High blood pressure is
considered a “silent epidemic,” as lots of people have it but don’t know
it. The usual treatment is drugs, and there are some dietary suggestions
as well, especially cutting down on salt and fat as promoted by Dean Ornish
and Nathan Pritikin. Stress reduction is highly recommended as well.
However, there seems to be more the issue than salt and stress.
Recently I encountered
the work of Samuel J. Mann, M.D., an associate professor of clinical
medicine at the Hypertension Center of The New York Presbyterian Hospital in
New York City. You would hardly think that a revolutionary idea would come
out of such a well-established medical institution, but Dr Mann’s work is
certainly what I would consider ground-breaking. It also deserves attention
and discussion.
As a hypertension
specialist, Dr Mann has seen thousands of people with all varieties of high
blood pressure. Eventually he began to notice a pattern that did not accord
with the common view that stress is linked to this condition. “Even
patients with severe hypertension did not seem more emotionally distressed
than others,” he writes in his book Healing Hypertension: A revolutionary
new approach (John Wiley & Sons, NY: 1999). “If anything, they seemed
less distressed. Their high blood pressure appeared to be more related to
what they did not seem to be feeling than to what they were
feeling.” He began to see in his patients that old, un-healed, repressed
trauma seemed to be a major culprit in the problem.
These are the main
concepts covered by Dr Mann in his book, and they warrant serious attention.
1. Blood pressure
fluctuates, and there has been extensive over diagnosis and unnecessary
treatment of millions of people.
2. Anger or stress
can elevate blood pressure temporarily, but do not actually cause
hypertension.
3. Here is the
kicker: “it is our hidden emotions, the emotions we do not feel, that
lead to hypertension and many other unexplained physical disorders.”
4. To deal with
hypertension at its core, it is necessary to bring those hidden emotions to
the light, to consciousness, and to deal with them.
5. For those who are
under the care of a physician for hypertension, incorporating this new
information can help the physician select a more appropriate drug, if
required, to match it to the cause of the condition.
While for many people
there are contributing factors to hypertension such as genetics, obesity,
and salt consumption, for countless others it may be driven mainly by
repressed feelings due to traumatic experiences. It generally is not be
easy to deal with these, and the process can be painful, but it may be worth
it. Dr Mann points out that for those who do not want to deal with their
hidden emotions, standard medical treatment will help control the
condition.
I can testify to the
validity of this approach. In the summer of 2000, I read about Dr Mann in a
little free newspaper that covers my New York neighborhood. At the time
this seemed a surprising syncronicity, as I had suddenly found myself
grappling with some episodes of extremely high blood pressure, as high as
220/120. I was unable to sleep at night, or at most slept 2-3 hours, a
completely new development for me; I also had trouble concentrating.
Although I am very resistant to taking pharmacological drugs, I did consult
a physician and took some anyway. I also went to my usual alternative
medicine practitioners, such as my chiropractor, homeopath, and
acupuncturist, which helped a little, but I knew it wasn’t enough.
After reading the
article, I bought the book and read that. Then went to see Dr Mann at The
Presbyterian Hospital, and with his encouragement started looking at what
kind of hidden emotions I could be harboring. It didn’t take long to figure
that the place to look would be in my repressed, or perhaps pre-verbal,
memories of the three years I spent during World War II in Budapest, when I
was two to five years old. I was there with my mother (my father was
somewhere away at the front), and we spent many nights in cellars and
basements with 30-40 strangers, hiding from the bombs and grenades. In
terms of emotions, I knew there was something there, but I had no memory of
it.
One day in August,
after a weekend of sleeping one night out of three, I found myself again
with a 200/100 pressure, and I went for a walk in the park, barefoot in the
grass, which I had taken to do as a de-stressor. Thinking about the war
years, and also about how I felt the sleepless night before, I realized that
my night wakefulness was quiet and watchful. I did not think, worry, toss,
or turn. I was just on high alert.
Then remembered my
mother telling me about one time when we were staying in some
cellar/basement, and she was summoned upstairs by the occupying soldiers for
a party, together with another young woman there. Thus, she had to leave me
alone in the dark cellar with all the strangers, none of whom cared about
me. I suddenly got in touch with a profound terror -- that which a 3 or
4-year old could feel -- the fear that my mother might not come back. I
realized now that I knew then that if she didn’t return I was dead - as
simple as that. I had no home, no family, no friends around, nothing - it
was just she and I and without her, that would be the end of me. I think I
must have stayed awake all that night waiting for my mother, and now, in my
sleepless nights, I was reliving it. I lay in the grass and cried, feeling
and releasing that old terror.
After a while of
shaking and crying, I got up and went home. Then I checked my blood
pressure: it had gone down to 137/82. In one hour! I knew I was on the
right track. Since then, it still has gone up and down, and I had to do
quite a lot more spiritual work, but at the time of this writing, four
months later, my blood pressure seems to be keeping itself normal with no
medication. It’s been a harrowing four months, and I’m not finished yet,
but I am certainly on the path to cleaning out that old emotional baggage,
thanks to Dr Mann’s revolutionary insights.
Food, of course, is
still a major healing tool for me. I found that eating beans daily helped a
lot as well. So here is a nice recipe for Black Bean Soup.
