over the years, I have observed many people improve their blood pressure using nutritional therapy. In our diet, we want to target foods high in compounds called polyphenols and vitamin C.

I always add antioxidant supplement complexes that are high in grape seed oligomeric procyanidins (OPCs), high in vitamin C and other complementary compounds.
Give me a call if you need more information.

John Arts is a Nutritional Therapist and founder of Abundant Health. Contact John on 0800 423 559. To read more go to www.sunlive.co.nz