Many things can affect your blood pressure
through the day, so your doctor will take a number of blood pressure readings
to see that it stays high over time.
Occasionally
people with very high blood pressure say they experience headaches, but it is
best to visit your GP if you are concerned about symptoms.
Avoid
sugar and salt
You will
need to limit your intake of sugar and salt, but that doesn’t mean you have to
eat only bland food for the rest of your life.
Packaged
or processed meats
Packaged
meats including hot dogs, bacon, sausage, and lunch meat also rely on sodium to
preserve the product for a long time. Instead, buy your meat straight from a
butcher to get a fresh product that hasn’t been soaked in a giant vat of
saltwater.
Frozen
meats
Did you
know that the food in frozen meals may have been cooked up to a year before you
actually eat it? A massive amount of salt is used to make sure the meal still
tastes mostly like food by the time you eat it.
Softs
drinks
Just one
soda per day can push you over your daily recommended limit of added sugars,
yet because you drink rather than eating them, they don’t make you feel full or
satisfied.
Pastries
Cookies,
cakes, donuts, and other baked goodies can certainly be a hard habit to break,
but they are simply loaded with sugar and fat. However, you may still be able
to enjoy pastries in moderation.
Canned foods
Many canned vegetables, soups, and other food products are prepared with lots of salt for taste and to preserve the food. I often advise my patients to avoid these products if possible, and instead, eat fresh vegetables or low-salt soups. If you do need to use canned vegetables, you can buy the “no salt added” kind or rinse the vegetables before eating to get rid of the extra salt. Similarly, canned tuna is also often high in salt, so I advise giving that a rinse as well.
Unhealthy snacks
Everyone likes to munch on snacks
between meals or at the end of the day. However, if you look at the snack
aisle, what do you find? Chips, cookies, crackers, jerky, nuts, all of which
have lots of salt in them! In fact, it’s their salt, fat, and sugar that make
snacks so addictive. For example, popular chip flavorings such as ranch, salt
and vinegar, cheese, and barbeque are all high in salt. Again, look for
versions with little or no salt added. Another option is buying plain popcorn
and adding your own spices, so you don’t have to worry about salt at all.
Cured meats
Ham, bacon, and deli meats are often
prepared by soaking them in a brine bath made with salt water and spices. While
cured meats can be really tasty, it’s best to avoid them. Watch out especially
during the holidays, when you go out to eat, and especially when you’re making
a sandwich. Sandwiches are really high in salt because bread, cheese,
condiments, and deli meat all have salt. It is quite easy for one sub or
sandwich to have over 2,000 mg of salt.
Pickled foods
Similar to cured meats, pickled
vegetables also carry a lot of salt. Pickling is a process where food sits in a
solution of salt (to kill off bad bacteria) and other flavoring agents. Because
of this, pickled foods often are high in salt. If you’re concerned about your
blood pressure, avoid eating pickles or other pickled foods like kimchi and
sauerkraut, or at least wash them before eating to get rid of some of the salt.
Alcohol
An alcoholic drink can raise your
blood pressure slightly, but if you drink too much, your blood pressure may
rise dramatically. For people who drink alcohol on a daily or semi-daily basis,
cutting back to recommended levels can lower blood pressure by about 4 mmHg.
The AHA recommends that men drink no more than one or two drinks a day and
women drink no more than one drink a day. One drink is defined as 12 oz beer, 4
oz of wine, 1.5 oz of 80-proof spirits, or 1 oz of 100-proof spirits.
Coffee, tea, and energy drinks often come with caffeine, which can cause your blood pressure to rise. For people with a healthy blood pressure, caffeine really isn’t an issue, but if you have hypertension, it’s recommended that you limit your caffeine intake and choose decaf or half-caff coffee or caffeine-free teas instead. For more information about caffeine and hypertension, see our blog post here.
High-fat foods
While high-fat foods may not
directly raise your blood pressure, they can pose other problems, like raising
your risk for high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. The mixture of
hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol can dramatically increase your
risk for heart problems. To correct this issue, following a healthy diet—such
as the DASH diet—can really be helpful
written by Bidax Blogger
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