High Blood Pressure Be Gone

Posts Tagged ‘diets to control high blood pressure’

How I lowered blood pressure without drugs

It’s been just over 5 months since I dispensed with high blood pressure medications (that weren’t working and had unpleasant side effects) and began exploring alternative cures.

Yesterday was a big milestone. For the first time ever my blood pressure was monitored below the much slated ideal of 120/80. After doing a slow breathing exercise for 15 minutes it came in as 116/79.

Of course I was suspicious at first as because my blood pressure is usually in the 125-135 / 85-95 range. Given that my parents both suffered from high blood pressure and my higher blood pressure is most likely ‘in the genes’. So I figured that’s about as good as it’ll get for me. So I took the reading again at it this time it came in at 111/ 76 – amazing!

Amazing when you consider I was consistently 190+/120+ only five months before, plagued by headaches, heart palpitations, and the end of my life seemed to be approaching rapidly. You could say I’ve come a long way.

So what’s the secret to my new found health and ‘normal’ blood pressure? Two things – Diet and Exercise.

Exercise includes:

1. A 30 minute walk up the hill behind my house that gets my lungs and hearts working two or three time a week
2. Taking 15 minutes off for a slow breathing exercise (assisted by BreathEasy audio tracks)

Diet includes:

1. Drinking water more often (I prefer it carbonated)
2. Having a bowl of oatmeal every morning
3. Supplementing my daily diet with 500mg Vitamin C, multi vitamin (including 100mg Magnesium), 600mg Calcium, Cod Liver Oil capsules (Omega 3), 60mg Ginkgo Biloba, 160mg Korean Ginseng, 30 drops of Hawthorn tincture
4. Virtually eliminating processed foods now sticking with the basics.
5. Apples, bananas, celery, onions, garlic, tomatoes, (among other things of course).
6. Cayenne powder, apple cider vinegar, and only the best extra vigin olive oil.
7. Reduction in the amount of salt I consume. I now use the Celtic Sea Salt (Sel de Gurerande) naturally harvested from the coast of Brittanny, France (as they have done it for centuries)
8. Less red meat, more chicken and fish (but not the skin)
9. Red wine and dark chocolate everyday … and more nuts.

In a nutshell that’s about it. I now live a much healthier, relaxed and trouble free life with optimal blood pressure as well. It’s more than I would have imagined 5 months ago but now there’s no turning back. My final curtains have receded well off into the distant future.

How did I know what to do and eat to lower my dangerously high blood pressure? I did a lot of research and reading but the two indispensable helpers was Kevin Riley’s Guide Get Natural! Drop your Blood Pressure and BreathEasy.

Kevin Riley’s Get Natural! is the most informative (and enjoyable to read) guide on lowering blood pressure naturally without the use of medication. It really is top of the ‘lower your blood pressure advice’ mountain in my opinion.

BreathEasy audio tracks are also a great way to take 15 minutes off everyday and completely relax and calm down. I’m sure this is good for your whole-self, not just heart and blood pressure.

Well that’s what has worked for me. Please leave a comment and tell us what’s worked for you.

Carrying on the theme of eating yourself to lower blood pressure, I should mention that I like to eat salad regularly – sometimes as a meal in its own right.

What’s different about the salads I make and how do they help keep my blood pressure down?

First of all I like to add a small tin of tuna to my salad. Not only does this ‘bulk it out’ and make it more of a meal but fish contains essential oils good for your  circulatory system. (Fish is one of the leanest source of protein and also contains omega-3 fatty acids, which have a positive effect on the blood system. In short, fish fights hypertension (and tastes great).

I buy the tuna in brine but drain it before drowning heaps of extra virgin olive oil, a decent wallop of apple cider vinegar, crushed garlics, and liberal sprinkles of cayenne pepper. This then forms a fantastic tasting salad dressing and every ingredient helps keep the blood pressure get down and stay down.

How so?

