The SALT LIE; What's REALLY Behind Your High Blood Pressure; It's Not What You Think || Emma Voysey

The salt lie. What's really behind your high blood pressure? It's not what you think. So, a few months ago, a woman came to me absolutely terrified. She'd just been to her doctor, her her GP, and he told her that her blood pressure was dangerously high. Really scary, right? You know, people die from high blood pressure. After all, she was 52, fittish, not overweight, thought she was pretty healthy, didn't smoke, and yet there she was being handed a prescription for for blood pressure medication and told to come back in in 6 months. No conversation about what she was eating, but you know, doctors tend never to ask, no mention of her stress levels, no blood work beyond just the basics, just here's your pills, off you go. So, she asked me, "Emma, what on earth is going on inside my body?" And that question, that that single question is what this this video is really all about because the answer isn't very complicated, but it is being almost completely ignored. So, today I'm going to walk you through the hidden drivers of high blood pressure that nobody's connecting the dots on. We're going to talk about the mineral that most people are desperately short of, why the salt advice you've been given is probably backwards, and what your doctor was never taught, and what I'd actually do if my own blood pressure was was climbing. Stay with me. This might just change how you think about your health. Right? Let's start with the mineral that's silently running the show. or rather the mineral whose absence is causing the chaos. Magnesium. Here's a really simple way to think about it. Imagine your blood vessels are like a hose pipe. Calcium is what makes the hose clamp down and tighten. Magnesium is what lets it relax and soften. You you need both. It's a dance. But here's the problem. Most people are getting plenty of calcium, often too much, especially if they're supplementing, and if they're eating calcium fortified foods, and there's just nowhere near enough magnesium. And your body has a cunning little workaround for calcium. If you're a bit short, it'll just quietly borrow some from your bones. You don't even know it's happening. Not ideal. That's how osteoporosis develops. But it will do it in the name of keeping you alive. Magnesium has no such backup plan. There's no magnesium savings account. If you're not eating it, then you haven't got it. It your blood vessels can't relax when you don't have enough magnesium. They stay contracted and tight and your pressure goes up. That's the mechanics of it right there. So, let me ask you this. Have you ever thought about or considered magnesium? Because I hadn't until quite recently. Now, why are we all so depleted in this big mineral? Four, four reasons. One is our soils. The bit we can't do much about is the top soil that grows our food. It's been hammered by industrial farming, monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, and glyphosate or Roundup. The mineral content of our vegetables has dropped dramatically over the past 50 to 70 years. You'd need to eat about eight oranges today to get the same vitamin A that your grandmother got from one orange. And it's the same story with magnesium. And the recommended daily amounts, the RDAs, you might be interested to know that they haven't been updated since this happened. So, when you're reading about how much of a particular mineral or nutrient is in your food, when you're looking at those labels or you're looking at the recommended daily amounts, bear in mind that that number was probably calculated back around the Second World War when our soils were still full of nutrients when farming was more circular or regenerative the way it had been for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years leading up to that point. So, number two, processed food. Refining the food strips out the minerals. Your white flour, your white rice, your white pasta, your white sugar, all of them have had the good stuff removed. You're eating calories with no co-actors. And those starchy white foods turn straight into sugar in your body, which in turn depletes your other minerals. Number three, stress. Your body burns through magnesium when you're stressed. It's like running the heating with the windows open. And the more stressed you are, the faster your reserves drain. And number four, medications. Many common medications, including ironically some blood pressure drugs, deplete magnesium further. So, it's a vicious cycle. It's actually trying to be sunny out here and it's raining. Weather has completely changed from the last video I did. We've got much warmer temperatures and buckets and buckets of rain. So, all morning Mikey's been at me to get outside. Come on, let's go for a walk. Let's go for a walk. and it was absolutely tipping down, but it's finally not tipping down and we got some sunshine. I've got a better stick. Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, who wrote the brilliant book Gut and Psychology Syndrome, has been banging on about this for years. She puts it very plainly, high blood pressure isn't a disease. It's a symptom of deeper imbalance, and magnesium deficiency is one of the biggest culprits. Chapter two, the sugar magnesium heist. This is the aha moment. This is where it gets properly interesting because it's not just that we're not getting enough magnesium. We're actively having it stolen from us. And sugar is what's known as an anti-nutrient. Ow. So, every time your body has to process refined sugar, it uses up precious minerals to do it. Magnesium, zinc, vitamin B, B vitamins. It's like a burglar who breaks into your house, leaves the TV, but takes all the copper wiring. And the ratio is staggering. Dr. Campbell McBride points out that it takes approximately 50 molecules of magnesium to process just one molecule of refined sugar. Think about that. 50 to one. So that mid-after afternoon biscuit or cookie or whatever you call it, depending where you are watching this from or that spoonful in your tea or that slice of cake, each one is a withdrawal from your mineral reserves. And over time, those reserves, they're going to run dry. But it's not just the obvious sugar. And this is where people get really caught out. It's the bread. It's the pasta. It's the rice. It's the cereals. It's the low-fat crackers. It's all those things that we've been told are healthy whole grains. They all break down into glucose almost immediately, almost instantly in the body. They spike our insulin and they drain magnesium in the process. Think of it like this. Your body is like a bank account. Every time you eat processed carbohydrates or sugar, you're making a withdrawal. Every time you eat mineralrich whole foods, that's your meat, your fish, your eggs, your leafy greens, you're making a deposit. Most people are wildly overdrawn and they don't even know it. And guess what happens when you're tired, anxious, stressed? You reach for more sugar, more toast, more comfort food, and the cycle deepens. Many of my clients describe themselves as emotional eaters. And I reckon most of us could could write a cookbook called something like feelings with a side of double chocolate brownie. But comfort eating is the most uncomfortable comfort there is because it makes you feel worse afterwards. Worse in the long run rather than feeling better. So I'm going to attempt to walk and talk. But I've just realized I've got a white jumper on and it's very mucky old stick hands. So we'll see how this goes. First of all, I'll retrieve the ball just here. Right, Mr. Dog. So, chapter three, the great salt swindle. Oops. Right. So, we need to talk about salt because the advice that you've almost certainly been given about salt and high blood pressure is, let's just put it diplomatically, uh, incomplete and less diplomatically, [snorts] a load of absolute tosh. I know people who've avoided, you know, they've not only avoided salt in their food for years, but they prevented their children from eating it, too, which I consider to be a form of child abuse. But it's not entirely their fault because for decades we've been told by our doctors that salt raises blood pressure and watch your sodium. And millions of people with high blood pressure have dutifully thrown away their salt cellers and started eating bland, unseasoned, horrible tasting food believing that they're saving their hearts, believing that they're being virtuous. But here's what that advice misses completely. It's not salt per se that's the villain. It's the type of salt. And that distinction changes everything. But you try explaining that to someone who's an avid salt avoider. They look at you like you've you've just suggested that sprinkling uncut cocaine over over your food as a seasoning is a really good idea. And they look at you like you're a complete for even suggesting it. So, standard table salt, the the white stuff in [snorts] most kitchens and in virtually all processed food, is sodium chloride. Full stop. It has been stripped and bleached of every mineral that it ever contained. Just think about that for a moment. Often anti-caking agents have been added, sometimes even sugar. I know, seriously. And it's a processed industrial product. And yes, eating loads of that, especially from ultrarocessed food, is going to cause you problems. But natural unrefined salt like Redmond's real salt or a good quality Himalayan pink salt or Celtic sea salt or Baja Gold if you're really bougie. It's those are completely different substances. Yes, they contain sodium, but perfectly balanced with magnesium, potassium, calcium, dozens of other trace minerals, the very minerals that your body needs to regulate its blood pressure. So, think of it like this. Processed table salt is like a it's like a football team with only a striker, no midfield, no defense, no goalkeeper. It's unbalanced. Natural salt is your full squad. Everyone's playing his or her position. the minerals will all work synergistically together. And here's the thing, when you cut all the salt, you can actually make things worse because sodium works in partnership with potassium and magnesium. And if you slash the sodium without addressing the others, you're going to throw your whole electrolyte balance off. Your body responds by ramping up aldoststerone, and that tells your kidneys to hold on to sodium, and that can actually raise your blood pressure. So the very thing you're trying to fix, you're making potentially worse. So the real culprit isn't the salt from your kitchen. It's the salt that's hidden in the industrially ultrarocessed food, in the crisps, in the