Steve Wood Control Blood Pressure Without Drugs The following is taken from The Future of Health Now interview conducted by Ann Wixon with Steve Wood, co-founder of Cardiogrip Corporation. We have compiled the best, most valuable and easily applicable content from this amazing interview so you can begin to implement positive changes today, as you strive to live a happier and healthier life now and in the future. Who is Steve Wood? I am the co-founder, president, and CEO of Cardiogrip Corporation, developer of the breakthrough Zona Plus device. I have a bachelor's in political science and economics from Pepperdine University and am a fellow of the International Academy of Apologetics in Strasbourg, France. From Pilot to President I'm a private pilot as well and you have to take a flight physical every couple of years. My doctor told me my blood pressure was inching up and if I didn't get it under control that he was going to have to put me on medication. I had no interest in medications so I started looking for alternatives. I was able to find Air Force research that lead me to a clinical version of the Zona Plus, and it lowered my blood pressure dramatically. My brother is in the medical field himself. He told me, Steve, you need to get a hold of this, it's going to change the world. High Blood Pressure vs. Hypertension Hypertension is a specific definition so if your systolic blood pressure is 140 mmhg systolic or 90 mmhg diastolic, or more. There are various stages of hypertension. High blood pressure is a different thing. The Future of Health Now 2012 1
High blood pressure starts above normal, or what they say is good for you, which is 115/75. High blood pressure increases the chances of having premature death for every 20 mmhg that it increases. If it's 20 mmhg systolic or 10 diastolic over that 115/75, it's associated with a doubling of cardiovascular mortality. It's probably the most important thing in the world to control high blood pressure for your health. Is It Hypertension? There are a variety of ways to measure your blood pressure. You can measure your blood pressure with a cuff in the doctor s office. Just watch out for white coat hypertension, which happens simply because a person is in the doctor's office. You can check at home with a good quality blood pressure cuff. The gold standard home blood pressure cuff is the one that's been certified by the British Hypertension Society. High blood pressure causes over 7.1 million premature deaths, and totally disables 2.5 million of people every year. Half of all stokes, half of heart disease can be directly attributed to high blood pressure. The easiest way is to avoid that is to control your blood pressure. Get that under control and your chances drop by 50%. They call hypertension the silent killer. You chances of developing hypertension increase as you age, even if you're fit. In fact, 90 plus percent of adults will eventually get hypertension. What is the Zona Plus? The Zona Plus looks like the controls in the cockpit of a jet. It helps lower stress and reduce high blood pressure. It is comfortable. The research that lead to the Zona Plus came from the U.S. Air Force, from fighter pilots. They did some studies and found was that doing a specific isometric protocol caused two fighter pilots who had a little bit of high blood pressure to lower their blood pressure. We have recreated what is a lot like the joystick that you would see in a fighter pilot. The Zona Plus is a Class 1 exempt medical device. That s a rating of the type of device that has a low risk level. A Class 1 device is one where you're not eating anything, you're not injecting anything, you're not expected to balance on it and hurt yourself. It's a very low risk device. You use it for 12 minutes. It comes with specific instructions regarding use. The Future of Health Now 2012 2
It is an isometric exercise, which means it s a non-moving exercise where you use force, but you aren t moving. To use the Zona, you can sit in a chair, you can be walking down the road, there's any number of things that you can do. The key point is you need to be able to use your hand and you need to be able to pay enough attention to it to follow the protocol. There's a screen on top that you can see that gives you directions, gives you timing. You need to be able to follow that otherwise you won't see a good result. Zona Plus vs. Drugs The Zona is a science-based device. We ve found that people who use it work with their physician to get off of prescription medications. We're seeing about two-thirds of people who are medicated are able to reduce or eliminate their medication. The physicians we work with are quite interested. We're starting a large clinical trial where we're going to take people who are not able to be controlled by medications and have them use our device. Our preliminary trials show that we will be effective. We ve done about 10 studies with 148 people who are using the device in the studies and we've had 99% success at seeing a significant drop in blood pressure. When I first tried the clinical version of this, I was a large skeptic of this thing. What I found was that not only did it work for me, but for tens of thousands of other people, it works as well. We have 13 published clinical journal articles including the Journal of Clinical Hypertension, saying, Boy, this maybe the next big thing. The credibility is very strong. It won't work for everybody, some people won't have time, some people won't want to do it. We know that. If you're serious about your life, it ll change you, we guarantee it. More and more physicians are purchasing these for their own use. People are just starting to be aware that we re here. A cardiologist in Florida started off trying to prove that the Zona Plus wouldn t work. He took a guy that he was treating that had high blood pressure that was unable to be controlled by medications for more than 15 years. The doctor put him on this device. A few weeks later, his nurse came in and said, You've got to come see these numbers. Lo and behold, what had happened was, over a period of five weeks, this gentleman s blood pressure had dropped into the normal range, and the physician was able to treat him thoroughly for the first time in 15 years. The Future of Health Now 2012 3
