5 Ways to Naturally Control Your High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure (hypertension) is a serious medical condition that occurs when your blood pressure is persistently high. It causes no symptoms, but if left uncontrolled, it raises your risks of even more serious conditions like heart attack and stroke.
In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that one in three adults in the U.S. is battling high blood pressure 1. According to the American Heart Association in 2017, nearly half of American adults have high blood pressure (and many don’t even know it.) 2 So, if you haven’t had your blood pressure checked recently, you should see a doctor.
If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure, you might be concerned about taking medication to lower your blood pressure. While medication can reduce high blood pressure, it may cause side effects such as dizziness, leg cramps, and insomnia.
Fortunately, there’s good news. You can successfully control your blood pressure naturally without medication. Lifestyle changes play a huge role in controlling your high blood pressure naturally. Achieving a healthy lifestyle will help you lower blood pressure naturally and quickly so that you may reduce, delay, or avoid the need for medication.
Here are 5 ways to naturally control high blood pressure.
1. Reduce stress
Stress is a key contributor to high blood pressure.
Chronic stress puts your body to a constant fight-or-flight response mode. The end result is a faster heart rate and constricted blood vessels. Constriction of blood vessels and increase in heart rate raises blood pressure temporarily until the stress reaction goes away.19 Chronic stress can cause your body to go into high gear for days or weeks.
If you react to stress by drinking alcohol, smoking, or consuming unhealthy food, your blood pressure level could be negatively affected.
Learning how to reduce stress can help lower your blood pressure levels. It will not only improve your heart health but also rejuvenate your overall well-being.
The first step to managing stress is to figure out what causes you to feel stressed, whether it is finances, work, family, or illness. Once you know the cause of your stress, find a way to reduce or eliminate it. To fight stress, consider these stress management tips.
Change your expectations- Reduce stress by practicing time management. Also, avoid stressful working situations. Do not respond to difficult situations by drinking, overeating or smoking.
Recognize where you have control- Learn to accept things you can’t change. For things under your control, try to look for ways to solve them quickly. Know your stress triggers and try to avoid them if possible.
Take care of your moods- Relaxation works wonders for stress. Even if you are busy, spare some 10-15 minutes a day to sit quietly, breathe deeply and have peace with yourself. Invest your time in nurturing and supporting positive relations with friends, family or colleagues. Engage in regular physical activities to let go of tension in your body—you’ll feel better.
Research has shown that listening to soothing music can help lower blood pressure.20 The calming music helps relax your nervous system, allowing the heart to pump blood more efficiently.
Practice gratitude- Respond to stressful situations better by focusing on the positives rather than the negatives. Express gratitude to others and participate in an activity that brings you pleasure and joy. If it is sports or cooking that you love, enjoy taking part in such activities.
2. Lose weight
The risks of high blood pressure and other health problems are boosted with weight gain. If you’re overweight, losing extra pounds can make a huge difference for your heart health.
Even a losing just 5 percent of body mass when you need to lose weight can significantly lower your blood pressure levels.
Weight loss, when combined with exercise, can be a very effective lifestyle change for controlling blood pressure.
Being overweight strains your heart, increasing the risk of high blood pressure. Losing weight helps your blood vessels expand and contract with ease, so the left ventricle of the heart doesn’t have to work hard to pump blood.
If you want to lose weight so as to control your blood pressure, consider increasing the level of physical activities you undertake and ensure that you eat a healthy diet. Try to make small, realistic changes to your diet, and work towards becoming more physically active. Exercise will help you burn extra calories, while eating healthy will help you limit the number of calories taken through your diet.
Aim to lose weight around one to two pounds a week until you achieve a healthy body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 to 24.9.
Even as you work towards shedding some pounds, generally you should also check your waistline. Carrying too much weight at the waist increases your risk of high blood pressure.16 One way to make sure you’re not carrying too much fat around your stomach is to measure your waist regularly.
3. Eat a healthy diet
If you want to naturally lower your blood pressure, you need to eat a healthy diet. Consume real foods that offer adequate amounts of protein, (red meat, pork, poultry, fish), plenty of healthy fats (fish, butter, olive oil, eggs, nuts and seeds), and non-starchy vegetables (kales, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, red bell pepper).
Making dietary changes in your household by consuming healthy carbs from whole food sources such as starchy fruits and vegetables (beets, carrots and bananas), and grains rather from processed foods (fast food, soda, sweets) will help your body get energy and burn fat more efficiently.
You should always avoid anything containing vegetable oils, hydrogenated trans fats, or that are high in sodium or sugar, all of which are generally found in processed foods.
In addition, make sure you eat more potassium-rich foods. Potassium is an essential mineral that helps the body eliminate sodium thereby easing the pressure on your blood vessels. Studies have shown a link between the sodium-to-potassium ratio as it applies to blood pressure and related risk factors for cardiovascular disease.17 The best way to get a better balance of potassium to sodium in your diet is to avoid consuming processed foods and instead focus on fresh, real foods.
Foods that are rich in potassium include:
Fruits, including bananas, avocado, apricots, oranges, and melons
Vegetables, especially leafy greens
Beans
Tuna and salmon
Dairy products such as milk and yogurt
Nuts and seeds
Modern processed foods are nutritionally inferior to real or whole foods. Be a smart shopper by adopting the habit of reading food labels to ensure you choose foods wisely. A DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) eating plan is one of the best natural techniques used to control blood pressure. It is an eating plan designed to help you manage high blood pressure.18 It emphasizes eating healthy food sources while limiting red meat, sodium, and sweets or added sugars.
