Top 5 Ways To Naturally Lower Blood Pressure
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Follow These Tips To Manage Your Blood Pressure
On today’s episode of Live Lean TV, I’m sharing the top 5 ways to naturally lower blood pressure and manage it for life.
In addition to this, I’ll also be sharing:
- What blood is pressure?
- Which lifestyle factors increase blood pressure?
- What is the normal blood pressure for adults?
- Which foods and supplements may help naturally lower blood pressure?
I should also mention that a lot of this information came from the research conducted by the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and the National Library Of Medicine.
This topic was important to me due to a past experience I had with what I thought was high blood pressure.
Fortunately, the results from my high blood pressure test was due to my anxiety, but I’ll talk about that more in a bit.
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With that said, let’s jump into it.
What Is Blood Pressure?
Let’s first quickly talk about what is blood pressure.
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a major risk factor of heart disease and stroke.
As the heart pumps blood, the force of the blood pushing against the artery walls, is blood pressure.
When the arteries get stiff, it causes blood pressure to go up.
Which Lifestyle Factors Increases Your Blood Pressure?
The following lifestyle factors reduce your blood vessels flexibility and ability to dilate, thus increasing blood pressure:
- Unhealthy diet
- high in sugar
- processed foods high in sodium
- excessive alcohol
- Stress
- Lack of physical activity
- Being obese or overweight
- Poor sleep
- Cigarette smoking
What Is The Normal Blood Pressure For Adults?
The normal guideline for a resting good blood pressure is often defined as 120/80.
Let’s talk about what these numbers mean.
- Systolic Pressure: the top number
- This measures the pressure caused by the heart contracting to push the blood out.
- Diastolic Pressure: the bottom number
- This measures the pressure when the heart relaxes and fills up with blood.
When you measure your blood pressure, don’t be alarmed if your blood pressure in the morning is different than when you measure it at different times of the day.
Measuring your blood pressure in the morning, after a good night’s rest, or a deep breathing mediation session, will typically be lower than if you measure it in the afternoon or evening.
Your blood pressure may be temporarily higher after:
- a night of poor sleep
- eating a big meal
- drinking caffeine, including coffee
- during a stressful moment in your life
I can attest, because I have personal experience with this.
My Past Experience After Receiving A Higher Blood Pressure Measurement
Back in July 2019, I visited the doctor for my vasectomy.
Side note: We hit the jackpot with a beautiful daughter and son, so we are 100% certain we didn’t want anymore kids.
However, the thought of the doctor making a snip around my goodies, obviously made me nervous, and my anxiety was higher then usual.
I also had a caffeinated pre-workout drink and I worked out before my doctor’s appointment.
Before making the snip, the nurse checked my blood pressure and she was surprised that it came back higher than anticipated.
White Coat Syndrome
She took a look at me and quickly assured me that it was probably just a case of “white coat syndrome”.
White coat syndrome often occurs when blood pressure readings are higher at a doctor’s office due to the patient’s anxiety of being at the doctor’s office.
Even though this made sense to me, based on my personality, I needed further confirmation.
To ease my anxiety, my doctor recommended I buy a blood pressure monitor so I could measure my blood pressure in a controlled environment.
She told me to measure it first thing in the morning, for the next 5 days.
I Bought A Blood Pressure Monitor To Keep Track Of My Blood Pressure
To do this, I simply ordered this blood pressure monitor on Amazon for $40.
Then I measured my blood pressure every morning for the next week, and tracked it in the app that comes with the blood pressure monitor.
The good news is, as expected, my blood pressure came back normal, when I was in a rested and relaxed state.
Long story short, even if you live a healthy lifestyle, your environment and other short-term stressful factors can temporarily increase your blood pressure.
However, if you are overweight, you eat an unhealthy diet, you don’t workout, you drink a lot of alcohol, you’re stressed, you don’t sleep, and you smoke cigarettes, having high blood pressure should be a major concern.
Top 5 Ways To Naturally Lower Blood Pressure
Here are the top 5 ways to naturally lower blood pressure and manage it for life.
#1. Lose Weight, Especially From Your Waistline
Weight loss is one of the most important ways to naturally lower blood pressure.
When you are obese or overweight, your heart has to work harder to circulate blood throughout your body.
According to the Mayo Clinic, carrying too much weight around your waistline increases your risk of high blood pressure.
The Mayo Clinic suggests:
- Men are at risk of high blood pressure if their waist measurement is greater than 40 inches.
