The Yanomami Effect: Modern Blood Pressure Management
Picture this: You're scrolling through your feed, past the usual suspects—influencers hawking miracle supplements, your neighbor's sourdough starter update, and yet another article about why sitting is the new smoking. Then you stumble across a study about a tribe in the Amazon who have cracked the code on something that has been getting worse in Western societies over time: blood pressure.
Meet the Yanomami. They live deep in the rainforests of Brazil and Venezuela, and they've been unknowingly trolling the entire wellness industry for centuries. Their blood pressure? An almost unbelievable 90/50 mmHg. At any age. No worsening with aging.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are over here, with readings of 130/90 on a good day. And that’s true for most of us who take blood pressure medication.
And here's the kicker: their lifestyle was almost identical to what I'd stumbled into during my health transformation. It was like discovering that I'd accidentally been living like an indigenous tribe while thinking I was trying to fix my cholesterol. Let me tell you how that happened.
The Plot Twist That Changed Everything
As someone with type 1 diabetes for four decades, I thought I knew a thing or two about managing my health. I was modern. I am using a Dexcom CGM that provides me with my blood sugar values every five minutes, and my Tandem insulin pump automatically adjusts the insulin delivery based on the readings from the CGM. My focus was on managing my diabetes, but not on my complete metabolic health. More about this later.
However, I soon learned about the Yanomami people, and my modern lifestyle no longer seemed so appealing. What are they doing that we forgot? What’s their secret to such low blood pressure values that don’t get worse with aging?
Here's what made me think more about it: they don't have diabetes support groups, blood pressure monitors, or even the concept of a "wellness weekend." They live with what they have, without our modern food supply chain and health standards. And their bodies respond as if they're following some ancient instruction manual that the rest of us lost somewhere between the invention of the drive-thru and the rise of binge-watching. That was the time when I started questioning our modern approach to food and health. Maybe the old way should be the new, modern way?
The Great Modern Bamboozle
Let's take a moment for a reality check. When did "modern living" become code for "sitting in traffic to get to a gym where we'll walk in place while staring at screens"? When did we stop walking and start driving everywhere?
And how about our food? Our daily menu reads like a chemistry experiment: sodium levels that would make the Dead Sea jealous, more sugar than a candy store, and enough preservatives to keep us fresh until the next ice age. When did it become normal to eat bread for three months before it goes bad? When did we stop eating fresh food? And when did we start hating cooking and ordering everything from chains?
The Yanomami, on the other hand, eat what grows around them, walk because that's how you get places, and have never once worried about whether their banana has too many carbs. Rebels, without knowing it, and I wanted to know more about what they do.
When Technology Meets Biology: My Diabetes Was Crushing It
Let me paint you a picture of my diabetes management setup. I mentioned it before, but here's a quick reminder: I'm wearing a Dexcom CGM that monitors my blood sugar every 5 minutes, like an overprotective parent, and a Tandem insulin pump that receives those readings and automatically adjusts my insulin dose. It's like having a tiny pancreas-robot hybrid living on my body. When I switched to this approach in 2020, it changed my (diabetes) life.
And honestly? It has been working beautifully. My average blood sugar was sitting pretty at 119 mg/dL, and my A1c was a gorgeous 6.0%—numbers that would make any endocrinologist do a little happy dance. My doctor visits were usually five minutes because the values were so good and also stable.
I was so busy patting myself on the back for my glucose management skills that I completely forgot something rather important: my body has other systems at work. And boy, those other systems hit back with a vengeance after being neglected for some time.
The Wake-Up Call: When Good Glucose Isn't Enough
Turns out, while I was obsessing over my blood sugar like it was the only health metric that mattered, my blood pressure and cholesterol were having their little rebellion party. And they hadn't invited me. I took medication for both and needed to increase them over time because of worsening values. No problem, right? As long as the medication “solves” everything. Surprise, surprise: They don’t solve anything; they cover up the underlying issue of a lifestyle that works against metabolic health.
High blood pressure with diabetes isn't just an inconvenience—it's like adding rocket fuel to a fire. Every diabetes complication you've ever worried about gets an upgrade: heart disease with a side of stroke risk, kidney damage with express delivery, and vision problems that come with a lifetime warranty you definitely don't want. It's like having two troublemakers in your body who've decided to team up and cause maximum chaos.
And let’s not forget the side effects of those medications. Statins, which many doctors prescribe to improve the bad LDL cholesterol and improve the overall cholesterol, have a long list of side effects, including muscle pain. The higher the dose, the more side effects there are. Blood pressure medication also helps, and in many cases, the doctor combines two different types of medication to approach hypertension from different angles. The results are a long list of drugs with increasing doses. In short, a modern life.
The Protocol That Changed Everything
So there I was, diabetic tech wizard with perfect glucose control and the cardiovascular health of someone who'd been living on drive-thru meals and Netflix marathons. Something had to change, and I was determined to change whatever I could in my lifestyle and reduce my medication over time. My goal in the end was to get off the medication.
Initially, I believed the standard message that it would take a very long time before I saw improvement. As you can read later, this is not true at all.
After researching various lifestyle changes for improved cholesterol and blood pressure management, I decided to experiment. Not with some trendy diet or expensive supplement, but with going back to basics—the kind of eating our great-grandparents would recognize as actual food.
Here's what I did, and yes, I tracked everything because I'm that kind of nerd. More about my tracking tools in another blog post.
The Great Food Elimination:
Said goodbye to red meat and processed meats (steaks, ribs, bacon, and sausages). I love eating steak, but there is so much evidence from studies that shows that red meat is bad for your metabolic health. That was a tough change, but I wanted to see what it does.