Changing your eating habits from processed foods to more naturally-occurring real foods such as vegetables and fruits can help lower your blood pressure. Choose foods mindfully, and try to cook at home where you have more control over ingredients and methods of preparation.
4. Exercise regularly
Exercise is one of the best natural ways to lower high blood pressure. Regular physical activity like running or walking for at least 30 minutes every day can bring your blood pressure and the lower the risk of heart disease. For some, it’s possible to reduce the need for blood pressure medications just by getting enough physical activity.
Exercising on a regular basis helps to strengthen your heart, making it more efficient at using oxygen, which make it easier for it to pump blood. This in effect, lowers the blood pressure in your arteries.
The U.S Department of Health and Human Services recommends having 150 minutes of moderate exercise like walking, or 75 minutes of a vigorous cardio workout, like running every week to lower your blood pressure to safer levels and improve your heart health.
And the more exercises you do, the further your blood pressure is reduced. However, it is important to exercise on a regular basis because if you stop, your blood pressure could rise again.
There are three types of exercise you can do to help you control high blood pressure; aerobic, resistance, and isometric.
Aerobic exercises are simple but effective
Aerobic exercises aim at increasing the efficiency of your cardiovascular system by keeping your heart pumping. Aerobic activity makes you breathe hard, which in effect, lowers your blood pressure instantly. Examples of aerobic exercises include walking, jogging, rope jumping, cycling, and playing a team sport such as basketball, soccer, or softball.
Resistance exercise works best when combined with aerobic exercise
Resistance exercises consist of weight lifting and strength training. Strength training in particular, when combined with aerobic exercise can help lower your blood pressure by up to three points. But you will need to strength train at least couple of hours most days of the week to see results.
For better results, use weights at the gym or buy dumbbells to use at home.
Isometric exercise is effective for blood pressure control
Isometric exercise is one of the best things you can do to reduce your blood pressure.7 It involves enabling a muscle to contract without shortening. Hand grip isometrics are very effective at reducing high blood pressure. The technique allows your muscles to contract but doesn’t shorten the way they would if you were to perform dumbbell curls.
In order to get the health benefits of exercise, such as lowering your blood pressure, you’ll need to mix both high-intensity and low-intensity exercises.
Talk to your doctor first before starting a new exercise program, especially if you have diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, or lung disease. Also, listen to the signals your body is giving you when you’re starting a new exercise or fitness routine. While it is important to push yourself so you can get results, you should stop the exercise if you start to experience a sharp pain or shortness of breath.
When it comes to lowering your blood pressure naturally, any form of exercise is good for you.
5. Reduce sodium in your diet ? Maybe not.
Sodium is a life essential mineral that helps to control your body’s fluid balance. Sodium levels in the body are regulated by the kidneys.
But we’ve been told, based on an outdated and less credible studies which created a salt uproar in the 1970s, that salt is linked to high blood pressure, heart attacks, and other serious conditions such as strokes. However, a meta-analysis study published in 2017 indicates that “In spite of more than 100 years of investigations the question of whether a reduced sodium intake improves health is still unsolved.”8 The objective of this recent analysis was to estimate the effects of sodium intake relative to blood pressure, as well as plasma or serum levels of renin, aldosterone, catecholamines, cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and triglycerides.
The authors concluded that there were minor decreases (less than 1%) in blood pressure for normotensive white people on the low-sodium diet, but they also experienced a significant increase in certain hormones, cholesterol, and triglycerides. In comparison, the resulting side effects outweighed the potential benefit of such a slight decrease in blood pressure.
However, the authors also concluded that in the white, hypertensive population, there appeared to by about a 3.5% decrease in BP with reduced sodium intake, yet they also had similar increases in hormones and lipids as those without high blood pressure. And while a few studies suggest that, in comparison, those in black and Asian populations are more sensitive to sodium reduction, it was concluded that more research would be needed to support this.
In the end, after in-depth, credible analysis of hundreds of studies, they found that without conclusive evidence to support sodium reduction below 100 mmol/day (~2.3g), it could be stated that it would be optimal for the general population to accept the usual recommended amount of sodium intake.11 The American Heart Association recommends no more than 2,300 mg a day and an ideal limit of sodium intake of no more than 1,500 mg/day,12 but other experts strongly disagree.
Regardless of the differing opinions on sodium intake and its effect on blood pressure, each person can be different when it comes to their level of sodium sensitivity. L. Gabriel Navar, chair of the Department of Physiology and director of the Center for Biomedical Research Excellence in Hypertension and Renal Biology at Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans says, “It’s not how much salt you consume, but whether your body can process the sodium it contains,” says. “Operating efficiently, the kidneys can get rid of a huge amount of sodium — 5,000 milligrams or more.”
So despite the passionate disagreements suggesting our recommended daily intake of sodium, the bottom line is this—if you are concerned about high blood pressure, then what you need to be focusing on is the source of your sodium intake and less on the number. If you’re cutting back on the pre-packaged, processed foods and drinks (that are usually loaded with sodium), and are getting an adequate amount of nutrients from natural foods that you prepare yourself, then there’s not much to worry about. Healthy results will come naturally.
High blood pressure is a serious concern for many, and while there are medications that are proven to reduce blood pressure, they often come with unwanted side effects.
So if you’re looking for a more natural approach to managing your blood pressure, then it’s time to start making decisions to live a healthy lifestyle. By committing to following a healthy diet and exercise routine, managing your weight, and reducing stress, you may be able to reduce your high blood pressure without the need for medication.
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