I don’t understand how scientists/doctors can think that blood pressure doesn’t have a bottom end, when it comes to the value in lowering it.
What is the point in acknowledging the reality of homeostatic systems if you don’t apply the principle in practise?
Life is all about balance. While each one of us has a very individual range for ‘normal’, we still have limits either side. This stops us (and our bodies) from going to extremes. Nature is an automatic self-correcting system. When you swing too far one way, gravity will bring you back the other way. Balance is a wobble, either side of normal. If you keep going too far one way, you lose your wobble, you lose your balance…you tip! Into the shit.
It can be difficult to swing the pendulum back if you send it too far. Yes there is an un healthy bottom limit to low blood pressure. Why recognise this only when it’s extreme enough to kill you (shock), and not see an invisible sliding scale.
It’s bad for you to have extremely low blood pressure if its so low it will kill you, but it couldn’t possibly harm you if it’s slightly above the death-point?! (exasperated sarcasm getting-the-rant-out-of-my-system)
Ok. Now that I have that out of my system, my mind is opening again. I wonder if it is particularly dangerous for people with chronically high blood pressure to let their pressure drop too low. The arterials walls in high blood pressure people often don’t have enough elasticity and they can’t work with the volume running through it in an elastic, responsive manner. It wouldn’t matter whether pressure was being created by a chemically or mechanically induced narrowing of the pipes, contraction without cyclic relaxation damages homeostatic balance in any tissue. Life is all about yin and yang.
There is a relationship between the volume of flow and the capacity of the arterials walls to tighten and relax, contract and expand. If you stretch the (can I swear in here?) out of the muscle around your blood flow, it isn’t going to work anymore. It won’t contract when it needs to because it can’t. And if you then lower blood pressure, what you are actually lowering is the volume…. either that or you are somehow forcing a contraction-that-can’t-be-sustained out of already exhausted muscles. Either way, the vessels aren’t going to survive the demand placed on them.
I think the true answer is small stimulation touches to the nervous system, hormonal system and cardiovascular systems. You can get these touches via herbs, food, activity, behaviour changes, and shifts in mindbody cognitive health. We don’t make enough use of biofeedback. I truly think the future of medicine (in my world at least), is going to be about using biofeedback technology and ancient meditation/mindfulness techniques, alongside smart care of the physical body in natural ways (food/diet, exercise, rest). We have more control over our inner world than we think we do.
Love Om