High blood pressure at 15! Help, please!!

Hello everyone,

I don’t know how to start it the best way… so here’s it is: My 15-year-old brother has a serious problem with high blood pressure.

The first time it occurred was last year, over 8 months being on and off of antibiotics because he also was sick all the time. Therefore he went through several tests by several doctors until they found out the cause to be that one of his kidneys was swollen and had a huge cyst. To make a long story short, the sick kidney was removed, so now he only has one left.

Everything went fine after then for quite a while. He recovered and felt healthier than ever.

Until a few months ago when everything came back! High blood pressure, being sick most of the time, etc.

Now they put him on high blood pressure medication as you might have guessed already. What you already might have guessed as well is that it isn’t helping (as I’ve read a lot). So my question is: What to do? He only has one kidney anyway, so medication of any kind would be very hard on his body and as the medicine doesn’t help anyway, why take it?

You might also want to know, that he is of normal weight and partakes in different martial arts classes 3-4 times a week (1 1/2 to 2 hours each session). His diet is decent regarding a SAD (Standard American Diet) diet or in his case a standard German diet (he lives in Germany). Of course he avoids salt as good as completely to make it easier on his one kidney.

So, I’m crying out for help! What could be done to help him?

I’d love for him to just become a raw vegan like me, but at least for now I don’t think that would happen.

What advice would you have for someone on a standard diet? Green smoothies? Or other ideas besides diet changes?

Thank you for reading this, I would appreciate any advice. I don’t want to lose my brother!

Sonnenhut

Comments

  • MeditatingMeditating Raw Newbie

    SONNENHUT – I am sorry to hear about your brother’s condition. I should think high blood pressure is worrisome given his age and that he has one kidney. Hypertension is not kind to kidneys.

    I don’t have any medical training, but I have had serious hypertension and have reduced it to mild hypertension. Here is my best shot at advice. First, research and read about hypertension. Educating yourself is always the best move.

    The cause of his hypertension needs to be determined. You may want to try a good holistic naturopath. It has been my experience that most conventional doctors don’t diagnose patients properly mostly because their focus is on treating symptoms and not causes. Holistic doctors are trained to look for causes so they are more predisposed to getting there.

    Now let me contradict myself. Some causes are best confirmed by conventional medicine. Renal hypertension is caused by a narrowing of the renal arteries. My western doctor initially thought I had this. It is positively diagnosed via imaging but may be suspected after a proper physical exam. A doctor may find it difficult to consider a diagnosis in such a young patient. While it would be unusual it is not impossible.

    Another good way to eliminate possible causes is to see an optometrist. They can detect certain causes of disease, including hypertension, based on an examination of the eye and ocular nerve, which reveals much about health. If you do not have any of those causes that an optometrist can spot (such a malignant hypertension), they can still tell the degree of damage the hypertension is causing by looking around and behind the eye. Elevated blood pressure notably effects the sensitive nerves and tissue behind the eye. This is why it is important for those with hypertension and diabetes to have their eyes checked yearly. My sissy is an optometrist and she has a sizable practice monitoring patients with hypertension who are referred by their internists to eliminate certain causes and ascertain ongoing damage.

    Look for any other symptoms or indications that are deemed abnormal. They may help track down the cause. For example, a hormone imbalance could elevate blood pressure.

    If his problem is stress-related, meditation works very well for most people. Chronic stress is not unheard of at that age. Stress-induced hypertension responds very well to meditation. I, without any other life modifications, was able to shed 2 of my 3 daily hypertension meds in 6 months with 5 minutes of meditation 1-2 times daily. It has helped in many other ways too. I would suggest he try meditation any way. It could only help.

    Again, google hypertension and read all you can. I wish your brother and you the very best.

  • TomsMomTomsMom Raw Newbie

    I would take Meditating’s advise. She is not only compassionate, but very smart. Hugs for you and your brother.

