 So, what kind of things can affect things like high blood pressure? That's something that we tend to worry about, actually a bit more in society. So we've got stress here, so stress is a very, very, very common one that pushes people's blood pressure up. And actually a lot of the theme on the course is we're looking at herbs to help to support stress. Sedentary lifestyle, if you're literally sitting at a desk all day long and you don't do any exercise, you're not really using your heart. And remember your heart is a muscle, just like the muscles in your legs, so it actually needs using. The best kind of exercise is actually where you feel slightly out of breath. If you're starting to do exercise and you are maybe a little bit unfit or even if you're overweight, I do recommend seeing a doctor beforehand for a full checkup, but everyone should be starting to get into an exercise regime where they exercise about three times a week to help their heart. Obviously if you're overweight you need to look at that as well. Having a, unfortunately things like blood pressure can go up in pregnancy, this is obviously very specific to pregnancy alone. We won't be covering that that much on the course, but it's just worth understanding that can happen temporarily for a lady. This happens in older age as well. Sometimes we don't really know why it happens in older age. There are a lot of nutrients for the heart for example and sometimes older people find maybe getting a wider variety of food is actually more difficult, maybe they're on a lower income and also digestion decreases in terms of how fantastic it is as we actually age. And healthy diet, so lots of fizzy drinks, sugar, this kind of thing, fried foods. You really want to start cutting those kind of things out particularly if you have heart issues in your family and things like alcoholism. And actually things like alcoholism and drug use actually affect the vitamin mineral status in your body and those vitamins and minerals are really, really important for heart health. So we're looking here now at herbs which would be really helpful if you had high blood pressure. And remember about the herbs that we've chosen, these herbs are very effective but they're also very gentle. I just must advise against using these kinds of herbs if you're taking medication. If you are using medication and you want to use herbs for your heart, you need to go and visit a qualified herbalist in your country or your doctor just to check that it's okay to take those herbs alongside those medications. So up here actually we have Siberian ginseng, we have astragalus, ashwaganda. The reason I've actually pointed to these ones even though they're not completely in the same sentence order is these herbs are classified as adaptogens. They literally help us adapt to stress. So for example if you have a very, very busy job or you're moving house or you went through a difficult time so perhaps you have a bereavement, a relationship break up, these things can actually affect our blood pressure if they stress us out, if they get us worried. Even things like getting poor sleep and then worrying about getting to sleep, having poor sleep can even kind of push our blood pressure up. So these herbs actually help almost modulate our reaction stress in the body and therefore in turn they help the way that the heart is responding to that as well. You've got herbs like chamomile, hops and passionflower. These three together have more of a calming and soothing effect and these are ones that you could use in the evening time for sleep but also in the daytime to calm you down and relax you. So for example if you are in a business meeting and the person that you're with you disagree with what they're saying and it's pushing your blood pressure up. Perhaps you're trying to get a deal and you can't quite communicate with them, it's pushing your blood pressure up. These are the kind of herbs to use on an ongoing basis if you're someone who responds to that kind of pressure in that kind of way. So they're really dealing more with external stimuli affecting you and then how your body responds to that, these kind of herbs at the top. These herbs here, hawthorn particularly, so hawthorn is a premier heart herb and Jill will talk more about hawthorn when we move to the next session here. So we've got hawthorn, we've got olive leaf, we have beetroot. All these herbs are working more on the heart itself and helping to regulate things like blood flow and the actual pressure. So they're working a little bit differently than the herbs at the top here but actually the way we've designed this course is a lot of these herbs can be used together. So for example if I had high blood pressure I maybe would be thinking and maybe choosing to use Siberian ginseng and I might be taking some hawthorn. These are all these herbs are safe together as well. We all need essential fatty acids, they're called essential fatty acids because they are essential, we have to get them from our diet. A lot of oils need to go into our systems every day through our diet and you may also want to supplement. So we've got linseed oil, flaxseed oil here as well but also you'd be thinking like olive oil, chia seed oil, avocados, nuts and seeds and of course a fish oil as well. If you're vegetarian or vegan obviously you use a flaxseed oil or a chia seed oil. That's because flax and fish and chia have a high source of omega 3 and omega 3 is actually really the most important omega that you need for heart health. Having a diet that is rich in dark green vegetables and a reasonable amount of fruit, I always say to my clients there's no limit on the amount of vegetables that you eat in a day and you need to try and eat dark green vegetables but actually also all kinds of colours, so peppers for example or beetroot again, all kinds of colours. Fruit, I would stick to about maybe two to three pieces per day maximum because of fruit sugar and then we've got seaweeds and land grasses. We will learn more about these in the course so I won't go into detail on them but they are things like chlorella, spirulina, blue green algae, wheat grass, barley grass. They're becoming very popular to use. You may have seen people out with their green smoothie but actually they are some of the oldest foods on the planet. Some of them are single-celled entities and that means that they were actually here even before dinosaurs for example so they're very concentrated nutrition. Also on the nutrition side of things make sure you get B vitamins, magnesium, coenzyme Q10 if you've heard of that is also really important. A lot of it is concentrated in the heart muscle so that's magnesium, B vitamins and coQ10 and of course you can use all those supplements alongside using these herbs as well. We're talking about low blood pressure at the moment. Low blood pressure is fairly common actually but most of the time it doesn't actually affect people in an adverse way. You might have had your blood pressure checked by your doctor and he might have said to you that it's actually low but you might not be feeling any kind of symptoms. Most common symptoms are people for a little bit sort of dizzy or a bit spaced out but other times people don't notice anything at all. If you do have symptoms like that and you do want to help that it's worth looking at maybe that your circulation is a little bit sluggish or isn't working as well. Sometimes people who suffer from blood sugar fluctuations or imbalances in blood sugar need to look at that as well and in this course we are going to be looking at herbs which help blood sugar as well. Herbs which also help the adrenal glands so I mentioned them before when we were looking at high blood pressure like Siberian genes saying Ashwagandha are also very important because they help the body to adapt to changes and just because actually they can help with high blood pressure this also means they're able to kind of modulate blood pressure so they're also able to help with low blood pressure as well. But it's a bit more of a tricky area so we always recommend that maybe seeking the assistance or speaking to a herbalist as well if you're trying to tackle it on your own. If you enjoyed this video please give it a like and subscribe below so you don't miss any future content. To learn more about CNM or its courses head to www.naturopathy-uk.com