My mother aged 73 usually has high blood pressure and being retired pensioner and having got Health Scheme Card is used to so many BP pills and pills for other symptoms from hospital, where doctor symptomatically suggests so variety of colourful medicines in shining packings. My mother unfortunately is very fond of taking so many of these medicines punctually that she forget to take meals but not very medicine, it should be. I do not call her wrong, but her need for medicines to avoid recurrence of symptoms of high blood pressure. I have seen similar people in many places – offices, relations, who are very fond of pills.
The irony of this treatment is that she is still patient of severe hypertension and when I suggests to go for naturopathy, she is very strongly reluctant that I leave her as she wants to live. This March, 2019, she fell from bed and unfortunately, broke her femur bone. She was admitted in GTB Hospital, Delhi. There the orthopedic doctors suggested surgical operations to do fixature with clamp. The operation was scheduled after 2-3 days. But before that Pre-anesthesia clearance was mandatory to do the operation. To bad luck, high blood pressure of my mother interferred and the operation was postponed. Doctors waited for blood pressure to normal down from 180/100. Medications and reduced salt intake took 10 days to normalize enough to allow the doctors to do the operation. Well the operation was successful.
She returned home after 3 days of the operation and continued to take medications for fracture as well as hypertension. She continued all sorts of frequent meals on the bed as she was immobile because of fracture restrictions. After 3 months, she developed swelling on her feet as well as severe hypertension with systolic 220 mm Hg and diastolic 120 mm of Hg and she was feeling heaviness in her head. This can be severe damage to the heart and could lead to some bigger problem. As usual, she took double dose of hypertension medication, but in vain. This was emergency for me. I immediately came into action. It was night and just prayed God to protect her from any mishappening. Next day, I stopped all of her usual meals and put her on only Khichdi and porridge. I completely stopped her intake of white salt, white sugar, white flour, refined oil, tea. Khichdi was absolutely without salt and dhaliya was sweetened with jaggery. Apart from this I started her intake of seasonal fruits – specially bananas alongwith others. In place of tea, I suggested to take tea of Hibiscus to lower her blood pressure. In between, I suggested for coconut water. All other things were stopped. Alongwith diet, I also improved her sleep patterns so that she could get good quality sleep of 8 hours. Sleep has very important role in recovery from any ailment. So, I downloaded one yoga nidra (Bihar School of Yoga) from youtube in her mobile phone and let her listen every day to practice yoga nidra to allow her complete relaxation.
Everyday I used to check her blood pressure with digital BP reading machine. Within one week, her systolic pressure dropped to 190 and diastolic came around 100. At end of 2nd week, her blood pressure came down to 125/85 mm of Hg. This had been one of the happiest moments of my life and now, my mother understood the impact of diet on the health which is most important. Earlier, my frequent requests to restrict her diet / meals for better health used to produce no results.
Disclaimer: The above modifications should not be incorporated as a line of treatment and should never replace medical advice. The above real story can just be taken as an indication to improve lifestyle to prevent hypertension.