High Blood Pressure Diet
High blood pressure is a huge problem for many in the western world today. Maintaining healthy blood pressure and reducing high blood pressure is vital for continued good health. Diet plays a key role in both of these. So what is a good high blood pressure diet? There is a vast array of evidence to support the link between diet and blood pressure but is linking certain foods with specific health issues going too far?
A diet which is full of fresh fruit and vegetables for example a vegetarian diet is held up as being an excellent high blood pressure reducing diet whilst a diet containing high levels of saturated fat is seen as being a really bad high blood pressure diet because of the link between cholesterol and blood pressure. It all seems simple and clean cut, however this does not always follow, people who have followed the Atkins diet have also found a lowering of blood pressure.
A good high blood pressure diet is a balanced, mixed diet with everything eaten in moderation. Everyone jumps on the band wagon about the use of salt. The reality is that the body needs salt, what it cannot cope with is the high concentrations used in processed foods. Eating processed foods regularly also causes the problem of the natural balance of the minerals potassium, magnesium and sodium in the body being upset. Salt can be used in the diet as can low fat dairy products, lean cuts of meat all of which contribute to a well balanced diet.
The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet is the recommended diet for those with high blood pressure to follow. An official diet sounds as though it would be a complicated affair with more "can nots" than "cans" in it. This really is not the case, it is merely a sensible balanced diet which everyone would do well to follow in the quest for good health.
This diet is a basic low fat, low sugar diet containing lots of freshly prepared vegetables and lean meat as well as fresh fruit and low fat dairy products. It is all about getting back to basics and purchasing fresh produce and getting into the kitchen and doing some home cooking. Processed foods should be made a thing of the past and replaced with this high blood pressure diet.
If there is one area of this diet that I do disagree with it is the way in which it dictates sizes of portions and how many servings of each food group should be consumed. The way I see it, diet should work in cycles like nature we should eat food when it is in season, available locally and at its best.
To sum up there are really no hard and fast rules of what a good high blood pressure diet is. It is all about eating a sensible, varied diet with everything eaten in moderation. This simple advise should help reduce high blood pressure also promoting good health for all and also save some money by not purchasing the usually over priced "healthy" substitutes.