The Zona Rx We are creating a new product called the Zona Rx. It will be a prescription device you'll have to get through your physician. This device will have communication capability that will allow us to monitor compliance and monitor results. We're actually going to add another system to it, a blood pressure monitor. The really good thing about this device is that the cost is less than the cost of the alternative. People, on average, if they were on high blood pressure medication are going to spend $500 or more a year on your co-pay. The cost effectiveness of this device over a five-year period is 80% less than any other options. Treating High Blood Pressure When talking to your physician about the Zona, most of them want to know you have a rational reason for what you're doing. If you go in with the documents that you can find on our website at Zona.com or any of the journal articles, they see that you have a rational reason. Lifestyle modifications are the first recommended treatment for high blood pressure. That means lose weight, eat better, exercise, that type of thing. The Zona is a lifestyle modification that works. When you take in scientific evidence from the journal articles and you tell them that this fits into the number one treatment category, physicians are generally very curious and end up contacting us here at Zona. Just be sure NOT to change any medication without your physician s approval. Different physicians take you off medications different ways. Evaluating Medical Devices Ask questions. What clinical trial or what clinical information do you have and where has it been published? Is it peer-reviewed? Is there a long-term track record? For years, the number two trusted source for medical information is Reader s Digest. We have the Internet and it takes a little bit of education to know what you are looking at. You can type in what concerns you have. Find the abstracts, the summary of a study. You can go to some of the well-known medical sites that are vetted and you will find that there are 14 papers, or two papers, or you ll see this is an urban legend. The Future of Health Now 2012 4
The Future of Medical Devices I think the biggest thing coming down the road is telemedicine. What I mean by telemedicine is the communication ability of the various components of healthcare provision. People have come up with a strong dislike of interventions like drugs that have negative side effects. They're really going towards natural, healthy solutions. We re finding is that the best way to help people control some of these constant diseases is to give them a tool that will help them to take control of their own life. Part of that is feedback, the ability to monitor. We can monitor you at home. We can send you an email in the middle of the day that says, We've noticed your blood pressure spike in the last few days, you want to call and make an appointment with your physician because something else is changing. We're becoming more personal. Medicine is becoming what it used to be, which is individualized and interactive. There are forces at work that don t want it to go there, but there are other forces that want it to. Our motto at Zona Health is the power to change, and the power to change relies upon the individual. When you tell yourself through this system what you're looking for, you get reinforcement. We can take back control. You want to be proactive rather than reactive. There are also unsafe devices on the horizon. For example, there are two potential surgical solutions to hypertension. One of them, you kill the renal (kidney) nerves, so you literally go on and kill part of your body. You go and kill the renal nerves, and when you do that, there's a risk of death. Another one they implant in your chest, sort of like a pacemaker, and put little electrical baroceptors in your carotid arteries. Wrongly considered a safe risk because the dangers of high blood pressure are worth extraordinary measures. I think what you're going to see is a group of us that says, I don t want the drugs, I don t want the surgeries, what are my other options? The first thing is knowledge. It's important that you gather it and learn how to tell what's true and what's not; what's posturing and what's substantive. The second thing is you're going to see people that are really bright start to say, Well, I think this will have a positive effect. This group of people, entrepreneurs, businesses, and individuals will seek non-drug solutions. The Future of Health Now 2012 5
Easily Applicable To-Dos Know what your blood pressure is. About 20% of hypertensives don t know that they're hypertensive. Don t trust the cuffs that are in the grocery stores. They're very inaccurate. If your numbers are above 115/75, start taking control of it right now before it gets into that hypertension level of 140/90. The best ways to take control of blood pressure: lose weight, eat well, and use the Zona. Most of the people I talked to that started working down this path are happier and have a more comfortable lifestyle afterwards because they ve taken the control rather than somebody else run it for them. Final Thoughts One of the hardest things to do in the world is take control of your life. For high blood pressure, what's the number one thing you can do? Lose weight. What's the number two thing you can do? Eat well. Make sure you get enough water, potassium, and manganese. Exercise. After that, look at what's credible, what's proven, what's guaranteed, and start working your way forward into controlling your own life. The future of telemedicine is coming. We'll be able to scan your body, eventually, instead of pricking your finger for a blood draw. It's going that way. Resources: Dr. Neil Fiore interview Dr. Rollin McCraty interview This Action Guide has been brought to you by The Future of Health Now 2012 The Future of Health Now 2012 6