High blood pressure? Read on ...

Kowalski intones that while good food is crammed with the right minerals, his prescription calls for intakes far greater than found even in the best of diets. Bottom line: get used to popping half a dozen heavy duty vitamin supplements and minerals, daily.

Kowalski preaches way beyond simple lifestyle changes such as weight loss and cigarette cessation. While acknowledging that these are useful steps, they do not bring blood pressure levels to normal. His wish list for the reader is as follows:

1. When next at your GP, get your BP tested, with a cuff inflator on your upper arm. Don’t measure BP on the wrist.
2. Buy a home BP monitoring device. He recommends the German brand OMRON. They’re as accurate as testing in a doctor’s office and will give you a better reading as it will not be subject to “white coat syndrome”, the feeling that overcomes many when in the presence of medicos.
3. Eat better: more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, seafood, poultry, lean meats, nuts, no-fat and low-fat dairy foods, and good oils (e.g. olive and canola).
4. Swap sodium chloride for potassium chloride. Ensure you get enough calcium, magnesium, and potassium to keep your BP in balance.
5. Exercise 30 minutes a day, most days. More, if you can manage it.
6. De-stress three or four times a day, close your eyes breathe deeply. If you have any sleeping disorder, get it checked.
7. Attain and maintain a healthy weight. While Kowalski recites the Body Mass index mantra (being the body weight in kilograms divided by the height squared), thankfully he prefers the more realistic waist guide measurement. He says that women with waist circumference of 35 inches or more and men with 40 inches or more will lower BP by 2 point for every kilogram lost. Subtle message: lose that excess baggage you’re carrying.
8. Quit smoking. A no-brainer.
9. Drink hot cocoa. Enjoy a hot cup of cocoa half an hour before bedtime. Cocoa is rich in polyphenols (a plant substance that has been clinically proven to lower BP). Or eat (in very small quantities) very dark chocolate. Eliminate cola drinks. You can keep drinking coffee. And keep an eagle eye out for the words “hydrogenated” on the packages of foods you buy at the supermarket. This is code for trans-fatty acids which not only raise the bad cholesterol (LDL) but also lower the good cholesterol (HDL). They are added to foods to lengthen their shelf life and improve taste.
10. Take proven supplements including grape seed extract, tomato extract, pycnogenol (a derivative of the French maritime pine tree). These dietary supplements have been clinically proven at major medical research centres to dramatically lower blood pressure, often as much as prescription drugs - but without the side effects. With somewhat less enthusiasm, he recommends ingesting the amino acid, L-arginine.

There is much to hear about hypertension, but unfortunately most of us listen when it’s already too late to act. A GP’s inculcation, such as “take this tablet once a day, and let's check the BP in a month, shall we” is not my idea of sound health management.

Unfortunately, given the low profile BP has, we rarely get timely medical or dietary advice before we get hit with the news of our high BP.

If you’re like me and are new to high BP or if you’ve been “managing” your BP for years with drugs, or better still, if you’re a likely candidate for high BP based on your family’s cardiovascular history or on your poor diet, then this book will open your eyes to another way of management.

As for me, I’ve stopped popping Avapro. I started taking it two months ago, and my BP has improved from a “bad” 164/94 to an “excellent”’ 120/70. My GP is over the moon. But the improvement, may I add, wasn’t free. It came with side effects.

I will give myself 10 weeks on Kowalski’s program to see if it works. When mentioning this to my GP, I was surprised, (and delighted) by her wholly supportive stance. After all, by following Kowalski’s program, if it works, I have nothing to lose, apart from a regimen of Avapro.

But if Kowalski’s cure fails me, then it’s straight back to my Avapro or another BP drug. Or I can risk high BP and what that entails.

But if Kowalski’s prescription does succeed in keeping my BP under control, then I’ll be rid of not only Avapro’s dreaded side effects, but also of my recurring nightmare, where nightly I ask myself: what damage will a drug like Avapro do to me, if I were to take it daily for say the next say 40 years. What damage indeed.