Removing the “Mystery” of High Blood Pressure- Observations from a Front Line Doctor

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. Gordon Donaldson

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 2/25/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Wednesday edition of Stand In the Gap Today. And that’s also our quarterly focus. We do this just about every quarter, at least we try to, and the focus is on health. And my title has been This Health with Observations from a Frontline doc. They say, why is that? Well, it’s because my personal physician, Dr. Gordon Donaldson, is back with me. We’ve dealt with a lot of issues so far on this program and they’ve been very, very, very helpful to people all across the country and I’ve heard from you. And so in that interest, we want to go into a different area today. It’s actually, frankly an area of personal health that impacts a large percentage of Americans. And I’m going to say at least some point in time, probably all Americans. And that area of interest is in medical terms referred to as hypertension, but most commonly referred to as just plain old high blood pressure.

No doubt, a sizeable percentage of those of you listening to me right now according to the statistics, are likely taking one or more high blood pressure, prescriptive drugs, others are doing other things. Now to this day, much is still being learned about this health diagnosis, its causes and its treatments. So in today’s program, Dr. Gordon Donaldson, the founder and primary physician of the Morgantown Pennsylvania Family Practice will share what I’m sure will be very valuable and practical information. So stay tuned, get your pen and pencil out. You may want to write a few things down from time to time or at least make sure your memory’s working well. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s conversation is this Removing the mystery of high blood pressure. Alright, with that I welcome to the program right now, Dr. Gordon Donaldson, who happens to be sitting right here beside us in our studio. And it’s really a great thing to have you back right here. I can look in your eye and you can look in my eye and tell me whether or not you see hypertension in my eyes.

Gordon Donaldson:

Well, there you go Sam. Absolutely. It is a pleasure once again to be back with you and your listening audience.

Sam Rohrer:

Gordon, I’m going to ask you this because we just have to, last night was the State of the Union address. People would like me to say something. Yes, I did listen to it. I’m personally not going to comment much today. I’ll probably do more on tomorrow’s program because my guest will be with me. We’ll be dealing with economic issues and so we’ll connect it there. But that being said, there were a few things said last night about healthcare. You may or may not have a comment about that. You may or may not have a comment about the overall program perhaps as it would relate to health. I don’t know where you want to go. Let me

Gordon Donaldson:

Just go with that. And we spoke a little bit before and that is that fear not and be anxious. There’s a reason Paul said that. And last night we saw James three 14 to 16 on full display. It’s worldly wisdom that just leads to chaos and evil practice. And it’s interesting selfish ambition. There can also be in the Greek political factionalism and based on lies. So it looks at the world with no reference to God and his sovereign rule, but rather human will and reason operating as the final authority. So in light of that, as I said, don’t become anxious or fear because that is a driver of high blood pressure. So let’s talk about it.

Sam Rohrer:

Well that’s practical application to where we’re going. So let’s get right into it, Gordon, because I think a lot of people are exercised, good or bad, trying to decipher, but that’s not a point. We’re not going to go there, but use that as an example. But when I was doing some preparation for this, according to numerous medical research entities like Mayo Clinic and Harvard Health and some others, they say what is high blood pressure and what is considered normal? That was a question, a common question. So in other words, so anyways, let’s deal with these first three. What is blood pressure? Not high blood pressure, but what is blood pressure and why does it even matter? Well,

Gordon Donaldson:

Blood pressure is extremely important because blood pressure is an evidence of blood circulating around our cardiovascular system. So without blood pressure means guess what? We’re dead. We don’t operate without a blood pressure. And so it is important that we have it, but if it goes either too low or too high, and in this case high, it has a significant effect on our system. So normal blood pressure, we still use the same good old standard blood pressure in the systolic, which is the top number is below one 20 and diastolic on the bottom number is below 80. And so what does it mean? Well, the top number is when our heart beats. That’s the pumping pressure and when that’s high, it drives against our organs. And the lower number is our resting or relaxation blood pressure. And that’s what gives our organs a break. It gives our heart a break. And so there is an elevated blood pressure which is not technically by definition hypertension. That is a blood pressure where the systolic is between 120 and 129 and the diastolic is still below 80. Okay,

Sam Rohrer:

So let’s clarify this as we go into it. Just define, this is high blood pressure as we’re going to be referring. Is it the same as hypertension?

