Low-Blood-Pressure Books

The recipes are easy to follow and the food is delicious. My husband's BP is way down and he is one happy camper!

You discover your blood pressure's high, and your MD puts you on pills. Now that your pressure is controlled you can relax a little, knowing the one or two pills a day reduce your cardiovascular risk, right? Control Your High Blood Pressure Without Drugs, by Cleaves M. Bennett, M.D. is your wake-up call. Dr. Bennett explains in non-technical language what blood pressure is, why we need it, and what exactly goes awry to drive it up and keep it elevated. After convincing the reader that high blood pressure must be controlled, Dr. Bennett reviews the usual treatment regimen most practitioners employ: lip service to non-drug methods and a prescription for one or more medications. Although Dr. Bennett concedes that drugs may be necessary as a holding measure, he takes a dim view of their long-term value, showing the reader how drugs merely set up a "tug-of-war" in the body between toxic chemicals and reactions to stress within the body which brought about elevated pressure in the first place. Claiming success in weaning hypertensives off their pills, Dr. Bennett argues persuasively for life style changes in diet(low-salt,low fat), exercise, and stress reduction. He educates, motivates, even graduates the reader from the same step-by-step course in blood pressure reduction offered at his clinic. Blood pressure medicine today is available and afforable enough, and with mild enough side effects, that it is difficult to motivate doctors and patients to follow Dr. Bennett's regime closely enough to obtain dramatic results. But it is worth the effort to try lowering blood pressure without drugs. Even if you still require pills to do the job, following Dr. Bennett's guidelines will enable you to get by on less medication, as well as give you the satisfaction that you're taking charge of your destiny. Cleaves Bennett's book is a "must-read" for everyone taking pills to lower blood pressure, especially those with mild to moderate levels.

This book has been written with lay people in mind. Scala writes clearly, concisely and with humor while dealing with a most complex subject. Is he right? His recommendations have certainly worked for me. In a short time I have begun to lose weight and my blood pressure is moving down. Not only does the book contain very important facts about the relationship of nutrition to hypertension laced in with encouraging stories about some of his patients, he includes good recipes and suggested menus. I think it's good enough that I will not give up my library copy until Amazon locates a copy of this now hard to find book.

When I ordered the book, I was told that my order didn't qualify for free shipping, but if I met an amt, it would, so I ordered an additional item, but since the additional item (edger blade) was shipped from a different location/supplier, I was not given the free shipping.
I did not know that at the time.

The book was informational and the content well organized However, I was not inspired by the writing skill of the author. I found the book very easy to put down.

this has been a easy to follow plan, and can see results fairly quickly if you stick to it.

Very helpful in giving a plan to help reduce blood pressure. Well written and easy to follow guidelines.

Had a lot of "doable" suggestions for lowering blood pressure from daily exercises to meal planning.

Genocide, a book about eating healthy by avoiding sugar, has a subtitle of "how your doctor's dietary ignorance will kill you!!!!" That quadruple exclamation point gives you an indication of how this book will read.

The first thing to be aware of here is that this book did not go through much editing. Normally I am all in favor of self published books, but the process requires a solid team of "friends" who do the editing for you. It was really missing in this case. You have to be very patient to read through this, past the many errors, the multiple strings of !!!! and !?!? and SHOUTING LANGUAGE and back and forth commentary. It several instances this "technique" of writing makes the actual message very hard to understand.

Even more strange, he left justifies EVERYTHING in the book so the paragraphs all run together, and he has massive spacing between lines making the book much thicker than it needs to be. Does that make the information seem more weighty?

On to the message. Author James Carlson has been a doctor for many years and has always advised his people NOT to follow low carb diets - until he read an actual book about low carb diets and realized just how they work medically. Suddenly he understood that they were about removing sugar from your system, and he realized just how critical that was for his patients. Almost overnight he switched to a low carb diet himself and put all his patients on low carb diets - and saw amazing results.

