My grandma does not smoke or drink or do any sort for sudden reason for hypertension. She does exercise, yoga and eat healthy balanced diet. But out of nowhere, she vomits and cannot eat anything for almost 3 days and we put her in ICU due to severe weakness. She cannot eat, walk and her response while talking is slow. We have already performed major tests and ultrasounds like ECG, CRT scan etc resulting to no such internal stomach problem or any significant notice in results. A little bit of rise in sugar, that's it. I am very much worried and want to know other possibilities that the doctors are missing to find and how to lower the blood pressure. Please any help would be much much appreciated. God Bless!!
Sudden hypertension can have all kinds of causes; so of course the treatment will also vary according to the cause; and if the doctors have drawn a blank on the obvious ones they'll now be looking at the less common ones. Your grandmother's only in her mid 70s - she's young, they won't just have given up on her!
Don't be afraid to ask what tests are being done and politely insist on clear explanations. You're entitled to be kept informed. But if she's in ICU, bear in mind that the staff will be concentrating hard on their critically ill patients and won't always have the best manners - pick your moment carefully when you want to have a proper conversation with someone.
I'm not going to start guessing at what might be wrong, but I am privately thinking that many of the causes are very treatable as long as the doctors can get her condition stable to begin with: that's probably what they're trying to do first. Prayers that all will be well, please update.
I was on BP medication for high blood pressure for more than 15 years and it was going up. I checked myself into a medical program where they virtually eliminated all added sodium from the food they served. My bp dropped to normal overnight and has stayed normal, as long as I ensure that I don't include any prepared food (canned, frozen, restaurant, etc etc) with added sodium... to speak of.
The technique I was taught was that the mg of sodium to calories had to be 1:1 or lower. So for example, when purchasing salsa or tomato sauce, if the calories are 50 per serving, the amount of sodium listed has to be below 50mg. Typically you can find salsa and tomato sauces with 300-600+ mg of sodium. Can't eat in restaurants because there is no way to control what they cook with... My bp will go right up the day after eating something high in sodium. Bread is another culprit...
Her exercise is also important to keeping her bp within a good range. It is GREAT that she did exercise. If she stopped for any reason, or did some combination of very high sodium over a period of time and stopped exercising, that may have aggravated her situation as well.
I imagine you and your Grandma are facing much more complex issues than just that, but perhaps there is something in her diet that put her over the top and agitated it all.
My best wishes to you and hoping you can find a way to help through these challenging times. I'm sure the doctors will help, but in my experience... they rarely say much about life style and tend to recommend treatments of medication and surgery.
After much research, I recommend (I do not work for or make money on this) a company called Stop Aging Now. Great company. Pure products and extremely affordable. Supplements found in Drug Stores are pretty much garbage I am sorry to say. They have a great website and I save 40% Also, if she enjoys music, it is very healing. One more thing.....Hurry! Many Huggggzzz!
And I agree that music can be very healing. But don't plug anything into her ears until you've checked that she isn't suffering head pain; and don't expect a busy ICU to welcome a whole new sound system either.
I hope you've been given more information, and that things are looking up? Please update.
I know...from personal experience. She will have to "sneak" to get any real medicine into that body. They will Not allow it.
I also agree that it is hard to be overly cynical about what big pharma gets up to. But the time and place to pursue this important debate is not ICU, over the body of your seriously sick relative. If you're not open with your doctors, you can't turn round and blame them when things go wrong.
I would also point out that big pharma makes its really big money from keeping people alive and ailing. Which is if anything even more repellant of them… But there you are. You pays your money and you takes your choice - if you really don't trust mainstream doctors, then don't seek their advice.
It's amazing they have yet to find cause of her increased BP?
OR cause for the nausea?
Does she take supplements? Herbs?
Any loss of appetite over time [not just suddenly]?
Are bowels working right?
Did the hospital do any testing or scans for blood clots or cancer?
Does she want to have more tests?
Does she want treatment, or does she just want to quietly let go, her way?
Have you and she talked about all this?
Sounds like she's done quite a bit to take good care of herself, and avoid using mainstream medicine as much as possible. Sometimes there are health crises, though, that, it might be something fairly simple to fix, helping the remaining years be more comfortable.
SO many things can jack up BP and cause her other symptoms...like:
==Electrolytes imbalance:
==Dehydration:
==Constipation and/or obstructions of bowels;
==Sitting too long, can cause clots to move, block, and jack up BP;
==poor dietary intake for good fats and nutrients;
==Supplements that conflict with needs, medications, etc.;
==Supplement amounts could be a problem;
==Smoking;
==Kidney issues;
==Liver issues;
==Pancreas issues
==Obesity
etc.
Has the nausea decreased since being in ICU getting fluids?
Has her BP gone down in ICU, with or without drugs to make it drop?
I went on BP drugs responding to a BP crisis.
When those meds caused bad side effects, I weaned off them. Instead I used fresh, minced garlic, left to air x 15 minutes to develop the alicin; at about 1 to 2 heaping Tblsps. per day with good foods, especially good oils like virgin coconut oil, or with avocado. That alone dropped high [200's over 100's] BP to very healthy normal ranges [100s to 120s over 60s to 80s], in a matter of a couple hours, and stayed there, as long as I used the fresh garlic daily.
The garlic also helps make blood cells slipperier, helps soften blood vessel walls, which helps lower BP. After about one month, I could drop that to using only a few large cloves minced up, daily.
Yes, there can be side effects: usually good, as it also kills down candida that has gone pathological--so one might get more gas as the body readjusts. Using garlic with foods, particularly citrus and good oils, vastly helps reduce odors from it.
