My decision to take a sabbatical from new patients didn’t come lightly. It came with lots of back and forth, concern that I would be letting down those seeking my help or that I would falter financially, losing the traction that I have established in the last 2.75 years.
Money is always a taboo subject, but for the sake of being genuine, this is just the mere reality.
The decision was finally made when I listened to my gut – it felt right, so it must be – that’s it. Several events occurred later on that only confirmed and reinforced my already-made decision:
My own health (the last thing patients want are hypocrites as providers… or do they?)
The time I was allowing myself to increase my knowledge and education; much of which is done independently but others can be found in attending conferences and other continuing education opportunities
Acquiring an additional certification in Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT), which I am currently studying at a snail’s pace to ensure proper absorption of the heavy and dense material
All of which would ultimately benefit my patients overall – so you see why this decision was a shoe-in?
My favorite encounter thus far was rekindling my romance with botanical medicine. While we get a lot of this strung throughout our education, that time is mere introduction, the deep dives really come after graduation and are primarily independently acquired.
Hibiscus sabdariffa, aka Sorrel, is an herb that made itself known to me again and again over the last month or so. I don’t take these occurrences as mere coincidence, so I lean into them heavily and try to explore and research as much as I can, oftentimes experimenting on myself before bringing them into care plans with my patients.
Hibiscus makes a great addition to anybody’s care plan who might be battling the following concerns:
Heart disease
High blood pressure
Poor blood sugar balance
Excess weight
Leptin-resistance
Ultimately, all of these things culminate in cardiovascular concerns, so best to get them under control sooner rather than later. But of course, if you have already received such a diagnosis, we can work on that; but remember, healing is not linear and time for undoing needs to happen as much as the time that took to do the doing.
How does hibiscus work, you may ask? All of its functions are fairly interconnected so I will try my best to explain it all below while relating everything back to the other.
Elevations in blood pressure almost exclusively are rooted in insulin-resistance.
This means the body has a hard time managing blood sugar due to poor communication with the hormone that is meant to process it: insulin.
Insulin’s job is to convert and store glucose/sugar into fat. This is a physiological process, but when too much sugar is coming in for insulin to manage, this will result in higher amounts in the blood causing inflammation and other issues inside of the cardiovascular system; think: heart and arteries.
This inflammation within the cardiovascular system can then contribute to other potential heart issues, atherosclerosis – the narrowing of blood vessels – and thus, elevations in blood pressure. It’s really hard to process traffic when 10 lanes goes down to 2 or even 5, no? The same is true for the blood circulating in your arteries.
Back to the poor blood sugar regulation.
This is not exclusively due to the food that we eat. It is rooted in stress and cortisol levels, too (which impact your blood pressure!). So, if you’re somebody who has been told you have poor blood sugar regulation and only advised to adjust your eating habits, then you weren’t told the whole story.
The purpose of me bringing this up here is to show you that if your mitigation tactics of just changing your food haven’t helped, it doesn’t mean food isn’t still your problem; it just means that you’re not addressing all of the contributing factors.
Weight gain
Should you have insulin resistance, as mentioned before, this is the result of storing sugar as excess fat on the body.
It is almost in an identifiable pattern, too: around your midsection. These are the people who have relatively thin arms and legs what we might call a “pot belly” exhibiting no excess fat in other areas… yet.
I can almost guarantee you that if I saw these individuals in public, not knowing anything else about them, and went up to them and ask them if they had high blood pressure, I can almost guarantee you that many of these people will say yes.
Another form of resistance, that of leptin, will also likely occur in the presence of long-standing insulin resistance. This is because these individuals are potentially overeating to their body’s needs which results in poor signaling of the hunger- and full- hormones.
The body gets to a place where it thinks its wrong because the human keeps ignoring the signals its putting out, so the goal post moves and the weight keeps climbing.
Ultimately, all of this metabolic dysfunction is going to result in cardiovascular disease and a potential heart attack down the line.
Hibiscus helps to curtail a lot these processes that continue to happen and unravel with confusion as to where to stop the cascade. It is not only anti-inflammatory, but it helps to feed beneficial bacteria in the gut Akkermansia muciniphila (see more about this amazing microorganism here) that helps to up-regulate GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) and thus facilitating proper blood sugar balance. It is actually the primary target in the hotshot weight loss drug ozempic – which you can read about more here – but doesn’t come with the potential life-threatening side effects.
Hibiscus (along with Lemon verbena, subject of another post to come) has been found to inhibit fat accumulation, which can also help with weight loss and removing the excess around the middle.
To address the blood pressure would be covered by the above functions, but it also has a mechanism of action similar to an ACE-inhibitor, think drugs like lisinopril, enalopril, quinopril, etc.
It is an ideal multifunctional approach to managing and preventing cardiovascular disease – at least I think so!
