How to Lower Blood Pressure Naturally

You could have borderline or high blood pressure and not always know it until being diagnosed and given medications. However, there are some additional steps that you can take for how to lower blood pressure naturally that could improve your health.

The more weight that you carry around, the more forceful the blood travels through the walls of your arteries. As a result, the heart works harder circulating that blood to all the vital organs that can put you at risk for a heart attack or stroke over time. The extra weight also causes sleep apnea, further raising your blood pressure because of what it does to hamper breathing at night.

A waist that has expanded with more fat around the middle also invites heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Get a measuring tape and place it just above the hipbone. Take your measurement there after exhaling. If you’re a woman and find that your waist is 35 inches or more than 40 inches if you’re a man, then this can increase those two risks.

Losing just a few pounds can make all the difference for a better reading for blood pressure when tested.  Though exercising can seem like a chore, it can also help pare down the waist and overall health. Devote at least one-half hour on a regular basis to some form of exercise.

Walking or swimming might be more pleasant ways to be more active. All the best intentions often fail when jumping into some strenuous or expensive exercise program that you may not be ready to commit to. Sometimes, it is better to gradually ease from a sedentary lifestyle into an exercise regime to stay with it.

The Connection Between Food and Blood Pressure 

According to one study, researchers found that a common similarity of those with high pressure usually is a deficiency in calcium. This is calcium directly from dairy products and not just a vitamin supplement. Apparently, the calcium supplement did help those that were mildly hypertensive in reducing blood pressure somewhat, but not very much to matter for those with higher blood pressures. The best results were supplementing their diets with more low-fat dairy products in the forms of milk, cheese and yogurt.

If you’re a big fan of cottage cheese, ricotta cheese has more calcium and tastes just as delicious if you enjoy a dish with some sliced, fresh fruit for lunch. You can also try adding it in a quiche filling, cheesecake, lasagna recipe or a tuna casserole.

Another excellent way to fortify your diet with more dairy is adding more nonfat dry milk to your recipes or a glass of skim milk to boost up your daily calcium levels. You don’t need to completely alter cooking or your lifestyle all that much for health benefits. Try adding two tablespoons of dry milk to a cream sauce, a fruit smoothie, yogurt, creamy salad dressing, cream soups, and puddings, etc. can help.

It is a fact that Americans eat too much sodium whether you blame the salt shaker or prepared foods. One teaspoon of salt has 2,300 milligrams of sodium, which is all that you should have in an entire day. The recommended level of daily sodium is 1,500 milligrams. Therefore, try to gradually salt your food less and turn to herbs to bring out the flavor. Make my Herb Salt Substitute recipe and Herbal Salt-Free Seasoning Blends to replace the salt in your shaker can be beneficial for this purpose.

Excessive sodium in your diet also causes your body not to have enough potassium, another common factor in those with hypertension. Sodium does such a great job of draining the potassium because it causes frequent urination and the potassium loss with it.

Be that as it may be, adding more potassium-rich foods can also be useful for this cause. Fresh vegetables and fruits such as sweet or baked potatoes, leafy greens, squashes, avocado, banana, berries, legumes, soy nuts,  salmon and other fatty fish high in omega-3s to healthier grains like oatmeal can work.

What I’m sharing is not meant to replace seeing your medical doctor or medications. All I intended here is encouraging you to take the time to monitor your blood pressure and trying to eat a healthier diet because doing so can make a difference.