- Women are at risk of high blood pressure if their waist measurement is greater than 35 inches.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a general rule of thumb is that every kilogram you lose, your blood pressure can decrease by 1 millimeter of mercury (mm HG).
Now, if you’re wondering how you can start losing weight, this leads me to the second way to naturally lower blood pressure.
#2. Following A Healthy Diet High In High Quality Whole Foods
The most important aspect of losing weight is your diet.
This includes following a healthy diet filled with lots of:
Studies show eating at least 25% of your calories from protein can decrease blood pressure, since protein can help dilate and decrease pressure in the blood vessels.
High quality complete protein sources high in amino acids include:
These complete protein sources will keep you:
- feeling full and reduce your hunger so you eat less calories throughout the day
- build more metabolism boosting lean muscle tissue
Grass fed beef and fish is also high in the healthy omega 3 fats, EPA and DHA, which as I’ll share shortly, may also help you naturally lower blood pressure.
Limit Salt Consumption
If you currently have high blood pressure, it’s also very important to limit the amount of processed foods high in sodium.
Not only are processed foods high in sodium, they are also very fattening as they are essentially empty calories, meaning they don’t fuel your body or fill you up.
Too much sodium intake, regardless if it’s from pink himilayan salt, sea salt, or regular table salt, can increase blood pressure.
The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of 1500 mg of sodium per day.
However, if this is a challenge for you, the Cleveland Clinic acknowledges that people can still get away with 2300 mg of sodium per day, as the extra 800 mg does not seem to drastically increase blood pressure.
Other Foods Than May Help Lower Blood Pressure Include:
- Cocoa Powder
- Spinach
- Spinach contains potassium, magnesium, and folate to maintain normal blood flow.
- In addition to adding spinach to your salads, you can also add spinach to your smoothies.
- Garlic
- Garlic contains specific compounds that may help lower blood pressure.
- Start adding more garlic powder, minced garlic, and roasted garlic to your favorite meals.
- Pumpkin
- Pumpkin contains potassium which helps flush out excess sodium.
- You can add canned pumpkin puree to your favorite homemade baked goods, such as these pumpkin chocolate chip bars.
- Beets and Watermelon
- Beets and watermelon help decrease blood pressure by increasing nitric oxide production.
- Increased nitric oxide production can dilate and increase the flexibility of blood vessels.
#3. Workout
It’s time to get active.
Exercise in the form of cardio and weight training helps control blood pressure, by keeping your blood vessels flexible, so they can dilate when needed.
Being active also helps reduce the risk of obesity, which is a key contributor to high blood pressure.
When most people think about weight loss, they often think they only need to do cardio.
Sure cardio activities such as walking can help, however following a properly structured workout program, that combines weight training and cardio, is key for sustainable weight loss and blood pressure management.
By lifting weights, you will add more lean muscle mass to your body, your metabolism will increase, thus you’ll be burning more calories, and body fat, throughout the day.
This is why building muscle is the often missing key factor in sustainable fat loss.
#4. Supplements
The following supplements may help naturally lower blood pressure.
- Potassium
- When it comes to blood pressure, potassium is an important electrolyte that does the inverse of sodium.
- If your potassium intake is low, it may also increases blood pressure.
- Magnesium
- Taking a high quality magnesium supplement a day may help lower blood pressure by:
- relaxing the body
- calming the nervous system
- lowering heart rate
- relaxing blood vessels
- Taking a high quality magnesium supplement a day may help lower blood pressure by:
- High quality fish oil
- Taking a high quality omega 3 fish oil may help lower blood pressure by improving blood flow and vasodilation
- I’ve been supplementing with this high quality fish oil from Nordic Naturals for years.
- Vitamin D3
- Garlic extract
#5. Reduce Alcohol Consumption
The last tip to help naturally lower blood pressure, is to reduce alcohol consumption.
It is recommended for:
- Men to limit alcohol to 2 drinks or less per day
- Women to limit alcohol to 1 drink per day
There you go Live Lean Nation.
Those were the top 5 ways to naturally lower blood pressure.
I hope this helped.
Thanks for watching and keep Living Lean.
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Question Of The Day:
- When was the last time you had your blood pressure measured?
- Which of these blood pressure management tips helped you the most?
Share your experiences in the comment section below.
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Brad Gouthro is the founder of Live Lean TV, a media company focused on helping men and women “Live Lean” 365 days a year. Brad’s programs and content have helped millions of people all over the world learn how to get in shape, and more importantly, sustain it for life.
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