ready meals, in the takeaways, in the sauces, in the packaged foods, the packaged snacks. That's your processed sodium without any of its balancing minerals because they've all been stripped out. So, if you're eating single ingredient whole foods and seasoning with a good quality natural salt, then you're giving your body exactly what it needs. If however, you're eating those single ingredient whole foods and you fear salt and you avoid all of it because you wholeheartedly believe it's bad for you, then you're setting yourself up for failure. And I'm talking failure in literally in so many of your body systems. Chapter four, what your doctor wasn't taught. Now, I want to be really clear here because I'm I'm what I'm not doing is having a go at your doctor, your MD, your GP. Most of them are decent, hardworking people with doing their best in a system that simply hasn't been equipped for this type of conversation. The research tells us something quite sobering. Up to 80% of people diagnosed with high blood pressure received no meaningful guidance about diet or physical activity during their consultations. Not a mention of magnesium, not a word about processed food, not a suggestion just to go for a walk after dinner, just the prescription and uh you know here's your pills. And that's the same whether you're in that consultation because you're worried about your high blood pressure or because you've got an unexplained lump that you want the doctor to look into further or you're being told that your cholesterol is too high or you've got type 2 diabetes. They almost never ask what you're eating. What do you fuel your body with on a daily basis for your entire life? And here's why. It's because doctors receive fewer, on average, fewer than 20 hours of nutrition training in their entire medical degree, 20 hours. I've spent more time than that researching a single mineral. And that was just in one month. And what little doctors are taught is often based on outdated, industrially influenced guidelines, the kind that still promote the food py pyramid and and tell you to swap butter for margarine. And by the way, even the US government has finally caught up, which is brilliant news. In January this year, 2026, they literally flipped the food pyramid upside down, just like in that South Park episode from 2014, 12 years ago. Protein and healthy fats are now at the top. Refined carbohydrates and ultrarocessed foods, avoid their words, not mine. Only took them about 40 years, but better late than never. So when your GP, your doctor doesn't mention uh magnesium rich foods or cutting ultrarocessed carbs, please don't take it personally. They probably won't taught it. The system is set up to diagnose and medicate and eliminate symptoms or symptom suppression. That's your model of western medicine. Uh never investigate root causes. And that means millions of people are being managed and never helped. and the symptom is just being suppressed, being squashed while the underlying driver just keeps on doing more and more damage. So, uh what about magnesium testing? What about checking fasting insulin? What about stress management or a simple food first approach to reducing inflammation? Mostly crickets. Nothing. Nada. Radio silence. Chapter five. The other driver is that nobody's mentioning really. Now, I don't want to put all the blame on one mineral because the truth is high blood pressure is usually a a cocktail of issues. So, let's round up the other usual suspects. Low potassium um and calcium, especially if you're not eating enough animal foods or organic organic leafy greens grown in excellent organic soil. Potassium is essential for balancing sodium and supporting your kidneys and your adrenals, your adrenal glands. So, think avocados, wild salmon, beef, mushrooms, cooked greens. Let's talk about refined seed oils. You've got your soybean, sunflower, safflower, cotton seed, corn, canola, uh, grape seed, rice brand oil. I've probably missed a couple. These will damage your blood vessels. No question about it. They're in virtually everything that comes in a packet. Your body cannot build healthy cell membranes from these oils. And damaged vessels mean higher blood pressure. Chronic stress and high cortisol. Stress doesn't just feel bad. It physiologically raises your blood pressure and burns through your magnesium at the same time. It's a double hit. And here's the thing. Stress comes in so many forms and half the time you don't even realize it's happening. your subconscious registers it, but you carry on thinking everything's fine while it's secretly doing unseen damage inside your body. This has become um really apparent to me since I started wearing an aura ring a few months ago. So, it'll tell me I've had a a a stressful day and I'll think, huh, I thought today was pretty good. Nothing too too upsetting. But it picks up on all kinds of small things and then cumulatively over the years they layer on top of one another. Deplete, deplete, deplete. That's your magnesium draining away. Got to go find my dog. Poor sleep, which raises blood pressure overnight and will blunt your body's ability to recover if you're not sleeping well. Your cardiovascular system never gets proper rest. And then there's the overarching problem, uh, ultrarocessed foods. When the majority of your diet comes out of colorful