A 50-year-old woman suffered a minor stroke recently after a failed attempt to lower her high blood pressure using banana peels.
According to Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital cardiologist Chiu Chiung-zuan (邱俊仁), the patient, surnamed Lin (林), was diagnosed with high blood pressure six months ago, but her fear of long-term dependency on medications prompted her to search for folk remedies on the Internet.
“Lin read that consuming banana peels can help to lower blood pressure and began eating them half a year ago. However, due to a lack of proper medication, recent temperature changes caused her blood pressure to fluctuate dramatically and eventually led to a minor stroke,” Chiu said.
Chiu said he has noticed a gradual increase in the number of people who seek professional medical assistance only after folk remedies prove ineffective.
The trend is alarming, Chiu said, citing an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in June last year, which showed that people with poorly managed high blood pressure face a 70 percent greater risk of suffering a stroke.
The Internet is saturated with an array of alleged remedies believed to be helpful in reducing blood pressure, such as washing one’s feet with baking soda, drinking red wine soaked with onion and eating vinegar-marinated peanuts.
According to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the incidence rate of high blood pressure is 29.7 percent among Taiwanese aged 40 and older, but only two-thirds of patients with hypertension seek treatment.
A guidebook published by the Taiwan Society of Cardiology and the Taiwan Hypertension Society on the management of high blood pressure last year advises people with two consecutive blood pressure readings of above 140/90 millimeters of mercury — which qualifies as hypertension — to seek medical attention, carry out dietary control and exercise regularly.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching