Zone brings blood pressure under control
Last Updated Aug 2007
Dear Dr. Sears,
I'm currently a graduate student in my fourth year of an acupuncture and Oriental
medicine school in San Diego. I've recently begun formulating my diet according to
Zone principles, and it has been a great blessing. Not only am I committed to
eating this way for the rest of my life, I'm telling everyone else I know about it
so they can also benefit. The following is an excerpt of a letter I sent to
everyone in my family about the Zone Diet:
"I've known for some time that my blood pressure was on the high side. I think it's
probably been up and down since high school, but I think that at that time I had
tested it in one of those supermarket blood pressure machines and found that it was
around 140/90, which is the upper limit of what can be considered a normal blood
pressure. I didn't realize what that meant at that time, so I didn't really worry
too much about it. Then, in one of the classes I took in my first year here, one of
my classmates measured my blood pressure and found that it was 150/100. Definitely
high. I got a little worried, but I decided that I'd just watch what I eat and
exercise a little more, hoping that would bring it down. At the time it didn't seem
like 150/100 was too dangerous, and I felt pretty healthy, so I again put it out of
my mind and went on with life.
"I have since learned that high blood pressure can be a silent killer and that it
can lead to a number of other serious and even life-threatening health problems,
including heart disease and stroke. I should have taken it more seriously
initially, but as is often the case with many things, it took a crisis to wake me
up and get me to do something about the problem."
The crisis came about two months ago. I was in my physical exam class, and we were
again practicing the initial stage of a physical exam, part of which involves
measuring the blood pressure. My partner tried to take my blood pressure, but felt
like she was doing it wrong because "nobody has a blood pressure that high". She
then called our instructor over to take another reading. He did so, and after going
through the measurement procedure several times, said to me, 'You're about to blow
a gasket! Your blood pressure is 210/110 (dangerously high). I want you to leave
class right now and go get treatment. Don't come back to class until you've seen
someone about it.'
"This, of course, was pretty frightening. I went to our school clinic immediately
and set an appointment for the next day, and then I went home and told Chao-yi (my
wife). We both were very worried and determined to take drastic measures. I decided
to start changing my diet. I stopped eating anything that contained a lot of sugar
or salt, started eating a lot less, and because I'd heard that high blood pressure
is partly due to over-consumption of animal products, I decided to stop eating
meat. I also went to my acupuncture appointment the next day. At the end of my
treatment, my blood pressure was 150/110, which although still high, was down quite
a bit from the day before. During the next two weeks I received treatment twice a
week and began taking an herbal formula, which brought my blood pressure down
further, but it was still high. I also hadn't seen much change in my weight, which
I had expected would also drop due to my drastic change in diet. Determined to find
a way to bring my blood pressure down to normal, I started researching several of
the popular dietary plans. I looked at two in particular: the Atkins Diet and the
Zone Diet.
"Now I know that several of you are using the Atkins diet plan and have found that
it works for you. My initial impression of it was that although it seemed to get
good results with weight loss, the large amount of meat and saturated fat typically
consumed on the Atkins plan might be damaging long term, so I decided to keep
looking. The Zone Diet seemed different. It is 'a protein-adequate, carbohydrate-moderate,
low-fat diet' that was formulated primarily to balance hormone levels in the body
to prevent chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and
others. The author, a research scientist in biotechnology, has a significant family
history of heart disease, and his motivation in formulating this diet was only to
save himself from a certain early death. I'm not going to give you a whole lot of
details here, but suffice it to say that I was impressed with the strong scientific
foundation of the diet and the large amount of supporting evidence accumulated
through research. I also felt much better about the balanced nature of the Zone
Diet, and felt like it would be a healthy way to eat long-term. So I decided to try
it. Long story short: Since starting this diet about six weeks ago, my blood pressure
is down to 124/78, I have lost 25 pounds, and I am looking great and feeling great.
I feel like this has been an answer to my prayer, and I am convinced that I'll be
eating this way for the rest of a long, healthy life. I am recommending this "diet"
to everyone, and so I'll also recommend it to you."
I sent this about a week ago. Since then I've lost another 3 pounds, and my blood
pressure is stable - without medication - at 120/80. You can't get any more normal
than that. Thank you so much!
Andrew F.