High blood pressure will threaten your safety. The DASH diet plan or pieces of it can be used to reduce your blood pressure and maybe even slim down.
High blood pressure will threaten your safety. The DASH diet plan — or pieces of it — can be used to reduce your blood pressure, strengthen the back, and maybe even slim down.
What Is the DASH Diet?
Every time you reach the doctor's room, the nurse or assistant places a belt on the arm — and for good cause. Around one in three American adults has hypertension or elevated blood pressure. And they pose a significantly greater chance of heart attacks, strokes, and other health complications. If your blood pressure reading is on the high side, your MD can recommend a DASH diet (this is short for Dietary Hypertension Stop Approaches). The DASH diet program appeared in the 17 April 1997 issue of The New England Journal of Health, years before low-carb and gluten-free reigned. According to a community of researchers funded by the Regional Heart, Lung, and Blood Center, the DASH program lowered blood pressure sufficiently that if all followed it, cardiac attack incidents would decrease by 15 percent and strokes by around one-fourth.
The DASH diet plan stresses:
• Whole, unprocessed foods, including fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.
• Cutting back on sodium (2,300 mg per day if you're healthy, 1,500 mg per day if you're at-risk or already have heart issues).
• Getting 55 percent of your calories from high-quality carbs, 18 percent from protein, and 27 percent from fat.
"The DASH plan is one of the strongest foods out there year after year," says Gina DeVito, RD, a registered dietitian-nutritionist at the Forme Urgent Care and Wellness Clinic in White Plains, New York. A meta-analysis released this month in the British Journal of Nutrition showed that people who adopted the DASH diet schedule were around 13 per cent reducing their 10-year risk of cardiac attacks. And if you turn from a diet rich in fast products to DASH, you would definitely lose weight and boost your wellbeing, says DeVito.
Dash Diet Food List
You don't need to adopt the entire DASH plan to net these perks. Merely focusing on whole foods can go a long way toward whittling your waist and reducing your blood pressure, DeVito says. Try these:
• Sweet potatoes. Their vitamin A and fiber further boosts blood vessel health.
• Beans. Any type of works, but white beans shine brightest. Just rinse canned brands first to reduce sodium.
• Winter squash. Sub spaghetti squash for the pasta to cut calories.
• Fish. Steak-like catches like halibut and cod boast the most potassium.
• Clams. Get them fresh, not canned, to skip salt and preservatives.
• Dairy. Look for low-fat yogurt, milk, and cheese.
• Fresh juice. Run carrots or oranges through your juicer (pre-packaged or concentrated varieties aren't always as nutrient-dense, DeVito points out).
• Bananas. America's favorite fruit provides about 13 percent of your daily potassium needs.
• Sweet potatoes. Their vitamin A and fiber further boosts blood vessel health.
• Beans. Any type of works, but white beans shine brightest. Just rinse canned brands first to reduce sodium.
• Winter squash. Sub spaghetti squash for the pasta to cut calories.
• Fish. Steak-like catches like halibut and cod boast the most potassium.
• Clams. Get them fresh, not canned, to skip salt and preservatives.
• Dairy. Look for low-fat yogurt, milk, and cheese.
• Fresh juice. Run carrots or oranges through your juicer (pre-packaged or concentrated varieties aren't always as nutrient-dense, DeVito points out).
• Bananas. America's favorite fruit provides about 13 percent of your daily potassium needs.
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