Lower Blood Pressure Foods Help You Control Your Blood Pressure Naturally

Some foods we eat tend to increase our blood pressures. Other foods lower blood pressures. If you know which is which you can begin to control your blood pressure naturally...

If your blood pressure is too high and you want to get it down, you might want to look at what you are eating. Avoid the foods that tend to increase BP, like those with saturated fats and trans fats.  Instead, consider eating more of the foods that tend to lower your blood pressure.

There are several lower blood pressure foods that you might want to consider:

*First, let's cut out a few foods to make some room in your diet!

Because of its calories and chemical composition, fat plays a major role in weight gain and loss, and in heart health. High cholesterol levels, especially LDL (the bad cholesterol) can be directly affected by dietary fats, especially trans (hydrogenated) fat.

So avoid eating bakery products, fast-food products like hamburgers and french fries and pizza. Use no cooking oils with more than 14% saturated fat (2 grams per 14-gram spoonful). You avoid bakery products and fast-food products because the high saturated-fat oils are cheaper, taste fine and are preferred by commercial users.

Avoid animal fats, anything with pork and any fat that is not liquid at room temperature, like lard or margarine.

There. That should create a vacuum in your diet. Now you can fill that vacuum with lower blood pressure foods.

*Second, here are some lower blood pressure foods you could eat instead:

Potatoes contain chemicals which lower blood pressure. The Institute of Food Research says that the chemicals, called kukoamines, occur naturally in most common types of potato. Researchers say boiling potatoes is a better way to preserve the health benefits than frying them.

Soy foods may help lower diastolic blood pressure in men, according to a Japanese study. Researchers examined blood pressure and intake of soy and other foods in 600 healthy men and women. An average of two ounces of soy foods a day had a mild blood-pressure-lowering effect in men compared to other foods.

The same effect was not noted in women. Similar mild blood pressure lowering was seen with both soy protein and soy isoflavone intake, which would qualify these as lower blood pressure foods.

Consuming skim milk and other low-fat dairy foods may help lower blood pressure, according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers found that among 5,900 adults followed over two years, those with the highest intake of low-fat dairy products were half as likely to develop high blood pressure as those who consumed the least amount.

Eat Bananas. A diet that includes foods low in sodium but rich in potassium and magnesium may help reduce your risk of developing high blood pressure and suffering a stroke. Harvard School of Public Health researchers looked at the diets of more than 43,000 men and found that those eating diets rich in potassium and magnesium (both found in bananas) had reduced risk of stroke.

The Food and Drug Administration now even permits bananas to be marketed with a health claim lauding potassium's link to prevention of high blood pressure and stroke.

Women who get large amounts of the vitamin folate from food and/or supplements have a sharply lower risk of developing high blood pressure (in a study of 150,000 women). Folate is found in such foods as oranges, dark green leafy vegetables and beans and legumes.

There are many more but that is a good start. You can usually control your blood pressure naturally by what you eat. If you are aware of which foods are lower blood pressure foods and which raise it, you can change your diet to get your blood pressure down to safe levels.

Jorge G. Chavez is an experienced independent researcher who used medications to control his own blood pressure for 20+ years, before he found out that they were unnecessary.