He explains that cholesterol in the body RARELY comes from eating cholesterol. Most of the time it comes from eating sugar that the body then converts into cholesterol. In the same way, triglycerides don't come from eating fat. They come from eating sugars which get converted in the body. These are medical facts that most people aren't taught. Therefore, as they gobble up high-sugar diets with soda and cookies and ice cream, they are causing their own cholesterol problems and triglyceride problems. Their doctors then blame the issues on them eating meat and fat - so they cut back on those, and things only get worse.

James talks about why looking at "calories" in a food item can be meaningless. Literally, the biological measurement of a calorie is taking a food item (say a Big Mac), putting it into a beaker and lighting it on fire. The calories is simply how much heat (actual heat with a thermometer) that Big Mac causes. The problem of course is that a human body digests foods quite differently than a burning match! Just as one example, you can set fiber on fire. It burns quite nicely. However, when you EAT fiber, it goes in one end and out the other, sort of like a scrubby sponge to keep your system clean. It doesn't cause you to gain weight or anything. There are many other similar situations in the human body where the way we digest (or do not digest) something is vastly different than how a match would burn it up in a beaker.

James warns against the dangers of trans fats - something we should all know by now. He warns that the food pyramid with its emphasis on eating tons of grains is wrong. I agree with those. On the other hand, he bashes vegetarianism as being completely unhealthy, which I disagree with. Also, he claims stevia is a blend of hundreds of herbs. Actually, stevia is a green, leafy herb that grows in Central and South America. The official name of the plant is Stevia rebaudiana.

Still, there are only minor errors in a book chock full of solid medical history and explanation. One quote that every doctor should read is on ketones. He says, "I have heard some docs say that you can lose weight but there should never be any ketones in the urine. This is dietary ignorance at its finest. There is absolutely no way to lose fat without the creation of ketones, because ketones are the byproduct of fat digestion. If we are digesting and getting rid of fat, ketones will be created. End of story."

He has several sections dedicated to PCOS and pregnancy, explaining how many women he's helped by getting them to cut sugar from their diets. Many women who were infertile suddenly got pregnant once they reduced their sugar intake and began eating more healthily.

He had one patient with a blood sugar of over 400. In only a few weeks of cutting out sugar and focusing on low carb, his blood sugar was at 150. He has story after story with these results. He's helped people with GERD, and since overweight / obese size has been directly linked to cancer rates, he honestly feels this is saving lives every day.

Finally, for people living on a budget, look at this stat. $65.7 BILLION dollars a year are spent just on coronary artery bypass grafts and angioplasties. Another $22.9 BILLION dollars a year are spent on diabetes II care. We all pay those prices in our insurance premiums. The money you pay into taxes and health care premiums could be vastly reduced if we weren't all paying out those high costs for drug companies to fix people and pump drugs into them. Think of what our society could do with billions of dollars "free" and available for people to spend on other things! It is a sobering thought. One can only hope that more doctors - and food pyramid creators - read this information and start to actually understand it.

So to summarize, the message is great. The science provided to prove the message is great. It makes very clear even to a layperson why every human should be vastly reducing their sugar intake. My only wish is that the book go through a serious editing process, so that it becomes readable to many more people.

As a final note, author James Carlson is a Doctor of Osteopathy, which is "separate but equal" to a Medical Doctor. I had no idea there were two "types" of doctors in the US which were both equivalently licensed to practice medicine. It's very intriguing, and worth a read on Wikipedia.

