These days, everyone is an expert. Thanks to totale-transformation.de for giving a great example of what I always say that you have to take the qualifications and the motivations of the person giving advice before knowing whether to give it weight or not. Nowhere is this more true than in fitness and weight loss. Someone who is morbidly obese loses weight and suddenly they are an expert on EVERYTHING – fat loss, health, bodybuilding, and even medicine.
This German guy (totale-transformation.de ) would reply with dangerous misinformation on my facebook posts and I just politely hid them rather than blocking him figuring it was a language barrier causing the issue. Today I finally looked at his page and found he has an incurable case of expert-itis. He lost weight once and paid $175 for a trademark application and now he thinks he is an expert on everything and also qualified to give medical advice over the internet.
So I made this post on facebook about a blood pressure and caffeine experiment I was going to do over the next 14 days.
His response was …
“117 is not too high. 90 is rather too low”. Well, wrong and wrong. This is exactly the kind of dangerous misinformation that caused me to block this guy. The pre-hypertension range starts at 121 and 117 is right on the fringe. On the other hand, the low end of normal for systolic blood pressure is 80 so 90 is well in the normal range. Don’t forget that heart disease, of which high blood pressure plays a huge role, is one of the leading causes of death in America. In comparison, low blood pressure is rare and easily treatable. If I could choose a blood pressure for optimal health, there is no question at all that I would choose 92/66 (my pre-coffee blood pressure) rather than 119/67 (my post coffee blood pressure). The problem with this “expert” is that he read in “Bild” (a German tabloid) that 120/80 “good” but this is not the case. 120/80 might be “good” considering that nearly everyone has high blood pressure these days from stress, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise but that does not mean its great. Lets not forget that he says that in Red Bull “the taurine is rather calming on the nerves”, LOL, perhaps Red Bull needs to ditch the slogan that “Red Bull give you wings” and change it to “Red Bull calms the nerves!” :)
Please, save me from the “experts!”. This is a perfect example of what I talk about in this video which is when you read or hear advice from an “expert” ask yourself what their qualifications are and what their motivations are in giving you advice so that you know how to interpret what they are telling you.
This is also a great reminder to get a yearly checkup from your primary care physician who you can discuss issues like this with rather than listening to self proclaimed internet “experts”. Lowering blood pressure is critical for most Americans and requires a total lifestyle transformation. Daily exercise, clean nutrition like the free mealplans at custommealplanner.com suggest, and most important STRESS MANAGEMENT. Lowering stress starts with lowering your monthly expenditures. Please read this as a great start for stress management.