Natural Ways To Lower Your Blood Pressure – No Rocket Science Here
Are you one of the thousands of Americans who seeking out natural ways to lower your blood pressure? Are you fed up with the side effects and expense of high blood pressure medications? Would you just like to put this whole condition behind you and learn fast ways to lower blood pressure?
Well the American Heart Association would agree with you. In fact it is the A.H.A.’s position that blood pressure medication is useful only when diet and exercise has failed. In other words, they endorse natural ways to lower blood pressure by making adjustments in lifestyle over the taking of drugs.
Actually your lifestyle is probably what brought on the high blood pressure in the first place isn’t it? Does a diet full of salt and saturated fats sound familiar? Are you carrying around a few extra pounds on your belly? Is your idea of exercise changing the television channel without using the remote?
Of course those are exaggerations but they demonstrate two areas of lifestyle that need to be addressed if you are going to be successful in lowering blood pressure without medication. Using natural ways to lower blood pressure takes knowledge and commitment. It is not as easy as popping a couple of pills each day because you have to actually take responsibility for your own health.
If you don’t think you can make small adjustments in diet, or find the time for some light exercise, then you are probably better off staying on medication.
But if you want to get your blood pressure reading back to normal, and if you want to live a longer life free of daily medication, then you have to at least explore the idea of changing your life to lower blood pressure.
Interested?
There are three areas that can bring the quickest results; diet, exercise and stress management. Understand you don’t have to make radical changes at first. It’s better to make small changes that you can live with as you are more likely to stick with it. As time goes by, you can get more aggressive in your pursuit of a natural cure.
Diet is exceptionally important. Basically our Western diet is full of food that our bodies are not designed to use or can’t use efficiently. This explains not only the endemic of high blood pressure but the near endemic of obesity and diabetes.
Diet can be as complex a subject as you want to make it and as you go forward, you will no doubt dig into it deeper. For right now however, make an effort to reduce salt intake, increase potassium, and drink a ton of water.
Salt, or sodium, is in such abundance in our diets that the body doesn’t know what to do with it. But salt is only half the story. Salt and its relationship with potassium controls the fluid levels in our bodies. Without sufficient potassium there isn’t sufficient fluid resulting in a stiffening of the blood vessels. When this happens and the blood vessels lose their elasticity, high blood pressure occurs. Getting potassium from natural sources like bananas is an essential first step in controlling blood pressure.
Hydration is another major issue. If you are on medication you probably started out with a diuretic whose purpose was to flush out excess salt. Well, that can be accomplished simply by drinking more water. Drink half your body weight, expressed in ounces, each day. So if you weigh 150 pounds, you want to drink 75 ounces of water or about 9 glasses a day.
A last word about diet. Eat as much fresh food as you can. If you can’t get fresh get frozen. A lot of processed foods not only come with a ton of sodium, but also have lost most of the nutritional value of the food as well.
Exercise is the fastest way to drop your blood pressure reading. I’m not talking gut grinding, leg burning, back breaking exercises. Spend 30 minutes in a brisk walk or riding a bike and you can drop 2 to 3 points almost immediately. It’s easy. You simply have to set aside the time, get off your duff and do it!
The added benefit of exercise is the role it plays in burning off hormones created by stress, another big cause of high blood pressure. Over time there will be another benefit as well. A slimmer, trimmer you!
That’s a quick run down on natural ways to lower blood pressure. Can you just imagine for a moment, that it’s two weeks from today and you’ve been practicing these changes in lifestyle. You get your blood pressure checked and it’s down 15 points! How fantastic would that be?
You can make it happen.
If you are on blood pressure medication, or if you want to avoid that pharmaceutical trap, visit http://MyNaturalCures.info for a step by step program that will organize your diet, exercise and stress management efforts and lower your blood pressure by 20 points.