Using his extensive knowledge of biochemistry and cellular physiology, Dr. Carlson explains why high carb/low fat diets are detrimental to our health. He believes that promotion of this type of diet is causing genocide around the world. Prior to reading "Genocide" I really had my doubts about how this could be possible. Carb and lowfat foods are most commonly touted as being beneficial to our health. After reading this book, I have a better understanding of the biochemical processes involved in digestion and how eating high carb foods contributes to producing harmful cholesterol.
After observing the positive results on thousands of his patients following a nine year period, Dr. Carlson noticed that they experienced greater health benefits following the lower carb, higher fat, higher protein diet. Blood panel studies proved this. He also personally benefited from making changes in his own diet.
"Genocide" is written for persons with medical backgrounds and lay people who are looking to improve their own health. Dr. Carlson presents the information with scientific jargon and then he breaks it down into layman's terms. In doing this, he will be able to convince doctors why this diet works by reminding them of what they learned about science in college, not what they have been encouraged to promote without scientific evidence.
This is not a diet book. It is a book that scientifically explains why following a nutritional program like this would be beneficial to one's health, as opposed to a high carb/lowfat diet. He recommends that you consult a doctor that understands why low carb diets work to assist you with making changes. He also offers a list of recommended readings. If you are suffering from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and gastric reflux problems, you really should investigate these claims. Personally, I experience PCOS, IBS, fibromyalgia and eczema. Dr. Calson discusses how this diet can benefit all of the issues that I have listed except fibromyalgia. He does discuss how this diet can improve symptoms of auto-immune diseases and foods that promote inflammation. I suspect that fibromyalgia probably falls into this area. I definitely plan on making some changes in my diet. I look forward to seeing an improvement in my health and a reduction in my weight.

The author has credentials galore, including an MD, an MBA, and a JD. So I have to wonder how it is that such an educated person failed to have the text edited and proofed prior to publication; even the best writers know that this needs to be done. As a result, it is virtually impossible to get through two consecutive paragraphs without stumbling over egregious examples of writing that's in serious need of attention. Check out the excerpt provided via the "Search Inside!" link and you'll see what I mean.

1. You'll find extraneous commas that impair readability, while necessary commas are often missing-in-action.
2. There may be more semi-colons in this book than you've seen in all of your prior reading combined, and virtually none of them is used correctly.
3. There are very basic factual errors that would not have gotten past even an average editor. Example: "A vegetarian is someone who does not eat meat. There are your lacto vegetarians, those who don't eat meat or drink milk [wrong: lacto-vegetarians specifically do drink milk]. And there are your lacto-ova vegetarians, those who don't eat meat, eggs or drink milk [wrong: lacto-ovo means they DO consume milk and eggs]. (I see that the author has acknowledged this error on this website, but my point remains valid.)
4. There is no index.
5. There is no table-of-contents.
6. This should be a 150-page book, not almost 300. But combine wide margins with the largest line-spacing you've seen in any book (again, check-out the online excerpt and you'll see what I'm talking about), and that's what happens.

Yet, there is a *LOT* of important information in this book and I believe that most readers will learn a lot from it. There will be very little in it, however, that you'll need to refer back to later. Given that it's really only a 150-page book, I'd recommend looking for it at your library.

When you want to get somebody's attention, sometimes that means using language that underscores the severity of a problem. That's precisely what Dr. James E. Carlson has done with his new book. Regardless of your stance about low-carb diets, you owe it to yourself to read this book and learn from a doctor who has seen unbelievable improvements in ALL of his patients who have implemented the low-carb lifestyle into their health routine. The more unhealthy and obese that you are, the better you'll feel when you are livin' la vida low-carb. Whether you have diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, PCOS, or any of hundreds of other health ailments, low-carb could be the answer you've been looking for and Dr. Carlson shares why in this masterful book. If you want to know the truth about why the dietary ignorance of your doctor is leading you on a direct path to the grave, then READ THIS BOOK! You'll be glad you did.

James E. Carlson, Genocide!: How Your Doctor's Dietary Ignorance Will Kill You!!!! (BookSurge, 2007)

I'll admit right up front that the whole reason I grabbed this one for review when it was offered to me is the horribly ungrammatical title. Any time more than one exclamation point is used in series, I know that I'll be reading the book with an eye toward "how much worse can it get?". The answer in this case is that if I found out my doctor had written this book, I'd change doctors. Whether it's correct to do so or no, one of the factors I use in determining a person's intelligence is their mastery of the language in which that person chooses to communicate. In this case, four exclamation points at the end of the subtitle is only the tip of a very smelly, grammatically incorrect iceberg. James Carlson may be the smartest person in America. I don't know. I do know, however, that this book was in desperate need of a proofreading, or two, or three, before it got anywhere near a publishing house. Ah, the wonders of vanity publishing.

