High Blood Pressure – A Detective Story

by Graeme Ward, ActiveSignal Ltd

In 2003, our small company in North Wales published a report of research we had done that identified the cause of high blood pressure and, with an understanding of its cause, we were able to suggest a way in which it might be effectively eliminated. The Company is ActiveSignal Ltd and the research was led by Chief Scientist, Warren Ward.

Since that date 30 million people, worldwide, have died of diseases related to or caused by high blood pressure. That is equivalent to the population of Canada all dying unnecessarily! The problem is that, in the information society, good news finds it very hard to get out.

We knew that the basic circulatory system was a simple and understandable mechanical system that moves fluids around the body. Therefore, if blood pressure was rising, there must be a mechanical cause.

There are some known causes; these include kidney disease, endocrine disease, narrowing of the aorta, steroid medicines, use of the contraceptive pill and some side effects of pregnancy (pre-eclampsia). However, all of these taken together only represent about 1 in 20, or 5%, of all high blood pressure cases. The rest, 95% fall into the category of primary or essential hypertension – had previously been described as being of unknown cause. The respected BUPA healthy information site says “Although the exact cause of high blood pressure isn’t fully understood, it’s known that some factors to do with your lifestyle can contribute”. We knew that there had to be a physical reason why pressure rises and set out to find it.

The circulatory system is not one homogenous system; it can better be described as five interlinked systems. There are the arteries that deliver oxygen rich blood and the veins which cart away oxygen poor blood. Then there are the arterioles which are connections between the arteries and the capillaries and the venules which connect back to the veins. Then there are the capillaries themselves. Finally, we should not forget the pump that keeps everything moving, the heart.

When we measure blood pressure, we are measuring arterial pressure. The pressure in the veins is much lower and they rely on nearby muscular contractions to move the blood alone. There is no variable pressure, as such, in the capillaries. So in our detective work, we look at why the arterial blood pressure can vary. Eliminating the causes described above and faults in the pump, we can show that it is nothing in the arteries themselves that can cause the pressure to rise. The increase in pressure must come from a traffic jam when they try to deliver blood to the arterioles.

At any one time, around 80% of all of the blood supply is in the capillaries. The extensive network of capillaries in the human body is estimated at being anything between 25,000 and 60,000 miles long and there are around 30 capillary loops per square millimetre of skin. Blood does not flow through capillaries; it crawls like a tracked vehicle. The capillaries are the point of exchange between the blood and the surrounding tissues. They deliver oxygen, nutrient molecules and hormones and then remove carbon dioxide, ammonia and other metabolic wastes. Capillaries are non-compliant. What this means is that they do not stretch or grow. The effect of blood being delivered to them under pressure is that the fluid in them is squeezed out through the capillary walls (the delivery process). This then results in a void which causes osmotic (balancing) pressures that attract the waste products back through the walls into the capillaries.

This is our first clue. As the capillaries are not compliant, any reduction in their number will create a mathematically measurable increase in arterial blood pressure (the traffic jam). The loss of one mile of capillaries in a 50,000 mile system will cause a proportional rise in arterial pressure because the blood has nowhere to go! It was already known that essential hypertension was directly associated with the percentage of loss of capillaries: called rarefaction.

Rarefaction is known to commence in the third decade of life and is progressive so that, by age 70, more than 40% of the capillaries may be permanently lost. It has been shown that women at the age of 80 may have no capillary loops at all in the forearm skin; the effect known as parchment skin.

It follows that where there is rarefaction, the elevated pressure will inevitably cause a loss of arterial elasticity like an over inflated balloon. Thus, high blood pressure causes inelastic arteries NOT the other way round.

We can assert that, once you have eliminated the known causes of high blood pressure (5% of the cases), all other cases are probably caused by loss of capillaries and for no other reason. Thus, we have to enquire into why capillaries die.

Capillaries are very fragile and easily damaged. Because of the job they have to do their wall is only one cell thick. Some capillaries only allow gas to pass through and others allow materials to flow in and out. The largest capillaries are about 10 micrometers in diameter. They are very vulnerable, if pressure rises it can be transferred through the capillaries as heat causing blushing and flushes; if they are knocked or cut they will rupture causing characteristic bruising. To discover why capillaries can be permanently lost we had to look at cause. We knew that capillaries very quickly regenerate themselves once the cause of loss is removed, a process known as angiogenesis, so did not believe that they could “die of old age”.

Because capillaries are distributed throughout the body, it followed that any cause would also, probably, be similarly distributed. There is another system which meets this criterion and that turned out to be our killer.

Humans have about 3 to 4 million eccrine sweat glands spread throughout the skin. The glands supply continuous normal insensible perspiration via ducts to the skin surface. Insensible perspiration is an aqueous liquid, taken from circulating serum, containing electrolytes, principally sodium, waste products and antimicrobial peptides. As this liquid passes out through the sweat ducts, the transmembrane regulators in the duct wall make an adjustment to the electrolytes proportionate to the speed of passage through the duct.

The concentration of sodium in delivered perspiration is typically 25 per cent less than that in serum. The antimicrobial peptides, acting together with the balance of electrolytes, reduce the microbial load on the skin and prevent entry of microbes into the sweat ducts.

Human sweat glands and ducts have the ability to instantly switch over from insensible perspiration to the output of copious sweat in response to heat or exercise. Cooling copious sweat passes through the sweat ducts at seven times the rate of insensible perspiration. At this output, in a well-conditioned person, the transmembrane regulator of the duct removes all of the electrolytes. This effect is well known as the observation by athletes that there is no salt taste in their sweat when they are fully fit.

