Tea for High Blood Pressure? Hibiscus Tea…
Studies have been accumulating to show that drinking a few cups of hibiscus tea daily can significantly lower elevated blood pressure in people with pre- and mild hypertension. In a paper that appeared in the Journal of Nutrition in February 2010, Tufts University researchers reported an average drop of over 7 mm HG for hibiscus versus only 1.3 mm Hg for placebo in these types of hypertensive people. The effect was stronger for systolic than for diastolic blood pressure. This is a potentially mild and helpful adjunct for treatment of this common and dangerous condition. Talk with your doctor, monitor your blood pressure, and see if this is right for you.
Holistic Healing: Steps to the Journey of Healing
So, now that you see the big picture, have chosen your preferred approaches to a personalized holistic health care plan, and understand how to evaluate your progress, what are your next specific steps?
Here is a brief To Do list to get you on your journey of healing. These are only suggestions – again, tailoring the program to your needs is also important. Health psychologists also know that doctors and patients can get paralyzed and take no action when faced with multiple choices. To sidestep decision paralysis, focus on the step-by-step process.
First Steps Action Plan:
1. Write out and review your current choices for treatment options. If you are not sure what to pick, educate yourself as a consumer with one of the resource books, audios, and DVDs listed at the back of this book.
2. Set your healing intention. Put it into words that you write down in a journal, as a screensaver or other reminder on your computer screen, and as an affirmation that you repeat silently or aloud to yourself daily just before you go to sleep.
3. Get more information on the constitutional level of care that you chose – both the therapy itself and the local, regional, and/or national practitioners who offer what you want. Possible ways to find a good practitioner include:
o Use word of mouth from family, friends, staff at other health care professionals’ offices
o Look for small area newspapers or newsletters on holistic or alternative medicine with stories and ads about various providers
o Go on-line with web-browsing to search for official organization websites that list certified and/or licensed practitioners of a specific form of CAM. The Resources list at the back of this book gives you a start on some of the website URLs for these organizations.
4. Meet with your primary care provider and discuss your plans. Explain that you appreciate them and their treatment options, but you are thoughtfully exploring additional options. You want to work with them, openly, to find helpful answers to your health problems.
Many practitioners have ways to accommodate people who travel for their care. If you look for a practitioner who does “acupuncture,” as an example, but you accept whoever is easiest to access — or even cheapest — you may not end up receiving the type of acupuncture best suited to your health care needs.
Make sure to check carefully the credentials, training background, treatment philosophy, and current approaches to practice of each provider you consult. For basics such as professional misconduct, licensing boards in each state can provide information as to whether or not previous clients have lodged malpractice or ethical complaints against a given practitioner.
Research suggests that many users of alternative medicine in Western countries are financially able to afford paying out-of-pocket for the products and services they need for their health care. Increasingly, health care insurers are paying for a small number of alternative medicine services, e.g., for a fixed numbers of visits.
Holistic Healing: What’s in Your Dynamics?
In order to put together your personal treatment program in a way that will move you closer to inner readiness to heal and position, you to have an extraordinary healing response to the package of care you assemble. Your healing response depends upon what is in your dynamics and how stuck you are when dealing with a chronic disease.
The Disease Stuckness Quiz – What’s in Your Dynamics?
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 = not true for me, and 5 = very true for me, rate yourself for each item below. Add up your scores when you are done.
1. I have had a chronic disease from early in life (before my mid-life years). ____
2. My biological parents and grandparents were sick with serious diseases much of their lives. ____
3. I am the kind of person who stays in an intimate relationship or a close friendship with someone even when it no longer nurtures me. ____
4. I find myself in repetitive patterns in at least one area of my life that seem to end badly for me again and again. ____
5. The kind of chronic disease(s) that I have developed affects my brain or nervous system, or another major organ. ____
6. I rarely catch colds or flu. ____
7. I must take at least one prescription drug regularly. ____
8. I feel that my life is in a rut. ____
9. It is hard for me to bounce back from setbacks or big changes in my life. ____
10. I have to stay in my current job for the money, the benefits, and/or the security.____
11. I need to do certain things as much as I can or I do not feel well (e.g., exercise, control my eating, swallow my anger – or vent my anger, get out – or stay home – more). ____
12. I should work harder – or, its opposite – I should take it easier. ____
TOTAL DISEASE STUCKNESS SCORE ____
The maximum score is 60. A score above 36 suggests significant amounts of stuckness. The higher your score, the more stuck you are likely to be in your chronic disease – and your life, of which the mental, emotional, or physical disease is one major manifestation.
Feeling a need or having to do – or not do – something most of the time limits your freedom. A lower disease stuckness score suggests that the right individualized treatments will move you along more readily and perhaps faster than someone with a higher score.
Do not despair, however – you can usually get unstuck no matter how high your score, unless you are in your final moments of this life. A higher score simply means that it may take more time and persistence from you to get free and stay free of your disease rut. And even when cure is not possible, people can and do heal, especially in their final moments of life.
Use your Disease Stuckness Quiz score as a general guide: (a) to help you set up the extent of your treatment program. The higher your score, the more likely it is that you will need a full program at multiple levels of the system to get yourself unstuck and sustain you in making lasting changes to heal. With a lower score, a simpler program with one modality may be sufficient; (b) to prepare you for how long it might take to see significant change.
The higher your score, the more likely it is that you will want to give each treatment option and yourself a longer period of time to heal, e.g., perhaps on the order of a year or more. With a lower score, the simpler program may produce good results in only a few months.
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