  • Thank you so much for your detailed answer, Meditating! :-)

    Yes, he actually did go to an optometrist a while ago who found out that his blood vessels behind his eyes are narrowed and took some damage already. Another fact doctors found out is that his heart muscle is bigger, possibly to compensate whatever is going on.

    Something I didn’t think worth mentioning before is that he also has a hurting shoulder that nobody can find out a reason/cause for it hurting (no injury has taken place either, it just started hurting)... Different doctors have checked on it, x-rays and all, but nobody found anything. Don’t know if there’s a connection…?

    Yes, I do believe stress to be a big thing in his life, so meditating I find a good answer! Thank you! I called my brother today and told him about it. As he is seriously into martial arts (as mentioned before) he agreed right away and is already in the progress of finding out more about it himself.

    Thank you again for your answers, Meditating and TomsMom and I’d love to hear more. Anything helps. Thank you!!

  • TomsMomTomsMom Raw Newbie

    Sonnenhut, did the doctors tell your brother at all why his heart is enlarged? I mean, does he have congenital heart disease? Or why his kidney had a cyst? What kind of cyst was it?

    I’m kind of worried to give advise on what to eat, in case he has a problem that a certain food might aggravate. Please keep us up to date.

  • It is really difficult to give advise given the condition of your brother, I am no expert but if I were you given the failures of conventional medicine I would try alternative medicine such as a naturopathy or natural hygiene (as meditating indicated). Also given that your brother lives in Germany he would definitely have easy access to natural medicine as many Germans have been pioneers in it during the past centuries such as Sebastian Kneipp and Vincenz Priessnitz. I am sure there are plenty of practitioners and associations. Best of luck!!

  • Hi TomsMom and melaverde,

    thank you for your replies.

    TomsMom, they don’t ever found out the cause for the cyst on his kidney, but after further tests they said to have found out the kidney was gone (eaten by the cyst?) and all it was in place of it was a larger cyst with smaller ones on it. That seemed to have been confirmed when they removed it.

    The trouble all that must have given his body the doctors think is the reason for his enlarged heartmuscle.

    It’s all so complicated, I wish I understood all of it. But hey, even the doctors don’t. I’m just telling the short version of the story, but it was a lot of running around, going to different doctors, every one had a different opinion, etc. I’m sure you know how it is!

    No, I don’t think he has a heart disease. They just said the heart muscle is bigger due to overcompensation.

    I’m worried, too, TomsMom… and I appreciate your compassion.

    Absolutely true, melaverde! I’m going to bring it up to my brother and mother to try out alternative medicine. After all, my mom always looked at medicine as the very last option anyway.

    Personally, I have two thoughts on the whole thing:

    1. If he went “raw” he’d be fine. I’m so certain of it. All the “miracles” I’ve heard of and saw on myself! But all you can do is live it yourself and hope to make others curious when they see how much better you feel and look.

    2. I’m afraid that there truly is something else wrong with his body, his organs, whatever it might be and it already took to much damage to be “fixed” by raw foods…

    Thanks again for your replies and please keep it going! Thank you! :-)

  • Thank you lulushka8! :-) I’m going to pass that on to my brother. Gladly he loves home-made guacamole already!

    Just to update: He is joining a yoga class now, trying to wind his body down from whatever makes it work so hard – reducing stress in a meditating way like “meditating” suggested. ;-)

  • steviostevio Raw Newbie

    WHen I started my big transition I started with green smoothies. I was not raw vegan, but I was having 2 liters of green smoothie per day, and eating only whole foods (boiled chicken breasts and microwaved frozen veggies to use up what I had in the house). Even just eating whole foods, including cooked and animal foods, with a cvouple green smoothies per day did a LOT for my health. This change alone dropped my blood pressure by 20 points (both systolic and diastolic). Now I am about 90% raw vegan (I have fish for one meal every 4 days, but that is slowly cutting back as the cravings are dropping off), and I have stopped 2 of my 3 BP medications, and have a BP in the normal range. All of this has been within the last 10 weeks.

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