Fix Your High Blood Pressure in 90 Days or Less offers a sweeping and personal guide to tackling hypertension without lifelong reliance on prescription medication by drawing on your own experience as both a patient and a physician. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I had to write this book because there is no book out there written by a doctor who is also a hypertensive patient. That meant the books that had been written on the subject prior to mine lacked that fusion. You cannot beat that lived experience account when it comes to lifestyle medicine whilst at the same time drawing on prior knowledge and oversight of orthodox medicine. And I also felt folks with hypertension needed that motivation to do something about their condition rather than resign themselves to the belief that they have to be on medications for the rest of their lives bearing in mind that doing nothing else meant more medications will be added to their prescription list over time. The usual trend is a growing list of medications from poor blood pressure control as the individual got older and also from adding more medications to treat side effects of the prescribed medications. Writing the book offered patients a pathway to halting worsening of the hypertension condition and the treatment package.

How much research did you undertake for this book, and how much time did it take to put it all together?

My overriding goal was to remove complexity from the subject of hypertension. Just like most medical conditions, complexity prevails around the hypertension, and I love explaining things to people anyway. So, for me writing this book was an opportunity to do what I love doing – breaking things down to the basics such that the reader understands the subject of hypertension from the ground up. The reason I love doing this is, if you understand a subject and you understand what you are doing and why you are doing it, you are more likely to see it through. Everything makes more sense to you afterwards.

Removing the veil around hypertension was important for me and hopefully the reader too. The research was therefore around making the reader understand the subject of hypertension and the nuances of what the reader needs to do to manage their blood pressure with lifestyle approach. I used myself as the N=1 experimental figure initially, and this took at least 2 years trying to figure out what works and then zooming in on the science behind what worked and what didn’t.

It turns out that like most educational undertakings, the more you look the more you realize how little you know meaning the learning process was a dynamic and continuous process. The subject of nutrition and how it affects blood pressure is a classic example of how this rabbit hole just kept getting deeper and deeper. In fact, that was the reason why I needed to write a 2^nd edition of the book because after the first edition hit the shelfs, I began to discover more strategies that folks needed to know about as far as managing their blood pressure is concerned. I couldn’t allow my newfound knowledge to fester in my mind without divulging these to affected individuals. Besides I had also learnt a lot on the practical side from coaching people. So, this new edition had to be written and I’m glad I did.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

Right off the bat was the definition of essential hypertension. We were taught in medical school that hypertension of no known cause (of which 90% of hypertension cases are) should be classified as essential hypertension. For most things in life, there is an action and a reaction.

I refused to believe that hypertension is something that just happens, so I dug deeper into the concept and the more I looked the more I saw. In the course of my research, I came up with 4 causes of the so-called essential hypertension and a 5^th one which is more or less iatrogenic. Understanding these four causes meant the affected individual can zoom in on these to resolve their high blood pressure.

I needed to talk about sleep apnoea which is a secondary cause of high blood pressure and why it shouldn’t be ignored and what to do about it because all the medication in the world would do little if sleep apnoea was overlooked.

The subject of metabolism was equally important for me to explain as it forms the basis of a lot of the high blood pressure cases we have around especially in the Western world mainly due to our lifestyles. High blood pressure just like Type 2 diabetes is more or less a metabolic disease for a lot of people. I wanted to explain that concept and how to deal with it. If the underlying metabolic problem is fixed, your blood pressure will resolve.

I needed to delve into the issue of foods, and I devised the food traffic light system. My main objective though was not to demonize some foods as folks would have expected i.e the foods in the red zone but for us to use the goal-oriented approach. By that I mean consuming more and more of the foods that moved us closer to our goal of blood pressure reduction and less of the foods that moved us further away from that goal.

The concept of food acidity and alkalinity and how that influences blood pressure management was another and it got its own chapter.

I had new takes on exercise and how folks short on time could do the little they can and still get reasonable blood pressure reduction results.

One thing I was keen to get out there was dispelling anxiety around segmented sleep. This anxiety further fuels sleep problems and a vicious circle ensues. I wanted to break that and have folks jump out of that loop. And talking about anxiety, the role of the nervous system in the high blood pressure causation and how to deal with it was something I had to share as a matter of necessity.

To crystallize everything in the book, I also felt a 90-day plan would be just what the doctor (me) ordered. It is a plan with a helicopter oversight approach, yet bullet pointed enough to help the reader.  

What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Fix Your High Blood Pressure in 90 Days or Less?

The main takeaway from this book is for everyone who has high blood pressure to simply relax about their diagnosis and stop worrying about the condition because help is available. Yes, each individual can start their journey with high blood pressure medication(s) but that should be the beginning of the story, not the end. Your next task is to adjust your lifestyle because for the most part, essential hypertension at least for a huge chunk of the affected population is a lifestyle disease meaning you can resolve it by being diligent and masterful in your lifestyle choices. Lifelong dependence on medications is not a given as far as hypertension is concerned. In fact, I would argue that hypertension is a clarion call to adjust one’s lifestyle for the better.

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