Garlic both prevents and cures atherosclerosis (hardening of your arteries). It not only slows the build up of dangerous plaque on the walls of your arteries it can even reverse the process.

Olive oil has a beneficial mix of polyphenols, tocopherols, and oleic acid … all good
allies in the fight against hypertension. Eating garlic can make your arteries young again. (Get the cold-pressed extra virgin stuff as it contains the most benefits – and tastes better).

Both cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar have been long noted for their beneficial properties to cure all sorts of ailments – including hypertension. As a strong tonic for for high blood pressure some people will drink a glass of water everyday with a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and cayenne pepper added. (I’m not quite ready for that one!)

Make sure you have some celery, tomatoes and onions in your salad. Both these vegetables  provide a boost to your blood system and help lower your blood pressure.

There’s a flavonoid in celery called apigenin that dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure. Celery also contains a unique chemical called 3-n-butyl phthalide which has been singled out as the main compound that lowers blood pressure.

Tomatoes contain an antioxidant is called lycopene which helps in the prevention of heart disease and some types of cancer – as well as lower blood pressure.

Onions contain a flavonoid called quercetin – a strong antioxidant. Quercetin lowers blood pressure, slow heart rate, and improves the inner lining of arteries.

So there you have it. Here’s a run down of all the blood pressure lowering foods I ad to every salad I eat:

fish, garlic, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, onions, tomatoes, and celery.

Of course I add other things like lettuce, peppers, olives, cucumber, etc., and they all taste great and are good for you … but its the upper list that will actively work to lower your blood pressure and keep it low.

Got any great blood pressure lowering recipes? Send them this way!

Good eating folks.

It has been documented that the French nation enjoy better health all around and lower rates of high blood pressure and coronary disease than most other nations. This is partly due to diet and their habit of drinking red wine on a daily basis.

Red wine contains an antioxidant called resveratrol. Like other antioxidants resveratrol helps prevent hardening of the arteries and your blood platelets from clumping together.

Blood platelets are those things that enables your blood to clot – which is important if you cut yourself. But clots forming inside your circulatory system is not healthy and is the prime cause of strokes.

In other words red wine helps keep your blood system in good health and your blood pressure down.

In case you wondered, resveratrol isn’t just found in red wine. It comes from the skin of the grapes. You can get resveratrol simply from drinking grape juice but resveratrol isn’t water soluble. The alcohol in in wine extracts the resveratrol more efficiently and assists the absorption of it into your body.

So have a glass or two every day! Get the darker red wine for maximum resveratrol content. Say a merlot, cabernet, zinfandel, shiraz, or pinot noir.

I have to admit that before learning of the beneficial qualities of red wine I was not a big drinker of wine. Now I buy a bottle or two a week and have learned a few lessons on buying wine.

First, don’t be fooled by price alone. Expensive wine is not necessarily the best wine and cheap red wine is not necessarily the worst. On the contrary, some of the cheaper red wines seem to have the most pleasant taste.

On a  TV program this spring wine tasting experts had to taste and rank various popular red wines on the market – blind (they weren’t allowed to see what brand of wine they were tasting). They all agreed on the best tasting wine. And it turned out to be one of the cheapest! So much for price as an indication of quality!

To get a great tasting red wine I would suggest you experiment with various types. Make a list of what you drink – the good, bad and ugly – so you know what to pick and what to avoid.

If red wine really isn’t “your cup of tea”, you can get resveratrol supplements. They have become very popular lately in the USA as part of an anti-aging and weight-loss system being highlighted on TV shows like Oprah.

For UK-based people,

In the USA,

The best way to lower your blood pressure and get your body back in balance is through diet and exercise. It’s really as simple as that.

The worst way, in my opinion, is also the most common – taking prescription medication to artificially lower your blood pressure while not changing the factors that led to high blood pressure in the first place.

So what causes high blood pressure?

Some people might object saying that high blood pressure is caused by genetic factors outside if their control.

