Eating Right Can Reduce Your Blood Pressure
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Figures show that there are almost 73 million adults in the US alone today who are suffering from high blood pressure and that more than 50,000 people will die as a direct result of this problem during the course of this year. Unhappily, a large number of these deaths are unnecessary and one of the fastest and simplest ways to lower your blood pressure is to adjust your eating habits.
We have seen significant changes in our lifestyles in the past few years and one particularly significant change for most of us is seen in what we eat. The times of enjoying three home-cooked meals every day have gone and have been largely replaced with convenience foods and fast food which has caused a raft of different problems including the rising problems of obesity and high blood pressure. Happily, this is a state of affairs that can be quickly and easily reversed.
There are two main difficulties with many fast and convenience foods and these are salt and fat, both of which increase your blood pressure.
Salt is added to a very large range of food during the manufacturing and packaging process to add flavor and to act as a preservative and your daily consumption of salt can be very high without even adding further salt to your food at the table. In particular, canned foods usually contain high levels of salt as do pizza and frozen dinners, so look carefully at the labeling and determine exactly how much salt (sodium) products contain before you purchase them. Your overall daily intake of salt should be as low as you can get it but should not exceed 2,400 milligrams which is about a teaspoonful.
Fat is another adversary when it comes to high blood pressure and, although a bit of fat in your food is healthy, you should stay away from high fat food whenever you can. In addition to fats and oils themselves (such as butter, margarine, lard, vegetable oil and meat dripping) a lot of our favorite foods are high in fat. Keep an eye out for foods such as cream, regular ground beef, whole milk, cakes, pies, cheddar, corned beef, cookies, bacon, nuts, ice cream, salami, fried chicken and nearly all fast foods.
At this stage you might well be thinking that this list covers almost everything you eat and that if you cut all this out you are going to starve to death. The good news is that nothing could be farther from the truth and that the range of foods open to you is enormous. There are two ways to solve this problem.
The first is to just replace items in your present diet with foods that are lower in fat or salt. For instance, you might replace normal full-fat milk with half-fat or semi-skimmed milk and regular ground beef with ground lean beef.
The second is to add new foods into your diet and to replace some of your present favorite high fat foods. For instance, add more fresh fruit and vegetables into your meal plan and replace french fries with baked potatoes and rather than frying your food {try grilling|grill it. Grilled meat and fish is not only far better for you but it also tastes delicious.
High blood pressure does not need to be a problem for most individuals and some simply changes to what we eat can resolve the problem very easily and very quickly.
TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides information and advice of all aspects of controlling your blood pressure including choosing the best blood pressure monitor for use at home to selecting foods that lower blood pressure