Gordon Donaldson:

So yes and no. So we as in the general public, when we talk about somebody having high blood pressure, by definition on the medical side, they’re probably referring to them having hypertension. So yes, it is the same in that respect. And so with that, it is broken down into different stages. So there’s stage one, which is a systolic blood pressure on average between 130 and 139, and the diastolic between 80 and 89. Stage two is when the systolic is over 140 and or the diastolic is greater than 90 millimeters of mercury. And then of course there’s the severe hypertension where the systolic is over 180 or the diastolic is greater than 120.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, and we’ll build this out ladies and gen as we go further, Gordon. So I may interchange high blood pressure and hypertension in the program and we’ll be safe. Okay, let’s go here. Are there some preferred methodologies for testing blood pressure at home? I mean, can that accurately be done or is that something that has to be done at the local doctor’s office? Interestingly

Gordon Donaldson:

Enough, the best ways to measure it are two and both of them are done at home. One is called a ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and that is where you wear actually a blood pressure cuff for 24 hours and it measures your blood pressure every so often. And in doing that then you get a measurement average over that 24 hours. And so by definition using that method, blood pressure is an average 24 hour greater than 125 over 75 millimeters of mercury or an average daytime blood pressure of greater than 130 over 80. But the best is self measurement at home in a week. So I’ll just define that one when we come back.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, that’s excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, you may get excited when you go into the doctor’s office and your blood pressure is up. I think mine is at times. So that’s what we’re talking about. But in the next two segments we’re going to talk about complications, risk factors, those things that contribute perhaps to high blood pressure. And then we’re going to talk about modifying lifestyle modifications and how it can be treated. All of that yet today in this program, well if you’re just joining us today, welcome aboard. This is our Wednesday edition of, well this is Wednesday, let’s put it that way. And it’s a quarterly emphasis. I began a couple of years ago really with the focus on health and I call it observations from a frontline doc. And I’ll just say for full disclosure of the individual that’s sitting beside me here in the studio is my personal physician, Dr. Gordon Donaldson.

He’s also a friend. He’s not selling anything. So believe me, there’s nothing other than the commitment to try to communicate truth here today and I want you to know that. But when it comes to a lot of things, be it politics or frankly religion, medicine, we hear a lot of things that are not necessarily true. That’s why I’m doing this because truth is hard to get and you have to deal with that. Now, the theme today is this removing the mystery of high blood pressure. Probably if you’re listening to me right now, you either are taking something for it, you’re trying to live as a way not to have to take something or do something for it or somebody who is, it’s just one of those things, probably a hundred percent of us. Now that being the case when it comes to medical conditions such as hypertension, and we’ve established that it’s fairly accurate to say hypertension and high blood pressure are the same, they’re not totally the same, but they’re close enough that one of the remarkable things about it is that according to research, high blood pressure often has no symptoms which give rise to it being referred to as a silent killer.

Alright, first of all, Gordon, as we get into this next section here, would you agree with that silent killer designation? And then what would you identify then as complications due to high blood pressure? In other words, if left undiagnosed and untreated, what health conditions are likely to manifest this condition of hypertension or high blood pressure even if somebody doesn’t even know they’re being afflicted by it?

Gordon Donaldson:

Yeah, absolutely. And I would just quickly jump back to that first segment and that is my actually preferred third way to define whether a person has high blood pressure or not is actually doing a self measured blood pressure at home over a seven day period of time. And you take 12 measurements morning and evening at over that period of time. If the average blood pressure is greater than one 30 over 80, then by definition you have high blood pressure. So to move on to that, yes, the target organ injury or damage that happens from high blood pressure, very much so people do not know that they have the issues going on until it starts manifesting itself in some form of injury to the organ. So the damage can be done to the coronary artery system. You have the heart with heart failure, the heart works harder and so it gets thicker.

You have stroke, high blood pressure, retinal disease, and then chronic kidney disease. So those are the big areas that it really affects. And so the complications, what we mean with left ventricular enlargement with the heart, the left ventricle because that’s the pump is working harder. And so of that as it works harder, it builds up muscle and gets thicker. But that has in the end a negative effect because then it becomes inefficient. And that’s when we get congestive heart failure because that then reduces the heart output. You can also get strokes either from blocked brain arteries or strokes from broken arteries in the brain. And so those are the things. And when it happens, well now we’re way behind the eight ball and we are on the defensive from that standpoint. Also, when you start seeing the BUN and creatinine, which is the kidney evidence of kidney disease, when that starts going up, you’ve already lost greater than 50% of your kidney function. And so it really is that, and the likelihood of having a cardiovascular event increases as blood pressure increases in every 10 year age group starting at age 40 with a blood pressure greater than one 15 systolic or 75 diastolic for every, and this may sound, but for every 20 millimeters of mercury, increased systolic and 10 millimeters of mercury diastolic increases the risk of death from a heart attack or stroke by two it doubles.

