My blood pressure kept climbing. Then I asked what was underneath the number.

Three years on medication, a doctor who called it “managed,” and a place nobody had ever looked.

I'm 66. For the past year, the numbers on my cuff kept creeping up, and then they stayed up. I've been on blood pressure medication for three years. My doctor checks it every visit and says it's “managed.”

Then my numbers went back up. My doctor wanted to increase my dose and add a second medication. I asked, “Is there anything else that could be going on?” He said there's always more than one thing.

What I found when I looked past the number

A 2017 study in the journal Microbiome compared 41 healthy adults, 56 people with pre-hypertension and 99 with hypertension. The groups with higher blood pressure had less diverse gut bacteria than the healthy group. The researchers called it dysbiosis, an imbalance in the gut community.

Source: Li J et al. 'Gut microbiota dysbiosis contributes to the development of hypertension.' Microbiome, 2017. PubMed

Another paper, in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013, found that when gut bacteria break down certain nutrients they produce a compound called TMAO, and higher TMAO levels in the blood were associated with a higher risk of major cardiovascular events.

Source: Tang WHW et al. 'Intestinal microbial metabolism of phosphatidylcholine and cardiovascular risk.' New England Journal of Medicine, 2013. PubMed

The gut is not just digestion

Your gut talks to your brain all day through the vagus nerve, the long nerve that runs on down to the heart. When the good bacteria are low and the lining is thin, that signal can get noisy.

Source: Browning KN, Verheijden S, Boeckxstaens GE. 'The Vagus Nerve in Appetite Regulation, Mood, and Intestinal Inflammation.' Gastroenterology, 2017. PubMed

So I stopped looking only at the number and started looking at the gut.

One sachet, four ingredients

I found Manna Gut Honey:

I didn't stop my medication. I added one sachet each morning, with my doctor's knowledge. By week two I was sleeping through more of the night. By week four my afternoon energy wasn't falling off a cliff. I'm not saying it lowered my number. I'm saying I finally looked at the one thing nobody had ever mentioned.

• Supports a healthy gut and gut-brain axis. Not a treatment for blood pressure.
• Keep your regular medications and your doctor's plan.
• Money back if it's not for you.

Look underneath the number

One sachet a day. Money back if it's not for you.

Get Manna Gut Honey →

Raw honey · spore probiotic · slippery elm · L-glutamine