May
The DASH diet is an acronym for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The name tells its purpose. If you have hypertension, the DASH diet is one of the dietary approaches that can help you lower it. Changing your nutritional intake may not be enough to lower your blood pressure without medication, but it’s a start. The DASH diet will also help you lose weight. Weight loss also aids in lowering blood pressure. The whole food nature and healthy foods of the DASH diet also help you do that.
You’ll lower your sodium intake with the DASH diet.
The diet contains foods lower in sodium and higher in magnesium, calcium, and potassium. That can make a significant change in your blood pressure. While it wasn’t created to help you lose weight, the very nature of the diet does help you do that. It’s higher in fiber, healthy carbs, and protein. The fiber and protein fill you, so you eat less. The healthy carbs are fruits and vegetables that are lower in calories.
What can you eat on a dash diet?
Don’t worry. The DASH diet isn’t restrictive. It allows six to eight cereals and whole grains a day. You choose four to five servings of vegetables. You can eat more. It’s the minimum. You get four to five servings of fruit, two to three servings of dairy, and up to 6 one-ounce servings of poultry, fish, lean meat, or other protein source. One egg is one serving. You get two to three servings of fat daily. Nuts, sweets, and legumes are measured weekly. You can have up to four or five servings of nuts, seeds, and legumes and five servings of sweets.
Most evidence points to sugar, not salt, as the worst for blood pressure.
Unless you empty a salt shaker at every meal, there’s very little evidence that the low-sodium part of the diet helps. What the diet does is restrict a lot of junk food and sugar. More studies show that a high sugar intake increases blood pressure more than salt. By cutting out foods and drinks with added sugar and increasing whole foods, many of which are vasodilators, like beets, your blood pressure drops. So does your risk of gout and diabetes. Bananas also contain potassium, nature’s beta-blockers that lower blood pressure.
- Losing weight on the DASH diet also helps. If you lose 20 pounds, it lowers blood pressure by five to 20 systolic points. Combining dietary changes with exercise can reduce blood pressure significantly.
- The DASH diet can help you lose visceral fat, which is belly fat. It cuts out food that packs on the pounds like soft drinks and processed foods. It includes whole grains, healthy fat, lean protein, and healthy carbs.
- Some foods lower blood pressure by the phytochemicals they contain. For instance, citrulline, an amino acid found in watermelon, changes to nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator that relaxes blood vessels and lowers blood pressure.
- One study followed 43 obese children with high blood pressure. They were put on a diet lower in sugar. Within nine days, their blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels dropped significantly.
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