Copious cooling sweat does not have the balance of electrolytes that are present in perspiration. When the sweat glands are switched to copious cooling output there is no protection against the entry of normal skin microbes into the sweat ducts. This does not matter, since in copious cooling sweating the force of output of the copious sweat is sufficient to keep the ducts clear.

The populations of most modern societies are not fully fit, but typically have long periods of time with little physical activity, interspersed with short periods of exertion and of stress. This pattern results in the sweat glands starting to switch from insensible perspiration output to copious sweat output, but not fully completing the switch. The sweat ducts become habituated to a slightly increased output of perspiration, the result of which is a deficiency in electrolytes.

Without the proper level of electrolytes the antimicrobial peptides are ineffective, allowing normal skin microbes to enter the sweat duct. The immune reaction to the entry of microbes into the duct blocks the duct at a point near to the sweat gland itself. Perspiration output under pressure from the sweat gland now ruptures the duct and redundant perspiration spreads into the surrounding skin, destroying any blood capillaries in its path. This is the cause of the rarefaction of capillaries, cumulatively increasing with age.

For ease of understanding their function, the eccrine sweat ducts may be described as Habituating and Velocity Associated Reabsorptive Ducts (HAVARDS). Over the last few thousands of years, the HAVARDS of humans in the temperate zones were conditioned to proper habituation by sweating induced by many hours of physical work each day. This physical work is no longer common and for many people HAVARDS can only be conditioned by high ambient temperature. Essential hypertension is currently likely to be more prevalent in areas of increasing geographical latitude, and more prevalent in winter than in summer.

It is anticipated that people living in the temperate zones will never be persuaded to undertake regular daily sweat-inducing exercise. Instead there has to be some kind of intervention to restore the proper habituation of HAVARDS. If a surplus of electrolytes could be created in the body then there would be no need for the protective conservation of electrolytes by the sweat ducts. If this surplus could be maintained then the sweat ducts would remain open, protected by antimicrobial peptides. This would then lead to as angiogenesis and blood pressure would reduce to normal levels.

Trying to add electrolytes to body water, e.g. to the water in the digestive tract, will just result in surplus electrolytes being immediately dispersed and eliminated via the kidneys. For success, it is necessary to create an apparent surplus that cannot be eliminated by the normal processes of the body. The problem was how to achieve this apparent surplus.

We knew that the molecular behaviour was controlled and modified by a process of inter-cellular signals. After much experimentation we created a tablet that sealed small amounts of electrolyte, (e.g. sodium, potassium, magnesium and chloride) within a coating. The coating is permeable to gas but not to liquid. The solid electrolytes within the tablet change the immediate environment of the epithelial cells, rearranging the interfacial water molecules so that they appear to the body to be ordered in the same manner as if the electrolytes were dispersed in water.

This re-ordering of water molecules is sufficient to open the ion channel gating, although no ions can pass through the channel as they are held inside the tablet. However, opening ion channels initiates cell-to-cell signalling throughout the body, with the body metabolism adjusting to an apparent surplus of electrolyte.

In summary, a surplus would normally activate ion transport to remove the surplus electrolytes that have been provided by the tablet. However, the electrolytes cannot dissolve because of the tablet’s coating, and so the electrolytes cannot be removed. The apparent surplus continues whilst the tablet brushes past the epithelial cells achieving the objective of creating an apparent constant surplus of electrolyte. The consequent receipt of signals telling the body that there is a surplus prevents the inappropriate conservation of electrolyte by the sweat duct transmembrane regulator. The electrolytes sealed in the tablet pass through the body unchanged by being used, continually signalling and providing the desired effect for 24 hours or a little longer. The small amount of electrolytes in the tablet appear as normal molecular particles to the body.

Full angiogenesis of skin capillaries by this process over 14 to 30 days will usually generate a lasting reduction in blood pressure to the level of a typical twenty-one year old, in the absence of major organ disease or significant fatty deposits or cholesterol plaque in the arteries. In cases of high cholesterol, adjustment of diet to reduce these levels should accompany the use of the tablets although using the tablets alone will still produce a beneficial effect as capillaries are restored.

Active Signal Ltd has now brought this treatment to market in a product called ion eXtra. It is not a medicine in that it does not introduce anything into the body that is not naturally present. In fact, nothing is transferred from the tablet to the body at all, so side effects are impossible. It is just a little tablet signalling the body to release inappropriately conserved electrolytes. The Company has also obtained worldwide patent protection for this novel technology. It is the first product to use the body’s own intercellular signalling processes, without employing any drugs, to achieve a beneficial effect.

This treatment differs radically from the many existing treatments for high blood pressure. Medical intervention concentrates exclusively on reducing the arterial pressure by intervening in the operation of the heart, the state of the arteries or the amount of water present in the body, none of these treatments address the underlying cause which occurs in the capillaries and not in the heart or the arteries. Alternative treatments (including a glass of red wine) may help to regulate the heartbeat or thin the blood. But none of these treatments stop the normal progression of hypertension from mild to moderate to serious. The key point is that only by removing high blood pressure altogether, as IonExtraTM does, do you regain arterial flexibility.

Since 2003, we have been talking to anyone who will listen about high blood pressure and its causes. This has included all of the major universities who have any specialisation in this area, the various special interest groups, the NHS and even Government ministers. All of them express interest and our basic science has never been effectively challenged. It is well- founded and proven. The problem is that none of these people have mechanisms for dealing with novel science and there are no budgets for research into concepts that haven’t already been ratified by numerous peer reviews (impossible for new science!). Also, if one were cynical, one could suspect that the organisations who have tremendous vested interests and profits tied up in the current non-cures for high blood pressure have no interest in investigating a science that may remove the need for their interests.

If the silent epidemic of hypertension is not resolved now, by the end of next year the equivalent of the population of the UK will have died prematurely and unnecessarily!