boxes and packets and wrappers, then you are getting too much of the wrong kind of everything, that's the wrong salt, the wrong fats, wrong carbs, and not nearly enough of the the nutrients and minerals that your body is actually crying out for. This is precisely why I champion a single ingredient whole food approach, more like our ancestors at. So if it had a face or it grew in the ground, eat it. And I love that analogy which I first heard from my here my gorgeous friend Laura in Devon. And if it came off a production line and it has a list of ingredients that you can't pronounce, then leave it on the shelf. Can't get the ball Mikey. Chapter six. What I'd do if my blood pressure was high. Right. Here's what I'd actually do if uh if I had high blood pressure, and I don't. Nothing fluffy, no fads. This is what I'd put in place if my numbers were creeping up. So, number one, I'd start with magnesium. I'd supplement daily. I'd split it across morning through to evening. How much should you should you take? Well, Molly Robbins, who created the root cause protocol, he recommends 5 milligrams per pound of body weight or 10 milligrams per kilo. So if you weigh 10 stone, that's about 6 to 700 milligrams. And if you're going through a stressful time, you might need even more because, as I said already, stress burns through magnesium like nobody's business. I take magnesium malate in the mornings and at lunchtime because it's energizing. And magnesium glycinate is my go-to at nighttime because it also supports my sleep. Now it's worth noting here the primary recommended forms are glycinate and malate because of their absorbability and higher percentage of elemental magnesium. So don't go for a magnesium complex lots to mix together as it will generally contain ingredients which aren't so beneficial like magnesium oxide and citrate. Plus, they can have a laxative effect, and then that means that less of the the the nutrient is being absorbed into your body, so your body's not benefiting as much. And you need this stuff to stay in your system long enough to be able to utilize it, not just to flush straight out of you with a laxative effect. Citrate is useful if constipation is an issue, but be aware, it can tear through you with a [laughter] like a freight train. So, this gives your body no time to absorb anything positive from it. Torate is excellent specifically for cardiovascular health. And I'd be stacking this with magnesium rich foods always. Dark chocolate. Yeah, good for us if it's the proper stuff, the 80% plus. Also, pumpkin seeds, almonds, make sure you buy them raw and soak them well. If I ever use them, I soak them overnight and then I rinse them well and allow them to air dry naturally before I eat them because nuts and seeds contain phitates and lectins and oxalates and they are all anti-nutrients which will block magnesium absorption and irritate your gut. Soaking them overnight and rinsing them well helps to break down these compounds making the nutrients more bioavailable which is what you want and much easier on your digestion. Spinach, it's high in magnesium. It's also high in oxalates and lectins. So if you do choose to include this in your diet, always always cook it. No more raw spinach salads and smoothies. If you cook it with some dairy, the calcium in the dairy binds to the less than desirable ingredients in the spinach, making it kinder on the digestive system, on the delicate lining of your digestive tract, which you should be protecting. It's raining again now. So number two, cut out the sugar and the processed carbs. Not overnight, gradually, meal by meal. Swap the cereal and toast for protein and eggs. Uh leftovers, steak, wild salmon, even a even a sardine omelette for the Brave. These are these are meals that are going to stabilize your blood sugar rather than spiking it. And every time you replace a processed carb meal with a protein and fat meal, you're making a deposit into your mineral bank account. And three, switch the salt. Bin the table salt. Get yourself a good quality natural salt like Redmond's or a good Celtic sea salt or Himalayan salt and use it liberally. Season your food properly apart from making it taste more delicious. Your body needs those trace minerals and cutting salt is very very counterproductive. And number four, add potassium richch foods. That's your avocados, wild salmon, beef, mushrooms, cooked greens. You need the potassium to balance the sodium and support your kidneys and adrenals. Most people are only getting a fraction of what they need. And bear in mind here that if you supplement with synthetic vitamin D, it's been a known fact since 1962 when research was done at Yale Medical School that supplementing with synthetic vitamin D causes renal potassium wasting. That's renal is your kidneys. And that can take years to correct. So think very carefully about which supplements you're using and educate yourself about what they're really doing in your body. Ask questions. Number five, walk after meals. Nice and simple. Just 10 minutes of gentle movement after eating can reduce your post blood sugar spike after the meal and over time it'll make your insulin more sensitive and it'll lower your blood pressure. And it's the simplest hack in the world and it's free. And six, get morning sunlight. Another freebie. Your circadian