I have written other articles on importance of using an organic mattress, but it is equally important to use organic sheets, pillowcases and blankets on top of your bed because your bedding makes direct contact with your body for 8 hours every night. Just as using a natural mattress protects you from toxic effects of petrochemical foams and polyester in conventional mattresses, organic bedding protects you from harmful chemicals present in most commercial bedding.

I am sure you are thinking, “My current bedding is fine, it can’t harm me, especially if I would wash it and change it more often.” While I can’t help you wash and change your bed more often, you need to know that most commercially available sheets and pillowcases are made from a 50/50 blend of conventionally grown cotton and polyester, which is not safe. Let me explain why:

Cotton is a very useful fiber that has many good qualities: It is hypoallergenic, it wicks away moisture well for a nice dry feel, it is relatively soft, and it washes and dries well. But cotton is also most heavily sprayed crop on earth and 25% of world’s pesticides are used for cotton production. These pesticide residues build up in cotton as it grows, and they can be transferred directly to your bedding when it is made from non-organic cotton. Once you sleep on this contaminated cotton, pesticide residue can pass through your skin and into your body.

Medical scientists are fighting this life-threatening disease and they have gained some success. That is development of several classes of antihypertensive drugs and definition of “normal” levels of blood pressure that should be maintained to reduce risk of cardiovascular complications and death.

Is it a great success? Unfortunately not. Pharmaceutical treatment can not reverse disease. The patient with developed arterial hypertension can only hope to reduce risk of high blood pressure complications. How big is this risk reduction? Relative risk reduction is less than 25% during 2-5 years for all major cardiovascular complications. It is higher for stroke (36-45%) and less for heart attacks (10-15%). When all risks are combined, relative risk reduction is close to 25%.

Be careful and distinguish absolute and relative risk reductions. Papers and pharmaceutical ads always present relative risk reduction which is more impressive. They even do not mention that it is “relative”. That is because absolute risk reduction could be as much as 0.2-2.0%. Does not impress you, right? Let’s take a clinical trial where 0.6% and 0.96% of patients had had fatal stroke in treatment group and placebo group accordingly. Absolute risk reduction will be 0.96% - 0.60% = 0.36%, however relative risk reduction will be as much as (0.96% - 0.6%)/0.96% = 37.5%! Looks much better! Absolute risk reduction 0.36% means that from one thousand patients taking medication during 3-5 years, three or four could be saved from fatal stroke. Clinical trials don’t say what will happen with those saved patients after 5 years. Presumably, risk is postponed towards after 5 years period. Clinical trials also do not say which particular patients will be saved. It is like lottery, it could happen that 4 saved patients is just a difference between 44 saved and 40 preliminary died due to pharmaceutical side effects. Vioxx, Celebrex, Baycol are known examples.

As you see everyone has to pay for this risk reduction not only by inconvenience and cost of pharmaceuticals, but also by risk of unpleasant or life-threatening side effects. For patients with high estimated risk (more than 10% during 5 years or more than 20% during 10 years) this price is considered to be a worth-while to pay.

Estimated risk is calculated by doctor. Taking patient’s age and blood pressure level, plus presence of risk factors, such as smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, atherosclerosis and renal dysfunction, doctor can say that risk for cardiovascular complications of high blood pressure during 5, 10 or 20 years will be certain amount of chances For example, smoking woman, aged below 65, with abdominal obesity (waist more than 102cm) and blood pressure 140-179/90-109 mm Hg will have 15-20% absolute risk of all cardiovascular events at 10 years. Just add one more risk factor (diabetes or high cholesterol) and risk goes up to 30%. This is high risk and treatment is definitely required.

For patients with initial stages of hypertension and low risk balance between benefits and drawbacks of antihypertensive drugs is not established. There are three reasons for being reluctant to start taking antihypertensive drugs without having 10% estimated risk of cardiovascular complications.

Reason one: absolute risk reduction from, let’s say, 7 % to 5 % does not look sufficient to justify long-term expensive, unsafe and inconvenient treatment.

Reason two: even if we decide to operate relative instead of absolute risk reduction, we CAN NOT do this, because available clinical trials have demonstrated risk reduction for high risk patients and we can not extrapolate these results to low risk patients. Clinical trials on low risk patients were not performed and we do not know if harm of treatment overbalances benefit.