How to lower blood pressure, improve heart health and reduce dementia risk | Prof. Tim Spector

**Jonathan** (0:00)
Welcome to ZOE Science and Nutrition, where world leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health.
High blood pressure already affects millions, and the number of cases is accelerating. Sometimes referred to as the silent killer due to its hidden symptoms. It's linked to heart disease, stroke, and kidney disease are well established. Now, new research reveals it can be linked to many more conditions than we thought. Tinnitus, eye problems, diabetes, potentially even dementia. The good news? Your diet and lifestyle choices might be the most powerful way to lower blood pressure naturally. In this episode, Tim Spector reveals exactly what to eat to manage high blood pressure, along with surprising lifestyle changes, from sauna use to mindfulness that could make a difference. Tim is one of the world's top 100 most cited scientists, a professor of epidemiology at King's College London, and my scientific co-founder here at ZOE. He was also part of a groundbreaking study exploring the connection between high blood pressure and the gut microbiome. You'll lead this episode with a deeper understanding of the impact of high blood pressure and practical tips to lower your blood pressure naturally. Tim, thank you for joining me today.

**Tim Spector** (1:28)
A pleasure as always, Jonathan.

**Jonathan** (1:30)
So we're going to jump straight into the quickfire questions from our listeners. Is having high blood pressure dangerous?

**Tim Spector** (1:38)
Absolutely.

**Jonathan** (1:40)
Can high blood pressure increase your risk of dementia?

**Tim Spector** (1:43)
It can.

**Jonathan** (1:45)
Does reducing salt lower your blood pressure?

**Tim Spector** (1:49)
Yes.

**Jonathan** (1:51)
Can you lower high blood pressure through mindfulness?

**Tim Spector** (1:54)
You can.

**Jonathan** (1:56)
Is it true that drinking beetroot juice can help with high blood pressure?

**Tim Spector** (2:00)
Yes.

**Jonathan** (2:02)
I've never managed to get that many yeses from you, Tim. Lastly, what's the most misunderstood thing about high blood pressure?

**Tim Spector** (2:09)
That you can feel it, that you know if your blood pressure is high and people will say, oh, I'm angry, therefore my blood pressure is going up, I know how I'm feeling. But you can't. It's a silent killer. And everyone needs to know what their blood pressure is. And that can dramatically lengthen their lives.

**Jonathan** (2:30)
Amazing. So the team actually did some research for us before the show. And I had no idea how common it was to have high blood pressure. So apparently around half of adults in the US had the condition and about a third in the UK. I have two close family members with high blood pressure. And in both cases, that's something that started as they entered their 60s. It wasn't something that the doctors said to them before, but it sort of started about then. I also have to admit, I have absolutely no idea what high blood pressure actually is. So what is it?

**Tim Spector** (3:02)
It is basically a hardening of the arteries and thickening of the arteries, so they're not as flexible. And these are the arteries, the blood vessels, that go all around your body from your heart, pumping blood to every bit of your body, including your brain. And each time your heart beats, there's a change in how much pressure is put into the system. And essentially, it's there to absorb that shock. It's also there to have a system, so if you're exercising or you need to run away quickly, your blood pressure can go up in short bursts, and that's normal, and it comes back again quickly. So you want a flexible mobile system. And what happens when you have high blood pressure, which is also known as hypertension, is that it stays up. It doesn't just come up and go down. Your resting level is higher, so you've got more resistance to the whole system. It's like your pipes are furring up a bit. They're just not as flexible and bendy. And this puts a strain on the rest of your body, so it has to work harder to do things. That's a very simple way of thinking about it. And as you say, it's incredibly common. And where we draw the line about it being normal or abnormal is a bit flexible itself. So it could be that if we wanted to have the perfect blood pressure of, say, indigenous tribes in Africa, then we would put our thresholds even lower, and maybe two-thirds of us would be counting as having high blood pressure in the West. And it's considered a metabolic problem as well. So metabolic syndrome, which I think we've talked about in the past, is a combination of clusters of things that we get in the West, where you might get type 2 diabetes, you might get obesity, you get high cholesterol. And part of that as well as heart disease is high blood pressure. And they seem to have similar causes and relationships. And they all lead on to one to the other. So if you've got one, you're more likely to get the others. So your whole body is put into stress, and that throws out all kinds of mechanisms. Now, I've got high blood pressure. I got this rather suddenly overnight in about 2011