rhythm matters more than you think. So morning light helps you to regulate cortisol which in turn affects your blood pressure throughout the day. So 10 minutes first thing if you can't get outside just look out of a window without any glasses, contact lenses, no sunglasses. Let the light hit your eyes. It's a messenger and it's necessary for our health. And seven, address stress like it's a medical issue because it is. Try breath work or grounding with your shoes or feet on the earth or reading reading something calming before bed instead of doom scrolling on your phone. Try no screens after dark and lavender oil on your on your temples. And personally, I use a shakti mat which I lie on every night before I go to sleep. It stimulates acupressure points on your back and it's profoundly relaxing. So find whatever works for you and then do it consistently. Chapter seven, the tests which are worth asking for. So if you've got high blood pressure, a standard blood panel from your doctor is unlikely to tell you very much. It'll probably just look at your cholesterol and your basic kidney markers. And that's barely scratching the surface. So here's what I'd ask for. Magnesium RBC, not serum magnesium. So serum magnesium is virtually useless because your body will pull magnesium from your cells to keep your serum levels looking normal and you can be severely deficient and your tests will tell you you're fine. So RBC, red blood cell magnesium will tell you what's actually going on inside the red blood cells where where it really matters. Fasting insulin and HBA1C and fasting glucose to see what's actually happening with your blood sugar or your blood sugar regulation. High fasting insulin is one of the earliest warning signs that something's off. And it often shows up years before before blood sugar goes haywire. And if you haven't done so before, think about wearing a continuous glucose monitor. You can buy them off the shelf now. You don't need a prescription. Wear it for a couple of weeks. See what your blood sugar is doing in real time. See what the patterns are. See what's causing it to spike. Because when blood sugar goes high, insulin follows. Cortisol. ideally a fourpoint test throughout the day, not just a single morning reading and vitamin D status. Now, I'm not talking about supplemental vitamin D or supplementing with synthetic vitamin D here, which is actually a hormone, not a vitamin. I'm talking about getting your levels checked so you can see the full picture. And the best way to optimize your vitamin D, get outside. Morning sunlight. It's free and your body knows what to do with it. Stick your head out of a window if you can't get outside. A full electrolyte panel includes sodium, potassium and calcium. Homocyine amino acid marker that when elevated indicates inflammation and increased cardiovascular risk. Thyroid panel including free T3, free T4 and reverse T3. An underperforming thyroid can absolutely affect your blood pressure and it's routinely overlooked. Your blood pressure is the symptom. These markers will point you towards the cause. And once you know the cause, you can actually do something about it. Got to walk through this muddy bit here. So, I'll put all this information together in a free PDF um with the research references as well because it's a lot to take in. And if you would like access to my free PDFs, add yourself to my mailing list and then feel free to download whichever ones you fancy. We've normalized a world where nearly one in two adults is walking around with elevated blood pressure and most of them have no idea why. Or worse worse than that even they've been told that they can't do anything about it except take [snorts] a tablet for the rest of their lives. No, Mikey. Mikey, come on. Stop being tough. But your intelligent body doesn't just malfunction for no reason. It responds to its inputs. That's your food, your thoughts, your sleep, your stress load to the minerals that you're giving it or not giving it. As Dr. Campbell McBride puts it, you don't treat symptoms, you remove the cause. And that's the work. That's the shift. So, if your numbers are creeping up, don't just reach for a pill or prescription. Reach for your fork, your salt, the right salt, your shoes, your breath, sunlight, because your body is trying to talk to you. It's trying to tell you something. The question is, are you ready to listen? Look, I'm not telling anyone to stop taking their medication, but I am saying loudly and clearly. Ask why. Ask what's causing it and start making changes that address the root, the root cause, not just the reading on the cuff. And if you're interested in a discovery call with me, 30 minutes to discuss where you are right now with your health and where more importantly where you would like to be, there's a link down in the description which takes you to my calendar. We can have a conversation to see if we would like to work together. Thank you so much for watching. If this has opened your eyes even a little, please hit subscribe. It really does help the channel to grow. Please give me a like, give me a comment, and it also helps me to keep bringing you free mythbusting content every single week. I'll see you on the next one. Cheerio for now. Oh, and if you enjoyed this one, you might like to watch one of these two next. Thanks for watching. Bye.