Reduce High Blood Pressure: Salt, Smoking, And Exercise
Was it just recently that your doctor diagnosed your high blood pressure? Managing hypertension or high blood pressure is very important since this condition can lead to heart attack and stroke. Here are different methods that can effectively reduce high blood pressure.
When a person is diagnosed with hypertension, doctors usually prescribe anti-hypertensive medicines in order to control blood pressure. Different types of anti-hypertensive drugs can be prescribed like angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, diuretics, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin II receptor blockers and others. These drugs can definitely lower blood pressure but the usual complaints of patients are regarding the side effects.
Like any kind of synthetic drug, anti-hypertensive drugs do have side effects like diarrhea, dizziness, heartbeat changes, vomiting, and others. It is good if the side effects can be tolerated by the patient. Unfortunately for some, the side effects are intolerable that they look for other effective ways in reducing high blood pressure. What is great is the fact that certain approaches have been proven helpful in reducing high blood pressure and these methods have no side effects.
Decreased intake of salt. Remember that how much salt you consume per day can increase your risk of getting hypertension. For health reasons, people should limit their salt intake to 2,300 milligrams per day. And if a person is hypertensive, his or her sodium intake must be limited to 1,500 milligrams per day only. When you are going grocery shopping, always look at the nutritional facts and sodium content of products. The foods that you decide to purchase must only reflect 5% or less of the Daily Value of sodium. If the daily Value of sodium is 20% or more, do not purchase that food.
Increase consumption of vegetables and foods rich in magnesium, potassium, and fiber. It has been proven that these nutrients can help in lessening high blood pressure. Samples of fruits and vegetables that are rich in these nutrients are apples, apricots, bananas, broccoli, carrots, green beans, green peas, grapefruit, grapes, lima beans, mangoes, melons, oranges, pineapples, potatoes, raisins, squash, spinach, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, fat-free yogurt, and many more.
Completely stop smoking. Smoking is another proven risk factor of high blood pressure. The nicotine in cigarette smoke can cause decreased oxygen to the heart, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased blood clotting, and damage to cells of the blood vessels.
Get your body moving. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the risk factors in getting high blood pressure. Exercising every day for at least 30 minutes can decrease a person’s risk of developing high blood pressure as well as effectively control hypertension. You can do jogging, brisk walking, biking, walking, swimming, and other aerobic exercises.
These are just some proven effective methods to reduce high blood pressure. In fact, so many more methods can effectively reduce a person’s high blood pressure and examples of these are deep breathing, supplementation, meditation, yoga, and stress reduction. If you definitely want to control your high blood pressure without suffering the side effects brought about by anti-hypertensive medications, you need to know and apply the different natural methods in order to reduce high blood pressure.
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