How to Lower Blood Pressure

If you’ve been watching your fat intake but ignoring your sodium intake, you could be at greater risk of having a stroke than your fat-consuming neighbor!

When a stroke occurs, blood vessels carrying oxygen and nutrients to the brain either burst or are blocked by a clot. Ischemic strokes are caused by clots that block an artery; hemorrhagic strokes are caused by ruptured blood vessels.

A high-fat diet hardens the arteries, making them more resilient to hemorrhagic strokes. A low-fat diet that is high in sodium leaves your arteries vulnerable. Don’t feel you now have license to go out and eat a hamburger and fries, however; eliminating saturated fats and reducing sodium are both necessary to lower your risk of cardiovascular disease.

On a high-sodium diet, blood pressure can remain normal for years and then rise seemingly overnight due to excessive stimulation of the nervous system. Alternately, you may live with hypertension for many years and be unaware of the problem. Your heart, brain and kidneys can cope with hypertension for a long time but eventually stroke, heart attack and heart or kidney failure may ensue. Heart attack risk increases exponentially when other risk factors such as obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes and smoking are also present.

Contrary to popular belief, blood pressure should not rise with age. Blood pressures considered healthy for children in the U.S. (80/50 to 110/60) are common among adults in indigenous tribes who do not consume sodium. In most cases, the lower your blood pressure the better, as long as you don’t experience symptoms such as lightheadedness or fainting. Ideally, your blood pressure should be lower than 120/80.

If you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, take steps now to correct the problem. Reduce your sodium intake; aim to consume less than 1000 mg per day, especially if you have high or borderline high blood pressure or a family history of hypertension. One study demonstrated that reducing sodium intake even to 2,400 mg per day had twice the lowering effect of 45 minutes per day of aerobic exercise! Sometimes, however, blood pressure reduction from a low-sodium diet may take as much as a few years to be fully achieved.

A simple guideline is to avoid packaged foods with more than 1 mg of sodium per calorie per serving. For example, if a food has 200 calories per serving, it should have less than 200 mg of sodium. Another helpful tip: Rinsing canned beans eliminates a significant amount of their sodium content.

Many people now consume sea salt thinking it is somehow healthier than regular table salt. But salt affects the body exactly the same whether it comes from table salt, the sea, or Mars!

Other key steps for lowering blood pressure are to drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water every day and reduce the amount of saturated fat (found primarily in animal products) in your diet. Include plenty of healthy fats such as omega-3 fatty acids. These are found in nuts, seeds and fish. Walnuts and flaxseed are particularly good non-animal sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

If you are overweight, strive to achieve your ideal body weight, defined as a body mass index of less than 25. (A bodybuilder with higher-than-normal muscle mass would have a higher BMI.) Calculate your BMI with the following formula:

Weight in pounds x 703

Height in inches, squared

Another way to assess ideal weight is to measure your waist size. Measured around the belly button with the abdomen relaxed, a man’s waist size should be no larger than 35 inches and a woman’s should be no larger than 32 inches.

Finally, exercise! If you do not currently have an exercise routine, implement one. Find an activity you enjoy—such as walking, aerobics, biking or swimming—and participate in it regularly. Start with whatever amount you are able to do. Each week add one day until you are exercising six days per week, then add five minutes to your time until you are exercising for 45 minutes six times per week.

Nearly one in three American adults has hypertension, or high blood pressure, and probably one-third of them don’t know it. With no symptoms, hypertension is called “the silent killer.” Check yours today!

Note: 1 tsp table salt = 2000 mg sodium