This is more the pity because when you look beyond the constant grammatical errors and some of the godawful language use (the word "oops" is spelled with only one P, and that one will get on your nerves, since you'll see it quite often, usually with a number of exclamation points blazing along in its wake), there's a lot of information here that's well worth reading. This is yet another "carbs are bad, mmmkay?" book, but unlike Atkins and his other more visible contemporaries, Carlson actually gets into the science behind why low-carb diets work-- something that, had Atkins done it thirty-five years ago, might have made him a blockbuster long before he actually became one. His arguments are persuasive and well thought out, they're just presented badly. And while Carlson doesn't (as did Atkins) spend three-quarters of the book describing the low-carb diet, he does mention it in passing (sixty grams a day unless you're diabetic, then lower it to twenty), preferring to spend most of his time on the whys rather than the whats. This, to my way of thinking, is exactly the kick in the pants the low-carb diet has needed for so long. If only it were readable.

Add to the spelling and grammar problems (and some other basic structural flaws; the man never met a sentence fragment he didn't like, from the looks of it) a tone that attempts to be conversational, but instead often comes out self-aggrandizing (when addressing his scientific critics) or demeaning. Not something that's bound to help one's case, and something the prospective reader of the book will need to get past in order to soak up the actual information contained therein.

I hope there is a second edition of this book some time in the near future-- one that has been extensively edited and proofread. I'm relatively sure that such a beast would be picked up by a non-vanity publisher, and it might actually become a bestseller. Yeah, the information in here is that good, and that worthwhile. Packaging, however, is everything in the book industry. When you're dealing with a culture that's already resistant to reading, make it as easy for them as possible and they'll like you more. This is the antithesis of that sentiment. **

I had a heart attack 08-09-2008. This diet was suggested in the paperwork I was sent home with from the hospital. I am 49 and had a stent put in and had Left ventricular failure. I am doing great now. I started the DASH diet immediately. (I have two younger children and have no intention of a second Heart attack) I am never hungry, love all the food and love how it helped me plan and took so much of the thinking out of it for me....something I really wasn't up to coming home from the hospital. I eat plenty...I am a teacher and I usually have more food than my peers at lunch, but I have been loosing weight. I was 212 when I went to the emergency room on 8-9-08, and as of today at the cardiologist's office I weighed 185. Along with Lipitor, my LDL is down to 50. (that is what many people are born with.) People who do not deal withheart disease may not understand the greatness of this book, but I highly recommend this book.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is ready to enjoy wholesome food and reap the benefits of a healthier lifestyle. Don't waste your money on another fad diet book. Buy this user- friendly book based on National Institutes of Health research. The forms that are provided make it easy to set goals and track your personal progress. You will develop the skills needed to achieve long -term success as you learn about deciphering food labels, making over your kitchen, and eating away from home. The 28 days of delicious menus, culinary tips, and great recipes will show you that it is possible to enjoy fantastic food and feel full while you improve your health. As a Registered Dietitian and educator I say - order your copy now.

If you want to follow a strict diet then this is good for you, but I like more choices, so I found the diet too demanding.

This book is exceptional for people who are wanting to try something new. I ordered it for my mother in law and in 2 weeks she lost 8 lbs using this diet plan.

This book is so-so. Most of the info you can find on the NIH site or Dash site on line. The menus are nothing to rave about--and the recipes are not very inspiring. The only good thing is you can go on line with a site they have to download charts to keep records of weight, blood pressure, etc.

When my cholesterol levels went sky high, I started a proactive
approach to do all that I could to lower them . . . one thing I've
been doing is to read all I can about the subject, including
CONTROLLING CHOLESTEROL FOR DUMMIES (2nd ed.)
by Carol Ann Rinzler.

This informative guide contained all the information I wanted
to know about the subject--and then some . . . I could have done
without some of the material that was surprisingly technical, and
53 pages at the end about calories and other nutrients in food
were about 52 too many for me.

Yet that's not to say that much else of the rest of the information
made it a most worthwhile book for me to have read . . . I learned,
for instance, about something called BMI or body mass index:

* BMI is a unisex measure of weight relative to height, a number--such
as 24--that serves as a predictor of your risk for weight-related
illnesses, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease,
stroke, gallbladder disease, and arthritic pain. The higher your
number, the higher your risk . . .

