OK, once you’re getting more oxygen into the blood stream, the next thing is getting more of that blood to the body’s tissues. If you could widen your blood vessels to carry more blood, that is, use a fatter pipe, this would have that effect. There are several ways to accomplish vasodilation, one of them is heat. When your body gets hotter, the blood vessels dilate to carry heat away faster. Saunas are good for this, and my personal favorite, hot baths. A 20-30 minute soak, every day in hot water, the hotter the better, up to a point, helps deliver an increased supply of oxygen-carrying blood to all your cells, literally their lifeblood. Personally, I also use the time to meditate, sinking low enough so my ears are covered, but I can breathe freely and can’t sink further, to aproximate sensory deprivation. I’ve been doing this for thirty years, following work by John Lilly (another one of my science heroes since reading his books on dolphin reasearch in high school) on sensory deprivation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly
So: A daily hot soak, maybe some prana (breathing) exercises, and if desired, meditation.
Another way to dilate the blood vessels is with exercise, specifically bodybuilding. You look at bodybuilders and they have massive veins. You can easily see they are transferring larger amounts of blood to their tissues. Of course, when relaxed, not flexed, the veins don’t stand out like that and they’re pretty much invisible. I think the swollen tubes look puts off a lot of people, especially potential women weightlifters who don’t realize that with their higher percentage of smooth muscle tissue, still look smooth and tapered not bulgy (also the smaller ratio of striated [striped] tissue lets women be a third stronger for the same muscle mass). I’d like to strongly advocate bodybuilding for women.
Bodybuilders tend to remain young and healthy looking well into their sunset years. Take Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who still looks great and check out Clarence Bass, who is now past 70 and still ripped.
http://cbass.com/
There’s one more way of dilating the body’s vessels, I want to mention, and this will detail the way I’ve been able to intercept any (so far) excess growth of blood vessels over my retina, or excess vascularization, which is the reason diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in the US. The reason this happens is that in most diabetics (that is those who are not maintaining their sugars as close to normal as possible) the tiny blood vessels carrying blood to the retina gradually fail, due to compromise of the overall cardiovascular system. That is to say, diabetics typically have poor circulation, or poor blood delivery, especially to the extremities, which why our feet tend to drop off. Quoting off the top of my head, Parkinson’s Principles of Internal Medicine (13th–I think, edition), “Typically by the time a patient has had diabetes for 10 to 15 years, it is virtually (I’m not sure about the ‘virtually’) inevitable he or she will show some degree of retinopathy,” Of course, when you use terms like ‘virtually’ and ’some degree,’ it’s a pretty safe bet, but you get the idea. Type 1 diabetics nearly always start losing, partially or wholly, their eyesight almost from the time the condition first manifests.
What you need is something that accomplishes two tasks: Prevent the degradation of the existing blood supply to the retina, and inhibit uncontrolled vascular formation. First keep the retina healthy by maintaining the flow of blood to the cells, and second, enhance that protection by have a mechanism in place that prevents new blood vessels from growing where they shouldn’t.
A substance exists which possesses both of these properties and is easily found. Before I get into it, please cut and paste the following address into your address bar and visit this site. You need to at least glance over it, at least the discussion at the end which outlines other possible applications for this discovery. Please note the study is actually the 2nd to reach these conclusions, the 1st having been performed in the Virginia university system in the 1970s, and that the most recent researchers are all established, respected members of Spanish academic and medical circles.
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/64/16/5617
OK, looking at it, I realize it’s a little dense, but skip to the Discussion section, 2/3 of the way down, and keep in mind that ‘angiogenesis’ means the formation (genesis) of new blood vessels (angio) and you’ll quickly realize that what they’re saying is that cannabinoids, inhibit the formation of new blood vessels that carry blood to the tumor, and the tumor dies. Not just in a small percentage either. Note that the researchers point out, in the discussion, the wide range of applications this technique may have, and they’re just thinking about cancers.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about enhancing bloodflow to the retina so that revascularization isn’t necessary in the 1st place.
This is the last part of a NY Times article (see the link below for full page), mentioning, almost as an afterthought the ongoing research into the anticarcinogenic potential of cannabinoids.
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/19581/drug_war_briefs%3A_illegal_cures/
August 15- Scotland on Sunday reports: Cannabis is set to be used in the battle against deadly brain cancers that affect around 4,000 people in the UK each year, it has emerged.
Scientists have shown that cannabinoids – the active ingredients responsible for the drug’s ‘high’ – hold back the growth of blood vessels which feed tumors.
Tumors of the brain and the central nervous system kill about 340 Scots each year, and many more undergo extensive surgery in a bid to save their lives.
The cannabis findings hold out hope for brain tumor sufferers that they could live longer and be treated using less invasive techniques. The new research, which was conducted by scientists at Complutense University in Madrid, saw cannabinoids injected into mice with gliomas, which are fast-growing brain tumors.
The cannabinoids appear to block genes making a protein called VEGF ( vascular endothelial growth factor ) that stimulates the sprouting of blood vessels. Cutting off the blood supply to a tumor makes it unable to grow and spread.
In studies, cannabinoids significantly reduced the activity of VEGF in laboratory mice. They also lowered VEGF levels in tumor tissue samples taken from two patients with glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal type of brain tumor.
About 4,400 new cases of brain tumor are diagnosed in the UK each year. A small percentage of these are grade four gliomas, the most aggressive and dangerous brain tumors.
