Abstract

Hypertension (HTN) is a silent killer that sometimes ends lives abruptly. There are multiple hypertensive drugs that enable millions to survive HTN, but many are still unable to lower BP with medication alone, along with a low salt and optimal potassium intake balanced nutrition diet. Costly/time consuming emergency help when blood pressure (BP) exceeds stage2 HTN to normalize levels to prevent strokes is generally recommended. There are 3 major ways that water and sodium can be excreted: urine, stools and sweat. But kidneys are the most critical organs for excretion. Supplementing kidney function with sweating by exercise, hot yoga or dry sauna (DS) is reported to have beneficial effects. How that might happen in cases with stage2 Systolic hypertension has not been systematically studied in even a singledocumented case to-date. In December 2018, a 64-year old male subject went to a local gym and recorded his BP and found BP level at stage2 (systolic BP>160). He then sat in a dry sauna (DS) for 20min at 175 deg F (79 ˚C) and found BP was in the normal range (<120/70). He then subsequently recorded systematically and continuously for 24 weeks his BP before and after sit ins in DS for same duration and temperature twice a day, to determine whether his observation was reproducible as long as a low sodium diet and optimal potassium intake without changes in prescription medications to lower BP was maintained. The results show that the systolic BP significantly and reproducibly lowered to normal (<120) or pre HTN (<140) levels. The implication of this phenomenon if tested in a large population of patients with similar histories of stage 2 HTN could be a major advance in medical care of patients avoiding salty foods. Instead of dialysis or emergency visits, such subjects could sweat for a prescribed length of time as determined in consultation with their physicians.

Keywords: High systolic blood pressure; Dietary intake of sodium and potassium; Dry sauna; Stoke; Kidney disease; Heart disease; Accelerated sweating; Dialysis

Abbreviations: BP: Blood Pressure; Deg: Degree; DS: Dry Sauna; HTN: Hypertension