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Eating Right Can Reduce Your Blood Pressure

Estimates show that there are almost 73 million adults in the United States alone today who are suffering from high blood pressure and that more than 50,000 individuals will die as a result of this problem during the next year. Sadly, many of these deaths are preventable and one of the easiest and quickest ways to reduce your blood pressure is to adjust your eating habits.

We have seen dramatic changes in our lives in recent years and one very significant change for nearly all of us is seen in what we eat. Those times of enjoying three home-cooked meals every day have gone and have been replaced by to a large extend by convenience foods and fast food which has caused numerous different problems including the growing problems of obesity and high blood pressure. Fortunately, this is a state of affairs which can be easily reversed.

There are two main difficulties with many fast and convenience foods and they are fat and salt, both of which raise your blood pressure.

Salt is added to a huge number of food during processing to add flavor and act as a preservative and your daily consumption of salt can be extremely high without even adding further salt to your meals at the table. In particular, canned foods generally contain very high levels of salt as do pizza and frozen dinners, so look closely at the label and see precisely how much salt (sodium) products have in them before you purchase them. Your total daily intake of sodium should be as low as possible but should not be more than 2,400 milligrams which is about a teaspoonful.

Fat is another enemy when it comes to high blood pressure and, although some fat in the diet is healthy, high fat food should be avoided whenever you can. In addition to fats and oils themselves (such as butter, lard, vegetable oil, margarine and meat dripping) many of our favorite foods are very high in fat. Keep an eye out for foods such as cream, ice cream, cakes, cream cheese, bacon, fried chicken, whole milk, regular ground beef, cookies, pastries, sausages, nuts, pies, french fries, salami, corned beef and nearly 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 this out of your diet you are going to starve to death. The good news is that this is far from the case and that the range of foods open to you is enormous. There are two ways to go about solving this problem.

The first method is to simply replace items in your present diet with food items which are lower in salt or fat. For instance, replace ordinary full-fat milk with semi-skimmed or half-fat milk and regular ground beef with ground lean beef.

The second method is to add new foods into your diet and replace some of your present favorite high fat foods. For instance, add more fresh fruit and vegetables into your meal plan and replace french fries with baked or boiled potatoes and rather than frying your food {try grilling|grill it. Not only is grilled meat and fish much better for you but it also tastes very good.

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

Article Source: http://blisspublisher.com

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

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