Introduction
Do you have high blood pressure or hypertension? Well if you do there is a diet that has been proven to lower your hypertension in two weeks! This diet is known as the DASH diet or Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. One of the items it stresses to reduce your blood pressure is to reduce the amount of salt or sodium you have in your diet.
What Is Hypertension
Hypertension is elevated blood pressure. Normal pressure should be less than 120/80 mmHG. If it is between 120/80 mmHG and 139/89 mmHG you are considered to have prehypertension. Above that it is considered hypertension
What Is The DASH Diet
The DASH Diet emphasizes the reduction of salt or sodium. There are two levels of sodium that are recommended. The highest level recommended is 2,300 milligrams per day. This is the highest level that is acceptable by the National High Blood Pressure Education Program and is recommended by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 and 2010.
The DASH Diet also says that your pressure can be lowered further by reducing your sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams per day. The Institute of Medicine recommends this level as one that most people should try to reduce their level of salt intake to.
The DASH Diet not only reduces your salt intake but also requires you to increase your diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, and reduce your fat intake.
Plus you need to:
Keep your weight at a healthy level Perform physical activity on a near daily basis (work out) Have a healthy eating plan which includes lowering your salt intake Drink alcohol in moderation
Results
By following the DASH Diet for reducing your sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day or 1,500 mg per day, both resulted in people reducing their blood pressure. The highest reduction was for the group who reduced their sodium intake to 1,500 mg per day.
The results were about the same for those with high blood pressure and those with prehypertension blood pressure. But the best results were seen with those people who had hypertension, that is pressure over 140/90 mmHG.
Conclusion
The DASH Diet study does not convince me that reducing salt is the key to lowering your blood pressure. Though you do reduce salt in your diet, you also remove a lot of processed foods, exercise and keep your weight under control. By removing processed foods you improve the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3.
By keeping the ratio of Omega-6 and Omega-3 to a ratio of 2 to 1, it leads to many health benefits including lower blood pressure.
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