The equation looks like this:

BMI = (weight in pounds/height in inches x height in inches) x 705

To get your own BMI, plug your numbers into the BMI equation.
For example, if you're 5' 3" tall and weight 138 pounds, the result
is 24.5.

Its significance lies in the fact that after you do the computation,
you can effectively use it to view the various categories of BMI
(and what they mean):

Underweight: BMI lower than 18.5.

Normal: BMI of 25 to 29.9 (A moderate risk of weight-related
health problems.)

Overweight: BMI of 25 to 29.9. (A moderate risk of weight-related
health problems. For reference, BMI of 25 is about 10 percent
over ideal body weight.)

Obese: BMI of 30 to 39.9. (High risk of weight-related health problems.)

Extremely obese: BMI over 40. (The highest risk of weight-related
health problems.)

I also learned more about such foods that I used to like; e.g.,
coconut:

* Yes, trying to knock open a fresh coconut uses up calories. Yes,
coconut meat is high in dietary fiber, and like other nuts, it's a good
source of B vitamins. Yes, a single 2-inch square piece of fresh coconut
meat has 1.09 mg of iron (7.3 percent of the recommended daily
allowance for a woman of child-bearing age), and 0.49 mg of zinc
(3.3 percent of the recommended daily allowance for a man,
4 percent of the recommended daily allowance for a woman). And
of course, the coconut, being a plant, has no cholesterol.

Can you sense a "but" coming here? Right you are. But that same
2-inch square piece of coconut contains 15 g of coconut oil, the fat
that accounts for 85 percent of the calories in coconut meat.

Coconut oil is 89 percent saturated fatty acids, which makes it an
even more highly saturated fat than butter.

Yet there was also good news, such as this tidbit:

* But don't forget the chocolate or at least the very special new
chocolate from Canada. In the summer of 2007, Ocean Nutrition
Canada Limited, a company that makes and distributes omega-3
food and dietary supplement ingredients, announced that the 0 Trois
line of chocolate bars and "fingers" from Les Truffles
au Chocolat, would henceforth contain omega-3 fatty acids.
Who can ask for anything more?

Do read CONTROLLING CHOLESTEROL if you or any family member
of friend has to deal with this problem . . . you may not become the
word's greatest expert on the subject, but you will learn enough
so as to be able to reduce cholesterol limits without going on
any sort of crazy diet.

This is a great reference book for those of us fighting the dreaded cholesterol monster. I can say no more than that it is worth the money and a must have.

Having to recently begin watching my cholesterol I purchased this book as I thought it would be the easiest and quickest book to help me understand eating and cookiing. However, I found it more confusing than anything else and very similar to any other book as far as technical information, though, it tried to be "cute" a lot. I would have been interested in sample menus and clearly posted lists showing foods to avoid etc. The chapters on 10 foods to avoid and 10 foods to include were interesting but not enough and too much information and disclaimers throughout the book.

The title says it all. I tried to read from cover to cover but it's just boring. So I jumped around, which be design works great that way, got the information I needed, and moved on with my life.

This book is full of helpfull information. It is fairly uptodate concidering they keep lowering the recommended cholesterol levels every year. Its not to hard ro read. The terms and explanations are easly understood.

To personify the hoax, if indeed there is one, is to see how the facts presented apply to one's own situation. As Dr. Rogers alludes, this entails boning up on current studies, anatomical facts, one's personal health history, and a critical analysis of one's lifestyle. The first two areas mentioned are critical to making crucial decisions regarding meds, and of not just their benefits, but their potential bad effects.

The usual scenario as one advances past middle age is a doctors visit where these words are spoken (after several sets of b/p readings are taken), "Uh, since you are moderately hypertensive, I'm going to start you on these medications ... " A better approach might be to limit fats, exercise, and lose ten pounds. Then, when your readings drop some but are still above currently proposed limits, you might want to consider a low dosage regime, while working to further improve your lifestyle.

