Monday, January 18, 2010

How to Lower Your Blood Pressure without Medication

How to Lower your Blood Pressure without Medication
Blood pressure is a measurement of the force of blood flowing against the walls of the arteries. This pressure is constantly changing during the course of the heart related cycle. The highest pressure in the cycle is called the systolic, while the lowest is the diastolic. Both pressure readings are necessary to enable a health practitioner to evaluate the status of a patient's blood pressure
High blood pressure is a very common problem. It is estimated that about 25% of adults suffer from high blood pressure and 30% of them don't even know it. Hypertension is known as a silent killer, because it usually doesn't give early warning signs.
Hypertension is associated with heart attacks, strokes and kidney problems. It can also affect the blood vessels of the eyes and impair vision or even lead to blindness. Unfortunately, the symptoms appear in advanced stages when it's quite late. When the symptoms do occur, they usually include dizziness, headaches and nosebleeds.
The following tips are very helpful if you want to lower your blood pressure naturally:
• Reduce or eliminate salt from your diet: most people consume more salt than they actually need. In fact, according to the estimates, the average salt intake in the population is more than 10 grams per day. The daily recommended intake is about 5 grams. Reducing your salt intake to less than 3 grams per day, can decrease systolic blood pressure by 4 mm Hg and diastolic by 2 mm Hg in hypertensive patients
• Maintain a normal weight: being overweight is a major risk factor, because excess body fat leads to hypertension. If you lose 20 pounds, it can cause a reduction of 5-20 mm Hg. Indeed, for every pound you lose you can reduce systolic pressure by at least 1 mm Hg. Try and lose weight if you are overweight.
• Eliminate or reduce your caffeine intake: drinking about 1 cup of coffee per day is generally safe. However, studies show that consuming more than 300 mg of caffeine daily (2-3 cups) can have a negative impact.
• Eat a lot of garlic: for this to work, you need rather high dosages of garlic, so it would be a good idea to take a supplement.
• Drink a little red wine: moderate consumption of alcohol (1 drink for women and 2 drinks per day for men) can have beneficial effects.
• One of best approach really is to have the patient start a program of mild exercising which will break sweat, proper dieting and stress control.
• Diet change: you should try to consume more fresh fruits and vegetables. Eat foods low in fat, like low-fat yogurt and milk with 0% fat or 1% fat. Choose lean meat, fish, chicken and turkey without skin. Eat more oranges. There is a myth that oranges lead to hypertension, but exactly the opposite is true. Oranges contain a lot of potassium and clinical studies have shown that potassium is very effective in treating this condition
• To stay healthy, the patient should monitor his own blood pressure on a daily basis, he should reinforce those activities that leads to drops in blood pressure and refrain from practices which aggravate it.

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