The Meaning of the Symptoms of Hypertension
“My great religion is a trust in the blood, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our intellects. But what our blood feels and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.”
D.H. Lawrence
The healthy sense of your Self will always seek pleasure. As a child I recall whipping through supper, so that I could get back out onto my bike. I had a date to meet the boys, naturally, and we were to rendez-vous at the tree fort we were building in the forest. I had grabbed the nails and hammer from my Dad’s workbench and I had three chocolate chip cookies shoved into my jacket pocket to share. We had to get this thing built for … well, who really knows why we had to get it built. We were 8, and it was enough to munch on cookies and tell ghost stories before having to be back home by the time the street lights went on. When we were 10, the tree fort wasn’t being used for stories so much, but a haven away from our parents so we could engage in games of Truth or Dare or Spin the Bottle. Later on, in our teens, we needed to install some carpet as the days of cookies and ghost stories were long gone and our games were done more in a “prone” position. These days of pure ease, pleasure and exploration were delightful.
As I grew older, my life began to look more and more like the depiction by Queen and David Bowie of what it means to live “Under Pressure” in the 21st century. I often felt hurried and often frantic as I rushed my babe’s nursing to get her to the caregiver with her older brother, so I could rush to my meaningless Government job, with a streak of baby puke down the back of my suit. If you knew me, you might have wondered why I “sighed” all the time. It was my pathetic attempt to discharge some of the pressure. I was hyper-tense!
My father suffered “high blood pressure” and symptoms of hypertension and eventually succumbed to a heart attack at age 43 while he was away on vacation in the Caribbean. I asked him once, “why is your blood under more pressure than Mr. MacDonald’s?” He didn’t know the answer. He did take up meditation, though, to try to avoid taking medication which he would do first thing in the morning … right after smoking his morning cigarette.
My Dad was the type of fellow who really didn’t gravitate to new ideas easily and would never allow himself to be connected to his feelings. His “heart” had been broken when my Mom committed suicide and it really felt that his heart wasn’t into very much after she died. He greeted his own mother with a handshake during their annual visit! Thankfully, he was able to hug my sister and I, but I never saw him cry after my Mom died or for any other reason for that matter.
My Dad was successfully armored. His beliefs about demonstrations of affections were very limiting and he and I had quite a difficult relationship due to the fact that I lived through my emotions, loved the boys, and had not an ounce of a qualm when it came to being demonstrative or affectionate. If I was in love then the whole world knew it, and if I was in “hate,” the world knew that too. He just couldn’t handle this “inconsistent” realm of the emotive or the emoter!
It made no intellectual sense to him. I felt misunderstood and limited by him my whole life. It was sad, but I understand now, very intimately, how “armoring” prevents the flow of blood in an organism designed to ebb and tide through a venous system that demands that our organism be labile and flexible enough to allow for whatever comes up to the fore. We need to be able both to expand with our pleasures and contract with our challenges. A state of constant contraction will build under the “hardening of the attitudes” into a vacuum of pressure.
Dr. Mercola explains that for the most part, high blood pressure or hypertension, is related to your body producing too much insulin. When your insulin levels rise, your blood pressure increases. A study published in the journal Diabetes reported that nearly two-thirds of test subjects who were insulin resistant also had high blood pressure. However, this also leaves the patient in the dark as this statement doesn’t have much meaning, either, unless you know that insulin will only flood the system if a person is unable to wholly extract the “sweetness” from their life. Misery produces armoring and perpetual contraction.
I will attempt to break the process down into the simplest of terms as I learned back in the tree fort. All life begins with swelling. Inflammation is the body’s way of “breaking free” of a process of disease. My breast tumour swelled 2.5 sizes greater before it blew up and dissolved, dumping the toxicity into my liver and kidneys for processing out of my body. A fever will swell tissues as it cooks the microbial arch nemesis out of existence. The broccoli in your fridge will expand with green fuzz and increase in size before it contracts into a shrivelled mass of goop en route to it’s earthly destination. If you’ve ever tried to make love without swelling, the mission is botched before full engagement and both parties can feel frustrated and resigned. The disease of resignation is Cancer.
All those drugs that may be used to save a patients life like Anticoagulants, blood thinners, and vassal dilators will actually diminish the patient’s quality of life with unwanted side-effects, causing harm and eventually lead to their early demise. Aspirin might help us thin our blood and reduce inflammation, but as time goes on, your chances of having a hemorrhagic stroke increase (not to mention all the other detrimental side effects of aspirin). Should you need surgery and are told to go off the aspirin prior to surgery, your chances of a heart attack skyrocket. Continued Aspirin therapy also raises your blood pressure. Dr. Mercola also cites, “The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs otherwise known as Aspirin or Aleve) may block the production of prostaglandins, which are known to dilate blood vessels. When fewer prostaglandins are present, blood vessels may narrow, which could lead to hypertension.”
