10 Simple Ways you can Effectively Lower Your High Blood Pressure
When it comes to preventing high blood pressure, the idea is to focus on the risk factors that you can change.
Apart from your age, family history, and ethnicity are among the hypertension risk factors that are beyond your control.
Which includes living a healthy lifestyle and be cautious of what you take in when it comes to food, drinks and nutritional needs of your body.
With proper discipline and determination, you can prevent or lower your blood pressure.
What is high blood pressure?
High blood pressure, or hypertension, occurs when there is an increase of arterial pressure in the body.
It is most common when the arteries connected to the heart becomes partially blocked, and it’s unable to pump blood effectively around the body.
This increases the workload of the heart making it highly pressured. This may eventually cause health problems, such as heart diseases.
The following are key points to help reduce or prevent hypertension
Maintaining a Healthy Body Weight will go a long way in reducing High blood pressure
With proper discipline and determination, a healthy body weight can be achieved.
Various studies have shown that reducing body weight, even as little as 10 pounds, will reduce blood pressure in overweight and hypertensive individuals.
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Watch Your Caloric Intake
Maintaining a healthy body weight may be one of the most effective preventive measures. Watching what you take in daily.
Thus being cautious, restrictive and selective in your caloric intake to either lose or maintain a healthy body weight may be highly beneficial to your health.
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Control the Amount of Red Meat, Take More of Vegetables
Increase the number of fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, and whole grains you’re eating.
Instead of red meat, opt for healthier lean proteins like fish, poultry, or tofu (soybeans).
A plant-based diet is an easy way to increase fiber and reduce the amount of sodium and unhealthy saturated and trans fat you take in from dairy foods and meat.
Increase Body Activity
By exercising, involving yourself in some form of physical activity, and simply walking regularly around your neighborhood for more than 30 minutes will increase your heart and breathing rates.
Over time your heart gets stronger and pumps with less effort. This puts less pressure on your arteries and lowers your blood pressure.
Involving yourself in some form of physical activities will be of help tremendously
Read Also: Importance of Physical Activities to Your General Well Being
Reduced or Moderate Sodium Intake
Though there might not be any universal recommended daily intake of sodium. The common assertion is that both high and low levels of sodium intake may be related to cardiovascular-related deaths.
Others suggest that sodium restriction has only modest effects on blood pressure in normotensive individuals.
It is known that most individuals possess physiological control systems that effectively maintain a proper balance of sodium in the body.
However, many individuals are sodium-sensitive, or salt-sensitive, in that their blood pressure may increase with excessive consumption of salt.
Possible because of a defect in excretion, sodium accumulates in the body pressure.
It should be noted that decreasing salt and sodium intake possess some practical difficulties.
Most salt we take into our system comes from the packaged foods we buy, which makes it difficult to have control over the quantity of salt we take in.
Even minimally processed food, such as milk and bread, may contain a significant amount of sodium.
Salts are also high in most restaurant foods, some single servings of fast food have more than 1000 milligrams of sodium.
Some up to nearly 5000 milligrams thus, one might have to buy most foods in their natural state to cook at home, from scratch with your specifications to be sure of what you are eating.
Reducing Stress will also help in improving high blood pressure
By finding time to relax out of your busy schedules in a serene natural environment, away from the noise and pollution of our modern society.
Take a walk, listen to good music, read motivation books, visits friends and family try to laugh and take yourself less seriously.
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Improving your sleeping regime will help in managing high blood pressure
Increasing sleep alone cannot treat hypertension, but too little sleep and poor sleep quality may make it worse.
Consume a Balanced Diet
Consume a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat, protein-rich foods and with reduced saturated and total fat.
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Reduce your Alcohol Consumption
Excessive alcohol intake may increase heart disease risk, possibly because it is linked to high blood pressure.
Try to Avoid Smoking
Try quitting smoking to improve the flow of blood in your system. The chemicals in tobacco smoke damage the body’s tissues and harden blood vessel walls.
When you smoke, the blood vessels become narrowed, and blood pressure rises.
Smoking also reduces the blood’s oxygen content, so the heart pumps faster to compensate. This, too, increases blood pressure.
