By Dean L. Jones

Dismally, a common disease in the USA is high blood pressure, which is medically described as hypertension.  In essence, this disease causes blood to flow through blood vessels (arteries) at higher than normal pressures.  About 70 million American adults have high blood pressure, or in other words 1 of every 3 adults is inflicted with this disease.  Even worse, about 1 in 5 of American adults with high blood pressure is unaware that they have it.

Moreover, having high blood pressure shows 7 of every 10 people experiencing their first heart attack has high blood pressure.  In the same way, 8 of every 10 people having their first stroke have high blood pressure.  Also combined with these current health reports is about 7 of every 10 people with chronic heart failure have high blood pressure, not to mention how kidney disease is also a major risk factor for high blood pressure.

It is worth noting that black people (more black women than black men) develop high blood pressure more often than white people and other ethnic group members.  Another statistic is that nearly 1 in 3 American adults have pre-hypertension, which represents the blood pressure numbers that are higher than normal, but not yet in the high blood pressure range.

Medically, one of the primary underlying causes of high blood pressure is related to how the human body can produce too much insulin in response to eating a high carbohydrate diet, particularly foods that are heavy in processed sugar.  Exercise is essential to lowering high blood pressure, nevertheless the common diet routinely claimed to be among the most effective for controlling hypertension includes fresh vegetables, fruits, lean protein, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and very low sodium content.

Even though, today sodium is an outdated culprit to high blood pressure, but a much stronger offender are processed sugars and/or fructose.  The old traditional dietary activity to ease hypertension centered on the reduction in salt, but current research shows the need to reduce the intake of heavily processed foodstuff containing sugar/fructose.

Ingesting too much processed sugar can bring about hypertension, thereby being a primary reason for the body’s adverse insulin reaction stems from too much fructose, grains, and other sugar forming starchy carbohydrates.  Processed sugar comes in all sorts of forms from table sugar, brown sugar, raw sugar, turbinado sugar, honey (even raw), maple sugar, corn sweetener, dextrose, glucose, fructose and any other word that ends in an “ose”, barley malt, rice syrup, liquid cane sugar, concentrated fruit juice, etc.

Processed sugar is a proven agitator in promoting more than 75 diseases, especially when the body becomes insulin resistant it is subjected to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and the like. In view of that, it is indispensably in good health to live SugarAlert!

www.SugarAlert.com
Mr. Jones is a marketing strategist with the Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), sharing his view on mismanagement practices of packaged foods & beverages.