Lower Your Blood Pressure By Simply Picking The Right Foods

It is estimated that there are approximately 73 million adults in the United States alone today who are suffering from high blood pressure and that more than 50 thousand individuals will die as a direct result of this condition during the course of this year. Unhappily, many of these deaths are preventable and one of the quickest and easiest ways to reduce your blood pressure is to alter your eating habits.

We have witnessed dramatic changes in our lives in the past few years and one especially significant change for a lot of us is seen in what we eat. The times of three square home-cooked meals every day are long gone and have been largely replaced with convenience foods and fast food which has led to a number of different problems including the growing problems of both obesity and high blood pressure. Happily, this is a situation that can be easily reversed.

Convenience and fast foods carry two main problems and these are fat and salt, both of which have been clearly proven to raise your blood pressure.

Salt is added to an enormous number of food during the manufacturing and packaging process to both add flavor and to act as a preservative and your daily consumption of salt can be extremely high without you adding salt to your meals at the table. Canned foods in particular frequently contain high levels of salt as do frozen dinners and pizza, so look closely at the labeling and see just how much salt (sodium) products have in them before you purchase them. Your overall daily intake of salt should be as low as possible but should not exceed 2,400 milligrams which is equivalent to about a teaspoonful.

Fat is another enemy when it comes to high blood pressure and, while a bit of fat in the diet is good for you, you should stay away from high fat food whenever you can. As well as fats and oils themselves (like butter, lard, margarine, vegetable oil and meat dripping) many of our favorite foods are high in fat. Watch out for foods like cream, pies, cream cheese, french fries, whole milk, fried chicken, sausages, cheddar, nuts, cakes, cookies, pastries, corned beef, bacon and almost all fast foods.

At this stage you may be thinking that this list of food items contains almost everything you eat and that if you cut all of these out you are going to starve to death. The good news is that nothing could be farther from the truth and that the choice of foods still open to you is enormous. There are two ways to approach this problem.

The first method is to just replace items in your current diet with foods that are lower in fat or salt. For example, you might replace normal full-fat milk with half-fat or semi-skimmed milk and regular ground beef with ground lean beef.

The second method is to introduce new food items into your diet and to replace some of your present high fat favorites. For example, add more fresh fruit and vegetables into your meal plan and replace french fries with boiled or baked potatoes and rather than frying food {try grilling|grill it. Grilled fish and meat is not only far better for you but it also tastes delicious.

High blood pressure really does not need to be a problem for most of us and some simply changes to what we eat can solve the problem easily and quickly.

Article Source: http://www.orbitaloc.com/

TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides information and advice of all aspects of controlling your blood pressure including choosing the best blood pressure monitor for use at home to selecting foods that lower blood pressure

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