But why the hoax? According to fairly recent statistics from the American Heart Association, in 2002, 65 million Americans have high blood pressure, although these numbers are difficult to come by, since many with hypertension have not been diagnosed, and some being treated should NOT be. Normal blood pressure was most recently defined in 2003 by a national advisory committee to the United States Department of Health and Human Services as systolic pressure of 120 mm/Hg or greater, and/or a diastolic pressure of 80 mm/Hg or greater.

However, it has been reported that since "normals" for seniors have been revised downward by this study, profits for the pharmaceutical companies have soared. Dr. Rogers feels that these numbers have been set too low, and I agree. They are a significant drop from what was once considered normal. The true target values are probably somewhere in between.

By reading this book, you will become more informed of the causes of hypertension, some of which occur naturally due to normal aging, and the risks and pitfalls attached to jumping on the hypertensive medication bandwagon. I strongly feel it will be well worth the effort.

For another thoughtful review, Google "all thumbs" and "blood pressure hoax"

The guy who wrote this book is seriously deranged, trotting out a mixture of fallacies, speculation and the same tired old myths. Books like this produce such a sense of depression and futility in me that I can hardly bear to write any more, but... OK, just two things out of the introduction: (1) he says that BP drugs "deplete the nutrients which cause high blood pressure"... erm, that sounds like a good idea to me... and (2) the bit about cancer starting in areas of poor circulation - I mean, where do people like this GET these ideas? Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only do cancers tend to start in areas of very HIGH blood circulation (lungs, liver, stomach etc), the tumour has such a need for oxygen and the nutrients carried by blood that it actually turns on the body's process of angiogenesis, which causes EXTRA blood vessels to grow to feed the tumour! If tumours "hate oxygen", as you can read in a thousand quack websites, this would be suicide for them. Like most people, I'm against censorship, but books like this do sometimes make me wonder.

My doc suggested I read this to better understand nutrition and its impact on health. He beleves that doctors are more inclined to treat symptoms rather than underlying causes and that this shortcoming in medical education and practive is changing quickly. But not quickly enough. If you have an MD degree, you could breeze thru this book. But for the average guy its like trying to read something written by an alien. Even if you glean a good idea, you'll have a lot of trouble putting it into practice as the foods and supplements suggested are difficult to locate.

The High Blood Pressure Hoax is an excellent informative book that will enlighten the layperson about blood pressure and how to prevent hypertension. Dr Rogers explains everything in laymans terms and gives you an easy plan to follow. After all high blood pressure and many ailments aren't a lack of drugs but a lack of nutrients!!

This book is an EXCELLENT resource. The pharmaceutical companies have our physicians using "cookbook medicine". The true culprit, however, is our lazy population that will not take time to learn how to avoid severe illnesses. As a medical professional, I read the only 1 star review and saw that the person not only had the wrong gender for the author, but must have read only the intro and jumped to conclusions. Dr. Sherry Rogers is brilliant, yet has clear explanations and is sincere in her desire to help others. I have read most of her books, and use them with my patients and friends.

What a disappointment. All this book does is slam doctors for over medicating. It doesn't reveal any real scams or expose the reasons behind High Blood Pressure, Low Thyroid or Diabetes. Nor does it offer any kinds of solutions.

The only real value the book has to offer is to remind you not to give your power over to your doctor. They (doctors) are not gods and most of the time they are looking out for their own interests and those of the big drug companies.

Pretty basic stuff most people already know. Don't waste your money.

Written with great humor. The doctor/patient "play" is sad but true. Every person should learn to be their own healer, dont give away your power to anyone, especially a person who has been heavily conditioned to live in a left brain/ego reality.

Tired of taking one drug to cover the side effects of another drug? There is hope for this endless downward spiral. The Doctor Is Out is a powerful book that addresses the cause rather than just the symptoms of your health problems. It is profound in its insights, but easy to read and understand. The authors use humor to effectively communicate the true path to health. This is a must read for both patients and doctors who want to get to the real cause of disease. Read, laugh, and learn how to save your health and your money at the same time. Also checkout their website at www.selfstudycenter.org for more health information!