Broke up with high-saturated-fat dairy.
Eliminated all added sugars, which are often hidden in many products. It’s sometimes not so easy to find them, but they are there. Luckily, I was already skilled at doing this due to my diabetes management.
Avoided anything that came in a package. Processed foods are, simply, bad for our health. I didn’t have to search long to find that.
The New Food Romance:
Fell in love with fatty fish like salmon, trout, and other fish. There is a big variety of fish, and you can prepare them in different ways. It’s delicious when you start digging into this.
Embraced lean proteins like skinless chicken. I already liked chicken, so no big change there.
Made vegetables the star of every meal, not the reluctant side character. The important thing is to keep a variety of different vegetables. “Eat the rainbow” is the best approach with vegetables of different colors.
Ate 1-2 avocados daily (my grocery bill was not thrilled), but they help tremendously to bring up the daily fiber and have healthy fats.
Snacked on healthy nuts—walnuts and pumpkin seeds became my new best friends.
Swapped refined flour for whole grains.
Discovered that mushrooms and boiled potatoes could be exciting when you know how to prepare them in different ways.
The Movement Revolution and Mindfulness:
Walked at least 10,000 steps daily (no, grocery store trips don't count). Before, I had around 3,000 steps daily, because I work in an office. The switch was difficult, but I successfully implemented short breaks of 10-15 minutes during the day to take little walks.
Made physical activity as non-negotiable as insulin. My ideal time is in the morning before I go to work, and I hit the gym at least five times a week.
Practiced 30 minutes of mindfulness daily (because high stress levels were not helping). It was already part of my diabetes management, but I focused more on overall health-supporting, guided meditations than diabetes-centered approaches.
The Daily Target Values:
Consumed at least 30g of fiber per day (your digestive system will thank you)
Limited sodium to 1,500mg/day (goodbye, flavor packets). This has a significant impact on blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Once you start looking at sodium values on the food packaging, you’ll notice how much is in processed food. I was shocked to discover that.
Kept saturated fat under 15g/day. This is another big issue in our modern way of living. All the additives in highly processed food contain a high amount of saturated fat, which is detrimental to our metabolic health.
The results? Almost Unbelievable
My blood pressure dropped like it had been waiting for permission. My cholesterol numbers improved so dramatically that my doctor asked what I'd been doing. And the best part? I felt like I'd remembered how to be human again.
After only a few months of my new approach, here are the numbers as of today (end of June 2025):
I reduced my cholesterol medication by 75% and had an LDL of 59 and a total cholesterol of 140 in my last blood draw. I expect to get off the medication in the next couple of months.
My blood pressure has reduced significantly. I reduced my blood pressure medication by 90%, and I still sometimes have a low blood pressure of 100/60. I probably can get off it soon.
My A1c, which measures the diabetes management over the last three months, further reduced to 5.8, which is at a low level of pre-diabetes (5.7 - 6.4).
And all of this occurred over a remarkably short period of just three months. Can you imagine what you can achieve if you do this for six months, a year, or the rest of your life?
The Plot Twist: I'd Accidentally Gone Yanomami
Recently, while I continued researching natural approaches to blood pressure management, I stumbled across something that made me laugh out loud. There's this tribe in the Amazon called the Yanomami, and their approach to eating and living was almost identical to what I'd stumbled into.
The Yanomami have never set foot in a grocery store. They eat what the rainforest provides: fresh fish, wild game, fruits, vegetables, and nuts—zero processing, zero preservatives, zero ingredients they can't pronounce. Their sodium intake is naturally low because salt isn't hidden in every meal, as if it were playing an elaborate game of hide and seek. Saturated fats are minimal since the protein comes from lean sources, such as fish and wild game, rather than factory-farmed meat that is often high in fat. Movement isn't something they schedule between Netflix episodes—it's woven into everyday life as they walk miles through the forest, hunt, gather, and simply live. They've accidentally created the perfect metabolic lifestyle without a single wellness influencer telling them how to do it.
And you know what? Many elements of my new approach, as described above, share these characteristics. Without knowing it, I had gone Yunamami.
The Science Catches Up:
DASH Diet Validation
Then I discovered the DASH diet—the scientifically backed, doctor-approved, clinically proven approach to lowering blood pressure.
The DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) is the result of scientists reverse-engineering the perfect blood pressure-lowering eating plan. It's heavy on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and lean proteins, while keeping sodium, red meat, and sweets on the naughty list. Think of it as the responsible older sibling of diet plans—it works, it's backed by decades of research, and it's got the approval of every major medical organization.
The only catch? Not many people follow it, and, to be honest, I only discovered it while researching the topic. I was previously unaware of it. It’s not a diet everyone is talking about.
Still, when it comes to actually lowering blood pressure, the DASH diet delivers results like a Swiss watch—predictable, reliable, and somewhat unexciting in its effectiveness.
As I read through the guidelines, I had one of those wait a minute moments. Everything I'd been doing intuitively was right there in the research. The vegetables-as-main-course approach? Check. The fatty fish obsession? Check. The Whole Grain Revolution and the Sodium Rebellion? Check and check.
It turns out I'd accidentally recreated a diet that has been proven to work. I partly reinvented the wheel because I learned about it only later in my research. My approach extends beyond the DASH diet, but many of its elements mirror the approach.
The Real Modern Revolution
My aha moment and the lesson learned from my last three months is that a modern approach to managing blood pressure and other elements of metabolic health is to forget what society has developed into and get back to the roots: More movement, eating fresh food that you make in the kitchen, and be mindful for better stress management.
The Yanomami have been living this way for centuries. Maybe it's time the rest of us caught up.