If you are a patient of ours at Arcanum, we go after the root cause, to annhilate the symptoms of hypertension. The first aspect to address is Regimen as it is important to reduce a diet that is high in grains and sugars as well as increasing Slow Burn style of exercise. We will often suggest increased intake of vit. D and the oils resonant for your blood type. Animal protein and oils are the vehicle for the sense of self or blood consciousness as I will illustrate in a moment, and most medical allopaths will eliminate these foods first and, in essence, hasten the demise of the patient.
The other area that we focus on, without causing harm, is the realm of bio-energetic medicine. The cause of Hypertension also lies generally in the predisposition for heart disease. Medhorrinum, or the more glamorous Sycosis or Gonnorrhea, is a Genetic Miasm that has been identified as a virtually universal pattern of disease inheritance. This disease has never been cured outright until now.
The symptoms can include feelings of high blood pressure, hypertension, heart palpitations, cataracts, ear infections, eczema, asthma, and arthritis, especially worse in the spring. The state of mind is one of feeling sped up, frantic, hurried, dangerous, and gravitating excessively to extremes. Replay the “Under Pressure” video if you want a good understanding of how the post-industrial age has perpetuated this state of mind and it’s incumbent symptoms of hypertension. I know, because I carried my father’s disease at my core and I was radiating the state of mind daily. I was being set up by my disease for a very unwanted outcome.
As promised above, here is an illustration of how the emotional sense of self is connected to the physiology of the physical hematic blood system by Rudolf Steiner, in his lecture on THE BLOOD AS MANIFESTATION AND INSTRUMENT OF THE HUMAN EGO given on 26th March, 1911:
“I shall here point only to the fact that in a phenomenon such as blushing, where a shifting of the blood takes place, we have the very simplest form of the influencing of the hematic system by way of the ego-experiences; likewise, in blanching from anxiety and fear, we have transitory expressions of ego-experiences clearly manifested in the instrument of the ego. The way the ego feels in fear or shame is expressed through its instrument, the blood. You can understand, therefore, if such expressions occur even in the merely transitory processes, that the more lasting, habitual experiences of the ego must certainly manifest themselves in the easily excitable element of the blood.
There is no passion, no instinct, no emotion, whether we experience these habitually or whether they come to expression in an explosive way, which does not pass over, as inner experience, into the blood as the instrument of the ego, which does not there express itself externally. All the unwholesome elements of the inner life of the ego express themselves primarily in the hematic system. And so, wherever we wish to understand anything that goes on in the hematic system, it is important not merely to inquire as to the nutritive process but even more to look into the soul-processes in so far as they are inner ego-experiences, such as moods, habitual passions, emotions and the like. Only the materialist will direct his attention chiefly to the nutrition in connection with disturbances in the hematic system. For the nourishment of the blood is dependent upon that of the physical system, the glandular system, the nervous system, and the rest; and, as a matter of fact, the nutritive matter is already thoroughly filtered when it comes into the blood. If therefore the blood is to be adversely affected from without, the organism must already be in a seriously diseased state. On the other hand all soul-processes, all processes of the ego, react directly upon what is occurring in the circulation of the blood.”
I have committed to living my life out of the “tree fort” state of mind. I hike in the forest with my dog almost every day of the week. I ride my bike, accelerating down the hills to feel the wind in my face, just as I did when I was eight. I invite my beloved husband into my “treefort” every night for the same reasons I did in my teens. Although, he usually brings the bottle for spinning!
My Heilkunst practice is the most pleasurable way, I can imagine, to gain knowledge, mirroring all of what I’ve been learning through my in-depth studies of Rudolf Steiner, Willhelm Reich and Samuel Hahnemann. Whether I’m feeding the ducks, mucking out the barn or researching and writing another blog article or book, I am enraptured with what comes through me from these Romantic period thinkers in the most profound way.
If I commit to having the capacity for new ideas now and address each of my challenges as they are raised for my “viewing pleasure” in the present with innocence and the lens of the observational scientist, I can know the truth behind the Kaos, I can know freedom for my self and my patients. Thankfully, there isn’t an ounce of hyper-tension in my loins!