Sam Rohrer:

Well that’s a lot. I mean that’s big two sounds like a small number, but when you say double, which is what it is, things change. Alright, let’s move on to this because everyone’s listening to me and when I’ve gone into you for the first time as far as that goes, a good doc will go through and find out certain questions. What about this? What about that? First of it is well what about your mother? What about your father? Did they have any items? And if they’ve passed on, was it from heart attack or stroke or whatever? People know what I’m talking about. But to that degree, when you ask questions like that, you’re looking for built-in tendencies, I would suspect or risk factors. So it’s family history the same as a risk factor and if not, clarify the difference, but that’s not the only one. So then where would you go in looking for additional risk factors? Because that’s a proper aspect of diagnosis, is it not?

Gordon Donaldson:

Absolutely. And yes, so genetics are a risk factor, but I like to look at genetics as the predisposition to something. It’s a predisposition to heart disease, it’s a predisposition to diabetes. And so it is also a predisposition to high blood pressure. So we have to think of genetics as that. And so a individual who has parents, one or two parents that have high blood pressure, they’re twice as common to have high pressure themselves, and that’s about 30% of the population out there. So the genetics is a setup, but when we talk about risk factors, we are talking about things that are modifiable and that’s what makes the big difference here. I can’t emphasize that enough and we will get into that in segments three and four. What are some modifiable things that we can look at? Again, age as we get older, blood pressure goes higher, obesity and weight gain, race and social determinants being black or a lower socioeconomic status, whether your diet’s high in sodium or low in potassium, excessive alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, insufficient sleep of less than averaging seven hours a night and women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy, even if it normalizes after delivery.

And then another one is noise and air pollution and of course stress.

Sam Rohrer:

Stress. And that comes from all aspects, even like you just started by being caught up in political things, being caught up in local environmental actions or activists, any of those kinds of things can produce stress depending on how, and we’ll talk about that at the end. But once you’ve done your analysis and you’ve considered propensity or the possibility as in the genes, and then you look at these risk factors, most of which you’ll talk about them can be modified frankly, which is a really great thing. Once you do that, then you come to a point of determining, all right, now what do you do? You’ve used the term workup, put up that perspective, what does that mean from a medical perspective workup? And then what would a thorough workup consists of basically for somebody who you’ve now diagnosed as having hypertension.

Gordon Donaldson:

So one of the major workups that we talk about is just taking a history of any over the counter medications or medications that you’re on. That’s part of a big thing because your nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, acetaminophen, Tylenol, decongestants, are risk factors for high blood pressure. They will drive your blood pressure over time. And also then prescription medications like birth control pills, steroids, antidepressants and stimulants like so many kids are on a DD meds. And then of course the illicit drugs like speed and cocaine. And then these both drive the kidney disease acute and chronic. And so these are things that can also have secondary things that will drive blood pressure. So with a workup, the single most important thing that we can do is we want to look at blood work. Blood work is so important because blood work as I call it, when patients sit down with me and we go over their blood work and I get to that part that looks at the different organ, I said, okay, we’re going to have your organ recital and that is the electrolytes because they are very important, that balance with blood pressure, our kidney function, what our sugar is doing, and then doing a urinalysis to see if there’s protein that’s spilling into the urine, a complete blood count because anemia can make blood pressure issues.

Thyroid if where thyroid is over-functioning or under-functioning, either one. And then of course the cholesterol profile because the A POB, which is the most important of all the cholesterol numbers, if you start having that and you get blockage and then of course the micro and creatinine ratio which looks at that, and then of course an EKG.

Sam Rohrer:

So there is a whole litany of diagnoses and tools that can be used should be used in order to really make sure a person is accurately diagnosed before. Okay, now ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. Hope that’s been helpful too. When we come back in the next two seconds, we’re going to talk about modifications, those things that you can do regardless of your genetic predisposition, things that we can do. Well, welcome back. We’re halfway through the program now and we’re going to get into some practical aspects. Everything I’ve delivered so far, my special guest again is Dr. Gordon Donaldson. He’s the founder. He leads the practice, the Morgantown Family Practice in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. And he’s been with me a number of times the last couple of years and I’ve termed it generally observations from a frontline doc because that’s what he is. There’s quite a number of what we call frontline docks that are existing across the country, although there’s less of them I would say than there used to be.

But we’re dealing today with a very, very common issue. And the title is this, the focus is this removing the mystery of high blood pressure. Now let’s go forward here Gordon, before we get into potential lifestyle modifications, which we’ve referred to earlier, and this is good news section here, including such things as diet and exercise and weight loss and natural type supplements that we’ll talk about in the last segment. In a normal circumstance prescribing a pharmaceutical remedy, a medication at least in part seems to be, I’m going to say quite routine. In fact, when I did some research on this, according to a survey that was done by National Health and nutrition examination study was in the 2021 to 2023 timeframe. So very recent, they found that 51.2% of all US adults were taking some type of medication to lower their blood pressure. That’s a big number of those though diagnosed with high blood pressure or hypertension, 74.5%, which is a big number three quarters ended up on medications, although they did note a nondisclosed percentage of them they knew didn’t actually take the medicine that they were prescribed. Now all that being said, do you have a general principle that you follow in regard to treatment for high blood pressure in regard to that? For instance, how does medication, pharmaceutical medication fit into the overall possible treatments including and as we’ll get into lifestyle choices and all that? So how’s that blend? Anyways, go ahead. You know what I’m talking about. Go ahead.

Gordon Donaldson:

Yeah, so basically with that, the important thing, and what I want to emphasize going into this is that in a workup, one of the things that we focus on and most physicians do not, is the inflammation levels in the cardiovascular system. We’ve spoken about that in the past, but it is so important because inflammation drives blood pressure along with the other cardiovascular system, the blood vessels and with the inflammation. So as we get into this whole thing with lifestyle, I want you to understand that all of these modifications also benefit the heart, the cardiovascular system, and they help to reduce inflammation. So as far as the treatment, we consider pharmaceuticals. If somebody has a blood pressure, that is what we would obviously by definition the severe. In other words, if they’re up in the consistently one 60 over a hundred, or if they have a severe hypertensive episode, 180 over 120, then they need to get that blood pressure down because they’re on the verge of some major event like a stroke or something of that nature and the end organ damage. So that’s when it comes into play for pharmaceuticals. And have I used them? Absolutely, because some patients, again, they can’t get with that genetics, they can’t overcome the genetics necessarily with all the lifestyle, but it’s always the first way is lifestyle one and lifestyle two. And so that’s where we start.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, that’s really good news. So it’s kind of like there is a big gun if there’s an immediate need and you’ve got to get it down because you’re staring at an event potential right in the face. Okay, fine. Now, and when you get into lifestyle modification, you as we’ve talked about this, you’ve taken divided into two halves. One is in regard to diet and the other is related to exercise. So what about diet? Does it really make a difference? And what are you talking about

Gordon Donaldson:

Absolutely diet and exercise are extremely important, but diet does make a difference. And so there is the one out there, you will see it, it’s the dash diet, the dietary approaches to stop hypertension. And what that boils down to is getting five to seven servings of vegetables and fruit on a daily basis, whole foods, and then also the whole fat dairy products from grass fed milk, whole grains, legumes, poultry. So a good protein that’s a lean protein, fish and grass fed beef fall into that category. Free range, eggs, nuts and seeds, and then focusing on fiber in foods. Those are extremely important, but it boils down to just eating good whole foods. I’ve appreciated RFK Junior and just turning the whole food pyramid upside down literally and focusing on the whole foods, focusing on the aspects of getting our diet without all the additives, without all the processing, without all the parts of it that drive blood pressure and feeds into the whole system of pharmaceuticals.

That’s kind of where they want to drive us. And so if we get back to just eating in a natural whole food way, we will do a whole lot to help us out in reducing the blood pressure. So if we reduce the intake of that, we reduce sodium and that just reducing sodium for people who are sodium sensitive will reduce blood pressure. Five to six millimeters of mercury to do the dash diet will reduce blood pressure by an average of 11 millimeters of mercury. And then the other part of diet is reducing alcohol consumption and two, less than two a day for men, less than one a day for women. Although what we now know no alcohol is the best and that can reduce your blood pressure by four millimeters of mercury. So then that’s really the diet side of things.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, we’ll come back on this, but let’s go right into the other of exercise. It just makes sense that exercise has got to have some beneficial impact, but to what extent and how much exercise is really necessary to produce a noticeable

Gordon Donaldson:

