Question
i have level 2 hypertension. i'm bothered by gout. i heard today on an infomercial that the meds can cause gout. also, it said adjustment of the atlas bone is a cure for hypertension. at least it said that 90 percent of high blood pressure is hypertension.

Answer

Hanna Somatic Educatio Hi, Charlie.

Public communications are often oversimplifications.

This is a case in point.

Habituated muscular tensions throughout the body, accumulated over a lifetime through stress, repetitive use patterns, and injury, impede blood flow and create a back-pressure on the heart, which has to pump harder to get blood flow.  Muscles, when resilient (rather than always tense), pump blood with each contraction (i.e., ordinary movement) and help the heart pump blood.  So, in that sense, 90 percent of high blood pressure may be hypertension (in the sense of hypertonic muscles).

No way can adjusting one bone, the atlas, deal with the larger pattern I describe, above.  True, a displaced atlas leads to reflexive muscular tensions along the whole spine that compensate for off-center weight bearing of the head (which weighs about 12 pounds), and adjusting the atlas relieves that part of the tension pattern, but that is usually far from enough.  There's the whole rest of the muscular system to account for -- and chronic aches and pains are usually a sign that such tension exists.

As to meds causing gout, I can't address that point.  Gout is the accumulation of uric acid crystals in joints, and that's probably related more to excessive protein consumption than to meds.  But I don't know enough about meds to comment, further.

As an aside, I have done a video showing how somatic education techniques (which affect the muscular system) can correct atlas position.  But, again, that's almost never done until the larger patterns of muscular contraction have been dealt with.

If you'd like to see the video, subscribe to my blog at:

http://lawrencegold.wordpress.com/feed/atom/

or follow me on Twitter at:

@somanaut

I'll be announcing the video when I publish it.

regard,
Lawrence Gold