What is it? Pure and simple it’s an increase in the pressure in your arteries. Unfortunately the cause is unknown.
What’s the big deal? High blood pressure can cause -1. Atherosclerosis, or hardening of your artery walls. This can lead to stroke, heart attack, and a lot of problems with your aorta; 2. An enlarged heart. The higher your blood pressure the harder your heart has to work to push blood through the body. Your heart is a muscle, and if worked harder, it will get bigger, particularly the left ventricle. This is a problem because the bigger the muscle the more blood it needs. Some larger cells in the heart will actually rob blood from smaller cells of the heart, which kills the smaller cells, which are then replaced by fibrous tissue. So, your heart gets worked over; 3. Hypertensive Encephalopathy- i.e. it can cause strokes; 4. Retinopathy- can actually cause impaired vision and even blindness because the blood vessels in your eyes can be particularly sensitive to high blood pressure.
How to do I control it? High blood pressure treatment includes: Losing weight, exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, reducing salt in your diet, limiting alcohol consumption, avoiding tobacco, limiting caffeine, taking medication, reducing your stress, and regularly seeing your doc. We’ll write in more detail about each of these later. The cool thing about the DASH diet is that it’s a healthy diet that will help you lose weight, limits alcohol, incorporates reducing your salt intake, and encourages you to exercise regularly. It knocks 5 birds with one stone.
So let’s take the DASH! This diet was researched, written, and published by the National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They did extensive research that was incredibly promising. Many of the people that have gone on this diet have completely eliminated the need to take medication for their high blood pressure. Check out the studies below.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20305128
Here’s a quick breakdown of what you eat while on this diet followed by the diet’s nutrient goals.
Those are the basics of it. The DASH diet plan is a great way to improve your lifestyle, avoid high blood pressure foods, and eliminate the need for medication for high blood pressure. The thing I like best about this high blood pressure diet is that it is a diet you can live with permanently. It’s not a one month or three month deal, it can be a lifetime diet. Here’s a link to download the entire brochure, which I would totally recommend studying if you’re interested in making the DASH. I’ve also posted some links to the mayo clinic website that has meal ideas and goes into more details about daily servings. These are a great resources.