(Care2.com) — It’s important to understand that uncontrolled high blood pressure is a very serious health concern that can lead to heart disease and increases your risk of having a stroke.
The good news though is that following a healthy nutrition plan, along with exercising and implementing effective stress reduction techniques will normalize blood pressure in most people.
So please review the guidelines below, and look through the related article links at the end to learn more if you or someone you know is affected by high blood pressure. It’s actually an easily treated condition, but one that can cause serious damage to your health if it’s ignored.
Your Diet Will Raise or Lower Your Blood Pressure
Are you on a high grain, low fat regimen? If so, I have bad news for you, because this nutritional combination is a prescription for hypertension and can absolutely devastate your health.
Groundbreaking research published in 1998 in the journal Diabetes reported that nearly two-thirds of the test subjects who were insulin resistant (IR) also had high blood pressure, and insulin resistance is directly attributable to a high sugar, high grain diet along with insufficient amounts of exercise.
So, chances are that if you have hypertension, you also have poorly controlled blood sugar levels because these two problems often go hand in hand. As your insulin level elevates, so does your blood pressure.
As explained by Dr. Rosedale, insulin stores magnesium, but if your insulin receptors are blunted and your cells grow resistant to insulin, you can’t store magnesium so it passes out of your body through urination. Magnesium stored in your cells relaxes muscles.
(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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You need to be clearer on what you mean by high grain and low fat. This disagrees with the more recent findings of Dr. Neal Bernard where is uses a diet with no animal products, very low vegetable oils and high in fruit, grains and other elements of a vegan diet. I have had uncontrolled blood pressure and sugar for years. BP and BS meds do not help and neither did supplements recommended by Dr Williams and Whittaker. I started Dr. Bernerd’s diet and my sugar dropped 50 points from the normal 220 to 176 in a few weeks, the first consistent readings under 200 in years. Metformin does nothing to help sugar at 2000 mg but the diet really did, and fast!!! The grains I eat are complex, rolled oats and barley, etc., rather than highly processed such as read, bagtles, etc. So you need to be more specific. Your paper does not tell us what diet we should use but concentrates more of some things to avoid and supplements to take. The American diet is killing all that use it. People in areas such as Italy and Greece, Japan that are accustomed to a diet of rice and flour plus veggies ans small amounts and meat doe not have the same problems with blood pressure and diabetes as Americans. Isn’t it time for a change?
Mercola advocates a heavy meat based and fish based diet which is not the best for health. He makes tons of money selling supplements; things like vitamin D spray.
Dr Mercola is ONE doctor I would trust. No I am not his father! He is a naturalist! Not a pill pusher owned by the drug companies. Yes he sells good quality products, but you can get them other places just as well. God Bless you for being there for us Dr Mercola!!
I’ll stick with Dr. Bernard. What GBS describes is obviously the way to go. I’ve maintained a diet close to that suggested by Dr. Bernard for years and have all but eliminated the need for HBP meds, in about two weeks I’ll be totally free of them. I recently had my yearly exam and blood work and I’m happy to say everything is super!
It doesn’t sound as though Dr. Mercola is interested in good health, rather a fat wallet.
What about potassium supplements? One of the most common drugs prescribed for mild hypertension, HCT, is a high dose of potassium. I had a reading of 145/80 in my doctor’s office and the doctor immediately prescribed HCT. One HCT precaution is to avoid all foods containing potassium such as, my favorites, spinach, greens, tomatoes, potatoes, and mushrooms. I eat a spinach, mushroom, and tomato salad at least once a week. Add white onions and allowing the salad to sit overnight causes the juices to meld. Hence, no salad dressing needed. Just toss and eat. This is comfort food for me. The precaution warned that eating these foods would cause my blood pressure to drop to dangerous levels and increase the chances of side affects.
I took one pill(12.25 mg) and could not function for two days. I felt like I was on a rocking boat. I could not drive to work, sit, sleep, eat due to nausea, or walk without bracing myself against the wall. The increased urine and bowel output was phenominal. I reported the side affects to my doctor and was told to keep taking the medication and that I would be on it the rest of my life. That was about 10 years ago. I never took another HCT pill.
I went to another doctor who recommended dietary changes (low to no sodium), whole foods, and increased exercise. I take potassium supplements and continue my meals containing food high in potassium. So far, so good.
I would like to hear other opinions.
The potassium-sodium ratio in your diet is the key to normal blood pressure. Given typical American sodium intakes your potassium intake should be around 4500mg to 5000mg per day. Most food contains potassium including grains, meats, vegetables and fruits. A serving of most foods contains around 250mg of potassium. Using this rough estimate, to get 4500-5000mg of potassium you have to eat around 18- 20 servings of foods with potassium each day. A serving of pasta will provide 300 calories with its 250mg of postassium, while two cups of romaine lettuce will provide only 17 calories for 250mg of potassium. Obviously you cannot get your 4500mg of potassium with pasta or you would be consuming 5400 calories. Using our romaine lettuce example, if all your calories came from Romaine lettuce and you consumed the typical 2000 calories per day you would get 29,411mg of potassium. The reason a vegan diet lowers blood pressure is that people on this diet eat far more servings of vegetables and therefore get far more potassium. So the key is to eat more low calorie, high potassium foods, primarily vegetables. There are some potassium super-foods, two examples being romaine lettuce, and coconut water. I maintain my blood pressure in the 115/75 range (down from 140/90) by eating two servings of meat, fish, or eggs per day and the rest fruits and vegetables. My breakfast is a super-potassium smoothy made up of one banana, 11 oz. of coconut water and the juice of one lemon. It tastes great has about 200 calories and contains about 1200mg of potassium. You can find the potassium content (and other nutrient content) of virtually all food on this government website, http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/