Category Archives: herbal medicine

Some years ago during my time as the Digital Program Manager for the New England Journal of Medicine, I developed hypertension. I was genuinely surprised; I’d had low blood pressure most of my adult life.

In retrospect there was a clue; my predecessor had been gifted a blood pressure cuff by our General Manager at her going away party. Why should I have been any different?

My physician, a wonderful, deeply practical and very knowledgeable internist, advised me my diastolic pressure was dangerously high and had to be attended to. But I didn’t want to take pharmaceutical blood pressure medicine. So we agreed I could try exercise and meditation first and return for a blood pressure check soon.

When I returned my blood pressure was not reduced. It proved to be a tenacious condition. I was busy at work, and agreed to monitor my blood pressure daily and take the meds. I did this, meditating regularly, which did help. But I maintained a high stress level despite efforts to manage it, and my blood pressure remained high, too.

Eventually I left the job, taking another job in program management. My blood pressure remained a problem throughout, no matter how much I exercised, meditated, and ate foods that supported me.

The meditation helped and I got to a new place in understanding what was happening in my mind – very powerful. But my daily life and internal dialogue were still driving my blood pressure. I think meditating more would have ultimately helped bring it down reliably, but I have not disciplined myself to a practice that regular and deep, yet.

So, finally the game-changer was an herbal formula I found in David Hoffman’s book “Medical Herbalism.” Not just the motherwort, the hawthorne, the linden, the skullcap — all very helpful and they do affect my pressure positively — but the addition of crampbark to the formula was the magic. My diastolic blood pressure finally came down into the 70s.

And I feel that the crampbark has affected my thinking and my stress level, too. I can calm my stress reaction much more effectively now that I’m working with it. Somehow it’s shifted my relationship with the narrative that causes the pressure, in the same way a conversation with a wise elder brings fresh understanding.

It’s hard to describe the relief I felt when the monitor started to show me acceptable numbers without taking the lisinipril. Peace. Freedom. Deep deep relief.

Everyone’s different and most people struggle with their systolic, rather than their diastolic pressure. What works for me might not work for others – perhaps unsurprisingly there are several formulas in Hoffman’s book that address blood pressure associated with a range of conditions; dealing with the root cause is always the aim and Hoffman’s formulas make clear that there are several plants that can work together to address hypertension in an individualized way.

And interestingly, if you monitor your blood pressure it’s not hard to see how it responds to your medication and your state of mind -experimentation is not hard.