Benefit. So really again, any exercise is beneficial, but it’s broken down into three things. And so you have your aerobic exercise that’s like getting your walking, jogging, bike swimming, things like that. And then there’s dynamic resistance, which is weightlifting bands, things like that. And then there’s isometric resistance where you just hold a steady position but you just tighten your muscles against that. And so with the aerobic is probably the best one. And that one is getting your heart rate up to 65 to 75% of the max, which that formula is 220 minus your age. And if you get in between 90 and 150, our preference is 150 minutes per week on average. That will help reduce your blood pressure, five to eight millimeters of mercury. But understanding that when you’re out walking, when you’re jogging, when you’re riding your bike, usually your mind is off when doing something else as well and you’re enjoying nature or you can be thinking in more positive ways and it actually releases endorphins in our body that helps to reduce blood pressure, dynamic resistance, which is important because that’s our strength.

And so if you do basically six different exercises with different body parts, three sets of exercise, 10 res repetitions per set at 50 to 80% of your max and you get in again 90 to 150 minutes of that a week, that can reduce your blood pressure by four millimeters of mercury. Now I’d like to do that in combination. So I like to do a three and two, three days of aerobic, two days of strength, and then of course the isometric. And that’s the one where you can be sitting at your desk if you’re a desk worker and basically you just hold onto the sides of your desk or the sides of your chair and you just resist against the chair, that’s not going to move. But it’s isometric resistance. And if you do that and hold it for two minutes and do four repositions of that, it can be hand grips, it can be squats, it can be planks, and with a one minute rest in between each of those at 30 to 40% of your max and you get three sessions of that per week for eight to 10 weeks, you can reduce your blood pressure by five millimeters of mercury in some of the studies that have been done.

So exercise is extremely important when we get into the whole aspect of it. Again, getting outside just that deep breathing is also another one. It’s not truly an exercise, but deep breathing has been shown to effectively reduce blood pressure as well. And then along with that, with the deep breathing is just to try to get your mind off of a stressful situation. One of the easiest things you can do if you find it you’re in a stressful situation, is to get out and just walk away from it. Literally walk away from it, take a five minute walk after you eat, do some squats after you are, get up in the morning just to get out and do something that is very important on the exercise.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, a lot of practical applications here, Dr. Donaldson, and we’re going to conclude ladies and gentlemen, we’re looking at hopefully a couple of biblical principles we can apply at the end because in reality, God has given us a direction for our life. So if we’re involved and we’re active and we’re on mission and we’re not being anxious for anything but trusting in the Lord, all of these things, do they affect us physically? Of course they do. Now when we come back, we’re going to conclude with this lifestyle modifications, weight loss and supplements. Alright, as we go into our final segment, a reminder, I know even if you got your pen or your pencil out, which I suggested perhaps at the beginning of the program there probably too many things to note. So you can get the program again, you can get it on the website, you can get it on a free app, stand in the gap, and with that you will find an availability to a transcript.

So it’ll take the words that are there, read down through it, listen to the program alongside of it, which I know folks do and I find it very, very helpful. So I’d encourage you to do that. Alright, let’s continue in this matter of lifestyle modifications, we dealt with diet. Talk a little bit about exercise in the last segment and let me just ask you a quick question here before we get into weight loss and supplements. And it actually ties into the weight loss and that is this, many people think that to eat good food, you just talked about whole foods, non-processed foods that we just can’t do that because that’s too expensive. Talk about that because that probably ties into weight loss, too, a little bit.

Gordon Donaldson:

It absolutely does tie into weight loss because really when we eat quality, we do not need to eat as much. It sustains us better, it sustains our system better. And whatever happened to the feeling of hunger, hunger is actually a good thing, believe it or not. Now I know that boy, that’s like somebody saying how in the world can that ever be the case?

Sam Rohrer:

It almost like you’re not encouraging poverty are you? But you’re saying when you get those feelings of hunger and your stomach begins to growl, you’re suggesting that it’s not necessarily the best thing to shove something down your throat rather than to stop it. This was not in our plan here for today, but I’m going to ask you what actually happens when your stomach growls and you get hungry. What’s the good aspect of that? As long as it doesn’t go too long, obviously.

Gordon Donaldson:

Yes. Well basically the good aspect to that is, and again I’m not an evolutionist, but it’s how God created us. And that is that if when we get hungry, if we were living in a what we call hunter gatherer situation, if when you got hungry you became a couch potato, would you go out and get yourself some food? No. But with the hunger, it actually makes you feel better. You get adrenaline and that makes you go out, oh, I’m going to go out and harvest some berries or I’m going to go out and hunt some meat or I’m going to go out and do something to then get the natural foods in our system. And that’s really the important thing. And the whole deal with organic, those studies have been done and it’s not really a matter of organic or non-organic because I can tell you that most stuff that says is organic is not really organic.

