How to Lower High Blood Pressure Naturally

High blood pressure can sneak up on you. It affects 50 million Americans and is nothing to take lightly. High blood pressure can cause kidney damage, stroke, and heart attacks. There are some simple and natural ways to lower your high blood pressure. Just a simple change in diet could help you eliminate all medications. The best time to lower high blood pressure is before your doctor tells you that you have to.

What Is High Pressure

High blood pressure (Hypertension) is defined when the top number (systolic) is at or above 140 and the bottom number (diastolic) is 90 or greater. So, if you took your blood pressure and it read 140 over 90 or above, you would be considered as having high blood pressure.

Systolic pressure is the pressure in the vessels when the heart contracts and the diastolic pressure of the blood between heartbeats when the heart is at rest. Normal is 120/80 and very good is 110/70.

The American Heart Organization recently lowered the numbers that are considered as high blood pressure.The Stages of high blood pressure are:

• Normal: 120/80 or lower
• Elevated: 120-129 and less than 80
• Stage 1 high blood pressure: 130-139/80-89
• Stage 2 high blood pressure: 140 or higher/90 or higher
• Call a doctor immediately if systolic (upper number) is higher than 180 and or the diastolic (lower number) is higher than 120.

Once again studies and doctors opinions are confusing us. Articles that say caffeine doesn’t raise blood pressure. If you drink a lot of coffee and check your blood pressure, you can see just how high it can rise.

For a long time, it was said too much salt caused high blood pressure, recently the medical community told us salt wasn’t the cause. And now they are back to telling us salt is a cause of high blood pressure. 

Maybe one cause of high blood pressure is all of these studies and medical groups constantly changing their story.

According to the American Heart Association, in 95% of high blood pressure cases, the cause is not known. This is called essential hypertension. Then they then go on to say that diet is most likely the cause. The known factors of high blood pressure are:

• Being overweight or obese
• Lack of physical activity
• Too much alcohol
• Too much salt in the diet
• A diet high in animal foods, cholesterol, and fat
• Stress
• Genetics and family history of high blood pressure
• Adrenal or thyroid disease
• Chronic kidney disease
• Smoking
• Insufficient intake of potassium, magnesium, and calcium
• Use of birth control pills
• Certain drugs like amphetamines in diet pills and some cold and allergy medicines

How to Lower High Blood Pressure

A change in diet is the most important change you can do for yourself if you have high blood pressure. 

Today it is easier to just go to the doctor and get a prescription for one of the many drugs that lower the blood pressure while the patient continues to eat a diet that causes the high blood pressure, to begin with, relying on the expensive drugs with odd side effects.

Almost all peer-reviewed studies today state that changing to a plant-based diet or vegetarian diet, without any animal foods including dairy products is the best and most effective diet to lower blood pressure and reverse heart disease.

Eliminating all vegetable oils from your diet show even better results with losing weight, reversing heart disease and lowering blood pressure.

You don't have to become a strict vegetarian to lower your high blood pressure. There are diets like the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) and the Mediterranean diet that are healthy and can lower your blood pressure.

Saturated fat in the diet is a cause of high blood pressure. The fat causes fatty deposits in the arteries and blood vessels and can partially clog them. This narrows them since they are narrower than normal, the heart pumps harder and this is one of the ways diet causes high blood pressure.

Limit the amount of meat you eat because it is high in saturated fat. If you continue to eat lean meat, eat organic or grass-fed beef, which is also higher in nutrients than the normal feedlot type of beef. Do not eat smoked, cured or processed meats like bologna, hot dogs or smoked meats.

Sodium. There is sodium in all food, especially processed food. For example, look at a small can of condensed soup. A 10.5-ounce (298 g) can of Campbell’s French onion soup with beef stock has 900 mg (milligrams) of sodium per serving. But you have to look at the serving size.

This can shows that there are 2 ½ servings per can. Most people will eat the whole can of soup, which is only one normal size bowel. Multiple 900 mg by 2.5 and you have a whopping 2,250 mg of sodium.

The daily RDA for sodium is at most 2,400 mg. And this one can of soup has almost the entire daily amount. The average American eats 4,000 – 5,000 mg of sodium per day.

Limit the processed foods and processed meat you eat and don’t add salt to any of your meals. Always look at the sodium amount on the package and the serving size. I think you will be surprised at just how much sodium is in these packaged foods.

Potassium, magnesium, and calcium; More studies are showing that these nutrients are important for keeping blood pressure normal. Eat more foods containing these nutrients. You need to get your potassium from food and we need at least 3,500 mg per day. For adults, the RDA for magnesium is 300 – 400 mg per day. For calcium, the required daily amount is 1,000 mg.

A plant-based diet or a vegetarian diet will certainly lower your high blood pressure to the point you will most likely be taken off of your blood pressure medication. 

 

Eat plant foods like beans, legumes, whole grains, brown rice, vegetables, and fruits. These foods can lower your blood pressure. A high fiber diet is a great way to lower high blood pressure. 

 

A diet that is high in starch, complex carbs and low in fat will lower your blood pressure. These healthy diets are so effective, your doctor will most likely be able to take you off of your blood pressure medications.

Nitric oxide foods. Eating foods that boost nitric oxide in your body can help lower your blood pressure. 

 

This is because nitric oxide foods help with normal vasodilation or the opening up of the blood vessels. This helps the blood flow more easily through your body, which lowers your blood pressure. 

 

The best foods to boost the nitric oxide are beets and beet leaves, arugula, celery, kale, garlic, broccoli, Swiss chard, and cabbage.

Limit alcohol to one drink per day, that’s one beer or one glass of wine. Some people are more sensitive to alcohol and their blood pressure can rise with any alcohol. If you feel your blood pressure rise with just one drink, you shouldn’t drink any alcohol.

Limit caffeine since it can raise blood pressure. All you have to do is drink too much coffee and feel dizzy or your heart beating faster. Limit your coffee to a couple of cups per day or switch to tea. Tea is healthy and there are many teas to choose from.

Limit sugars. Studies are showing that sugar raises blood pressure. It is thought that this happens because sugar stimulates the adrenal glands. New studies show that high fructose corn syrup in soda and many other products is another cause high blood pressure.

Stress is a cause of high blood pressure and exercise will help relieve stress. There are some great natural remedies to relieve stress. 

 

Exercise is also a good stress reliever like walking around the block a couple of times, riding a stationary bike to get started or yoga and tai chi. Get a set of dumbbells. There are many great exercise you can do at home with even just one dumbbell.

 

You should talk to your doctor before starting an exercise program.

Losing weight is, of course, an obvious way to lower high blood pressure. And a change to a healthier diet is a great start to losing weight. With a change in diet and lifestyle, you will be able to lose weight by eating healthy foods.

Meditation has been shown to reduce stress and high blood pressure. Meditation takes practice, but once you get the hang of it, it will make you feel much better.

Quitting cigarette smoking is another way to lower your blood pressure. Since the chemicals in cigarette smoke reduces the oxygen to the blood and inhibits smooth blood flow, quitting smoking will help.

Blood Pressure Medication

 

If you have stage 2 high blood pressure, your doctor might want to put you on medication to lower your blood pressure. If you combine an exercise program with a change in diet, you might not have to be on the medication very long.

About the Author

Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Copyright © 2009-2019 Sam Montana