I would agree that a lot of blood pressure problems can be ascribed to genetic factors. But that’s not the same as saying there is nothing can be done about it – or saying  prescription medication is the only solution.

Some people, like myself, seem to be genetically predisposed to high blood pressure. It runs in my family apparently. My mother had high blood pressure and my father who is still alive regularly takes half a dozen pills a day for this and that including high blood pressure.

I have taken another path. Instead of resigning myself to a lifetime on pills I have made an effort to re-regulate my blood pressure through diet and exercise.

What is considered high blood pressure / hypertension?

The old rule of thumb was 100 plus your age was an acceptable blood pressure given that it was accepted that blood pressure naturally rises with age. The new regime says that everyone should be at or below 120/80. This has been a great boon to international pharmaceutical corporations given that virtually everyone above the age of forty is now eligible to be prescribed a lifetime of daily pills. If I sound cynical it’s because I am.

Lowering my blood pressure through diet and exercise hasn’t been instant. But my blood pressure has kept down over the months to an acceptable level. No, I’ll probably never enjoy blood pressure consistently below 120/80 -  it’s not in my genes. But as long as I consistently remain below 140/105 (usually in the 130/90 range) I figure that’s OK for me. I’m not in a high risk category for heart disease or stroke. And I feel better and more fit than I have for many years.

So why do I shun hypertension medications? It’s not the cost. I could get them for free here in the UK. No, it’s because blood pressure lowering medications do not fix the problem. If they did, after your blood pressure was down you could stop taking them. But the pharmaceutical industry has yet to create a drug that can really fix blood pressure. Sure, their drugs artificially lower your blood pressure. But stop taking them and it shoots right back up.

Statistics show that more people die from heart disease and stroke while on blood pressure lowering medication. That’s not to say that these medications are causing heart disease or strokes. But if you think that your safer on them then think again.

And then there’s the side effects. My only experience with a blood pressure lowering medication was for 8 week with Rampril – an ACE inhibitor. For 8 weeks I had an irritating dry cough day and night while my blood pressure refused to come down from its 190+/120+ readings. I’ve read about even worse side effects with some other medications but have no experience to validate.

So .. the Rambril went in the bin and I embarked on a new regime of diet and exercise. Within one month my blood pressure was beginning to drop. Within 3 months my BP readings were consistently below 135/95 occasionally as low as 118/79 (rare but does happen).

Diets to control high blood pressure … or … recipes for hypertension

Blood pressure lowering diet means eating less of somethings and eating more of others. It’s not all about moving simply to a bland diet of ‘healthy foods’ that suck much of the culinary pleasures out of life. Not at all. My new diet included things like a glass of red wine and dark chocolate one a day. among other things.

My new diet also involves a bowl of oatmeal every morning and some vitamin supplements. Currently I take each morning calcium, vitamin C, multi vitamin (that includes magnesium – very important) , cod liver oil (in capsules), and Korean ginseng, and ginkgo extract. I also have 20 odd drops of Hawthorn tincture in a glass of water every day.  I make the tincture myself as we are blessed with many Hawthorn trees here growing up on the mountains.

Blood pressure lowering exercises involve walking more. For me it’s a 20 minute hike up the mountain when the weather is friendly. (I live part way up a mountain in Wales). When I get to my summit I eat an apple I usually take with me. Yep, that’s part of my diet.

Other exercises involve slowing you system down with breathing exercises and the like.  One exercise involves a kind of rhythmic walking which I’ll do indoors when the weather is miserable (like today).

I hope over the coming weeks to fill in all the details of my diet and exercise that has worked so remarkably well in lowering my blood pressure from dangerously high levels as a resource for others struggling with high blood pressure problems too.

If you have any questions and or suggestions please leave a comment. I will attempt to answer all feedback.

Take care, we’re all in this together.

P.S. If you suffer from high blood pressure and are considering alternative treatments being promoted on the web, be sure to check out my review pages (links on the right hand column). I’ve checked most of the popular ones out and give you an objective assessment – warts and all!