That’s a whole thing. But with that, it’s just a matter of getting whole foods. And part of that I’m going to address in how we get our supplements, they can be done through foods, but weight loss is such a big one and it’s one that we deal with as a society. Obesity and overweight, whenever you have two out of three people are in that category. And it is the biggest category for our adolescents. It really for the future of our children is something that has to get turned around. And that’s what I appreciate about RFK Jr because he really is trying to turn that around, get away from the processed foods, don’t pay your taxes to subsidize the big ag and big pharma and big food and all of those. We need to get back to the whole foods and the natural. So weight loss can be a significant way to reduce our blood pressure.

And the goal would be to get our weight down too close to the ideal, but if not is at least get it down by 10%. If you can get your weight down by 10%, the expected reduction in blood pressure for every millimeter of mercury that you want to reduce your blood pressure and there’s a range, it can be a half to two. You reduce your weight by one kilogram, which is 2.2 pounds. And so when it comes to that weight loss, then we just eat the wrong things and we eat too much. And that’s really what it boils down to. I’m amazed at people who they’ll get sick or they’ll get a GI bug or something and literally they won’t be able to eat as much as they did before for a couple of weeks. And they come back and it’s like, wow, I’m down 20 pounds. And it’s like what was the difference with that? Well, you just didn’t eat as much. So that’s really with the weight loss, I know it’s difficult. People do have issues, there are some issues to work with it, but still I believe the big thing is we just don’t eat the appropriate thing and we don’t eat or we eat too much of it and you can eat too much of a good thing too.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, that’s excellent because of time. Let’s move right into it. Now from this perspective, nutritional supplements, you mentioned that. What role do they play or can they play in reducing or lowering high blood pressure?

Gordon Donaldson:

I’m going to quickly try to go to 10 of the main supplements that will help reduce blood pressure. And they also do it by reducing inflammation. Omega fatty acids, which is your omega threes from fish like salmon, sardines, herring, and nuts like walnuts and flaxseeds. So if you get a thousand to 2000 milligrams per day, you can help reduce blood pressure in some people, three to four millimeters of mercury in that potassium from the diet with foods like bananas, green leafies, beans, lentils, potatoes, squash, avocados, tomatoes, fish, clams, and mushrooms. If you get 3,500 to 5,000 milligrams a day, that also can reduce your blood pressure significantly. And magnesium in foods, again, your green leafies, your almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, whole grains, legumes, so a lot of these are repetitive, you get that and dark chocolate in the chelated form of magnesium, two 50 to 500 milligrams a day.

You can reduce blood pressure two to three millimeters of mercury, coq 10, and a supplement in a hundred to 300 milligrams per day can help reduce blood pressure and especially in those who are hypertensive, two to three millimeters of mercury, beet root, good old beets and beet root extract. It’s high in nitrates, which that helps to dilate our blood vessels and that can reduce our blood pressure. If you get a thousand milligrams a day, two to three millimeters hibiscus tea or extract garlic green tea or extract. And then also at night melatonin helps lower diastolic blood pressure at night can be by if you get just take three milligrams at night. And fiber. Fiber having high blood pressure is more, it will help if you have high blood pressure, 30 grams a day for women, 40 grams a day for men. And so you want to work with supplements though before you decide if it’s going to help you out at least three months. That’s a minimum to do that. But overall it depends on the blood pressure, it depends on how much you take. And so all of these are beneficial at reducing your blood pressure.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, Gordon, we’re just about done. You don’t have enough time to answer this question, but I said would that be a biblical principle or two, but that does factor into this and does it go back to the idea of just being anxious for nothing as reducing stress? I mean that’s a real thing, isn’t it?

Gordon Donaldson:

Absolutely it is. And that’s why I was setting up at the beginning. If you get anxious and there is a reason that Paul said be anxious for nothing, but allow the peace of God to work in your heart because that’s the key. And so again, exercise helps with us getting out there and getting that stress level down.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, we’re at the end ladies and gentlemen. Again, go back and listen to the program. You can get a copy of the transcript, which I would advise you do that because there’s so much involved today. Dr. Gordon Donaldson, my guest today and our theme is removing the mystery of high blood pressure  applies to all of us. Listen to it again. Share it with a friend. I know they will. Thank you for it. Thanks for being with us today. Lord willing, we’ll see you back here tomorrow.