Lack of Vitamin D Raises Hypertension Risk

(NaturalNews) The trail of vitamin D's health benefits just keeps getting longer and longer. In the past few months alone, numerous studies have been published suggesting vitamin D has protective and beneficial effects against bone disease, heart problems, Parkinson's disease and overall mortality. Recently, another study published in the journal Hypertension has linked low levels of vitamin D in the blood with a higher risk of getting hypertension, or high blood pressure.

Details and Findings of Study

Previous studies had already suggested that a link between low levels of vitamin D in the blood and hypertension existed. Definitive data in the form of prospective studies, however, had been somewhat limited. The said study followed some 1,484 women from the Nurses' Health Study II. The study subjects did not have hypertension at its commencement, and the women were aged from 32 to 52 years, with their average age being about 43 years.

After having accounted for a series of factors which could affect blood pressure, including age, race, body mass index, level of physical activity, family history of the disease, use of oral contraceptives, as well as blood levels of calcium and phosphorous, the study team found that women with lower levels of vitamin D had much higher incidence of hypertension.

Women who ranked in the lowest quartile for blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, or 25(OH)D, had a 66% higher risk of having high blood pressure, as compared to those in the highest quartile. The median 25(OH)D blood levels were also lower in hypertension sufferers (25.6 ng/mL) as compared with those who did not have the condition (27.3 ng/mL).

All in all, almost two thirds, or 65.7% of the women, were found to be deficient in vitamin D (less than 30.0 ng /mL). That, in itself, is quite a startling statistic. Perhaps nurses spend the majority of their days indoors, away from the health-promoting rays of the sun. And it was found that those deficient in the vitamin were 47% likelier to develop high blood pressure than those who had enough of it.

"Given that 65.7 percent of women were vitamin D deficient, the population risk attributable to vitamin D deficiency is 4.53 new cases of high blood pressure per 1000 young women annually. If this association is causal, then vitamin D deficiency may account for 23.7 percent of all new cases of high blood pressure developing among young women every year," wrote the study team, comprising Dr John P Forman and his colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Bottom line

As mentioned at the start of this article, knowledge of vitamin D's health benefits just keeps increasing. As far as lowering blood pressure is concerned, it is still unclear if vitamin D supplementation would do the trick, something which the study team has asked future research to look into. In meantime, most of us are well aware of the health benefits of the vitamin D which our bodies create on their own, a process which is only possible if we allow the sun's life-giving rays to touch our naked and unblocked skin.

Does walking really work?

A team from the University of Alberta compared more traditional moderate intensity fitness regimes with the often recommended 10,000 step a day walking plan and found that the improvements in fitness achieved by the exercisers were markedly higher than those of the walkers.Dr Vicki Harber, who led the study, said that the results had shown that gentle exercise was not enough to get people fit, and voiced her concern that too much emphasis was being placed on encouraging people to do walk and take any form of gentle exercise, when in fact this in itself is of little real value; ‘Generally, low-intensity activity such as walking alone is not likely to give anybody marked health benefits compared to programmes that occasionally elevate the intensity’ she said.The researchers studied 128 sedentary people, dividing them into two groups of walkers and exercisers. The walkers undertook their 10,000 step regime for six months as did the group that was given the more intense exercise program. Both groups burned off the same amount of energy.The researchers measured blood pressure and lung capacity in both groups and found that the walking program increased oxygen intake by an average four per cent, while the exercise group achieved a ten per cent increase.Harber did not dismiss the benefits of walking out of hand though, saying that the 10,000 step program was a good introduction to exercise, and advocated gradually introducing more vigorous activity into those steps; ‘Across your day, while you are achieving those 10,000 steps, take 200 to 400 of them at a brisker pace’ she said.Professor Stuart Biddle, an expert in exercise science at the University of Loughborough, concurred with Harber that current guidelines for exercise may not go far enough. But he also warned that increasing the recommendations to include more vigorous activity could be something of a shot in the foot as it could well deter the more sedentary among the population from exercising altogether, whereas the walking guidelines at least seemed achievable; ‘you have got to strike a compromise between physiology and psychology. The harder you make it, the fewer people will actually do it’ he said.

Laughter Yoga - A Growing Worldwide Phenomenon

Laughter Yoga is the brainchild of an Indian physician, Dr. Madan Kataria. While studying the effects of laughter on the body, he discovered a way to boost the immune system, raise feel-good endorphins, and lower blood pressure while reducing stress hormones naturally.
In 1995 Dr. Kataria offered his first class to five people in a park in Mumbai, India. This worldwide movement has blossomed into six thousand laughter clubs throughout sixty countries. Laughter Yoga clubs are in session from Asia to Europe and throughout America.
Laughter Yoga Better than Humor
Natural laughter in our everyday lives isn't enough to show beneficial results. Laughter Yoga, on the other hand, is a simple system to extend laughter. To receive the scientifically proven benefits, laughter has to come from the diaphragm and last for a longer period of time than naturally produced.
In Dr. Kataria's program, gut-busting laughter combined with yogic breathing is used to produce results. The participants laugh continuously and with great gusto for fifteen minutes with short breaks of yogic breathing. Since the body apparently cannot differentiate between forced and real laughter, positive physiological and psychological benefits can be obtained by this continuous and deep-reaching laughter.

Why Does it Hurt?

What hurts when you have a headache? Several areas of the head can hurt, including a network of nerves which extends over the scalp and certain nerves in the face, mouth, and throat. Also sensitive to pain, because they contain delicate nerve fibers, are the muscles of the head and blood vessels found along the surface and at the base of the brain.
The bones of the skull and tissues of the brain itself, however, never hurt, because they lack pain-sensitive nerve fibers.
The ends of these pain-sensitive nerves, called nociceptors, can be stimulated by stress, muscular tension, dilated blood vessels, and other triggers of headache. Once stimulated, a nociceptor sends a message up the length of the nerve fiber to the nerve cells in the brain, signaling that a part of the body hurts. The message is determined by the location of the nociceptor. A person who suddenly realizes "My toe hurts," is responding to nociceptors in the foot that have been stimulated by the stubbing of a toe.
A number of chemicals help transmit pain-related information to the brain. Some of these chemicals are natural painkilling proteins called endorphins, Greek for "the morphine within." One theory suggests that people who suffer from severe headache and other types of chronic pain have lower levels of endorphins than people who are generally pain free.