Other things that help both lower high BP, and loser bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol, is the right kind of fish oils:
But, it takes about 1200 mg daily of Omega 3's alone [gotta read labels!].
In some brands that takes 6 to 8 capsules daily.
Fish oil does things Krill can't, as far as I've found yet.
But Krill oil does some things fish oil does not do, too.
I found Nordic ProOmega D 1000,
and Found Now Neptune Krill 1000
==these allow me to use only 2 capsules each of that fish oil and those Krill caps, daily, instead of so many more of the others.
And it does the job.
Both Patients and myself have found these two things, done this way, can achieve about a 50 point lowering of bad cholesterols while raising good cholesterol---without adverse effects.
Eaten with food, there is no burping up of fish breath.
These oils also help soften blood vessel walls to allow lowering BP, and, also help make blood cells slipperier--good to prevent clotting blockages.
There are herbs to control BP--lots of them.
Some work better than others; most work with fewer bad side effects.
Some people have a harder time controlling BP than others, depending on cause.
It's REALLY important to understand herbs well, before just taking something---herbs ARE medicines; they can have adverse effects, do what medications do, and can have additive effects and other things one needs to be aware of.
But taking properly formulated herbs can offer sometimes, the good effects one needs, while lowering the chances of side effects.
Mainstream medicine doesn't usually look for causes; it usually treats BP, which is a symptom of other things causing it, using drugs.
Mainstream will usually always caution to stop using salt.
But table salt is not the only salt that can jack up BP: MSG [monosodium glutamate] is also a form of sodium. There's so much hidden MSG in foods, and other salts, it's really hard to avoid in restaurant food especially.
==Often, people can get high BP from salt, because they are not getting enough Potassium in their diet to off-set the amounts of salts consumed.
Sometimes it's easier to take more potassium to balance the salt.
Some folks actually get a diuretic effect from adding potassium, if salt is a problem, and/or if someone's got some edema, it can often help take that down.
CAUTIONS:
==Red Yeast Rice works like Statin Drugs; side effects will be a bit less, but can happen, especially at higher doses needed to get the anti-choesterol effects.
It requires using CoQ10 with it, in quantity, as if taking Statin drugs.
It is less effective at lowering bad cholesterols and raising good cholesterol, similar to Statin drugs.
===Policosanol, about 20 mg daily, was given to study patients along with fish oils, and the 2 together was more effective than fish oils alone, and significant;y better at dropping bad cholesterols and raising good cholesterol, than any Statins or other anti-cholesterol drugs
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11708574
et al.
I hope things can be found and treated, or at least made more clear with some good communications!
Please keep us posted!
Did anyone read where vitamin E (I advise mixed or gamma, not just alpha tocopherols BTW for concerns with coagulability effects) may be particularly helpful for Alzheimer's?
Glad to hear your perspective. I didn't mean to sound like NO mainstream do alternatives--only most don't, and some are downright obstructive.
Docs have to deal with SO much data now, that didn't used to be. IT's easy to be on overwhelm, and let Drug Reps "instruct" about what they're pushing, for instance.
But more Docs are pursuing alternatives, or at least educating themselves about them, instead of knee-jerk denying they can help--sometimes in ways drugs cannot.
Vit. E---yes, mixed Tocopherols--that way, there's "more tools in the bag", instead of trying to fix everything using only one tool--so to speak.
Probably anything that has
1. antioxidant activity
2. makes blood cells slipperier which enhances circulation
3. is a bit of a blood thinner
Have the ability to help at some level, for Alzheimers and other dementias.
How much help, remains to be seen.
Properly prepared Ginkgo can also help along those lines. Somehow, it gets more O2 to the brain; it also is a bit of a blood thinner.
Several years back, Mainstream media/News played shill for Big Pharma, by running stories convincing public that Vit/.E really didn't do much, so why bother using it?
Then Big Pharma launched sales of Plavix--their patented answer to those who could have done similarly using Vit. E, but now they could be sold, at high prices, the newest toy in their line. Media then also concurrently played a regular blitz of commercials for Plavix.
Several months later, after Plavix was well-launched & Docs prescribing it like hotcakes, THEN Mainstream news channels were allowed to put out a feebly delivered pseudo-retraction saying, Well, looks like new study has reconfirmed that Vit. E really can help circulation..."
That gambit has been done any number of times when Big Pharma wants to launch another drug, along with assorted other tricks used to get people scared off of using nutritional or alternative measures to help themselves.
OTH, Alternative Medicine purveyors, TOO, have knee-capped themselves, by selling public on ideas like, "it's all safe, natural, natural things can't hurt you", or almost worse: a suddenly popularized herb [like ginseng, etc.] will be put in every product on the market, even if it's token amounts just barely there, and despite some nutrients inability to stay stable [like CoQ10, etc.] in certain products or methods of delivery [like toothpaste or meal replacement powders in bulk cans]...
...then there's that pesky habit of packaging nutrients using fillers that are problematic even in drugs [like dairy-based fills, or cross-carmelose sodium, etc], things that block absorption, or processes that denature [too much heat, or picked too green, or wrong part of plant, etc.] the nutrient or herb--
--people often pay far more, and/or have to take far more of something, because of those issues.
It's a tricky business, health is! Turning around how people think about food, changing what people perceive as food, and reeducating them to understand what a truly healthy diet really is, and getting them to do that, is the hardest thing--but will eventually be the most effective.
"I got a flu shot and then I got sick." Well, that's probably because you were already exposed to the flu. Vaccines and clean water are the reasons we don't lose our children to disease any more the way we used to. Science! Don't believe EVERY word they say, but don't automatically disbelieve it either.
End of rant.
Still hoping to hear about some neuroimaging for this grandma!!