High Blood Pressure Diet
Posted by admin on October 12th, 2009
When I first found out I had high blood pressure, I was told right away I would have to lose weight. Actually, it wouldn’t have taken anyone 12 years of medical school to come to this conclusion. Some semblance of eyesight would do the trick.
Still, from a hypertension standpoint, a medical connection was made. I had high blood pressure, I was overweight and if I remained so, my blood pressure would never reach a normal level. So, as I reached out for a diet to help me lower my weight and blood pressure, I needed one question to be answered before I embarked on my weight loss regime.
Will Any Diet Do?
The question is: “Is any diet good enough to lower my blood pressure as long as it gets my weight into the recommended range?” The answer I found after much reading and talking to professionals about it was a surprising yes; with just one caveat.
High blood pressure and high sodium levels have an inner connection. Whenever you are told your blood pressure is elevated, the next thing you hear will be “stop eating salt.” So really, the only restriction I found for designing my diet was to not design one that would raise my sodium intake and preferably design one that would lower it. That was pretty much it.
How About the Atkins Diet?
A doctor actually told me a high protein, high fat type of diet would be okay for me to use as long as I lost weight. “If you get your weight down,” he said, “it will be better for your health in the long run.”
As it turned out, I didn’t choose a high protein diet because this type of diet tends to make me irregular, gives very little choice over what I can eat and buying all that meat all the time costs a fortune. Still, it was an option I didn’t think I’d be given.
Tips to control high blood pressure
You should ask your doctor which diet he thinks would be best for you because your medical situation may be different from mine. The problem I had was being just plain too fat. Still, I did want to share with you the fact that in a hypertension controlling situation, the medical community seems to place a higher value on lowering your weight than it does on exactly how you do it. This is, if your weight loss plan is within reason, of course. I don’t think they’d approve of “The 1,600 calorie a day root beer diet.”
Jason Falson
Tags: high blood pressure, Hypertension