Treat Hypertension With DASH
August 12, 2009
Hypertension is often thought to be lifestyle disease. Unhealthy diet could raise the blood pressure level. To normalize blood pressure level, physicians often recommend DASH or Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension.
By adhering to the DASH diet, blood pressure level could be reduced within a few weeks. Besides treating hypertension, DASH could also prevent occurrence of several other illnesses such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
Standard DASH diet vs. lower sodium DASH diet
There are two types of DASH diets – standard dash diet and lower sodium dash diet. While limiting sodium intake is the focal point of both the DASH diet categories, but the lower sodium DASH diet is recommended for people who suffer from extremely high blood pressure level.
Limit sodium intake
Up to 2,400mg of table salt is safe for a healthy individual. However, people suffering from hypertension should consume not more 1,500mg salt each day. Sometimes rock salt could be used as a substitute for table salt. In the absence of salt, to make your foods palatable, you can season your foods with spices.
What to eat
Besides limiting salt intake, DASH diet also recommends the proportion of different food categories in your regular meal. You can have six to eight servings of whole grains each day. Whole grains are rich in fibers and essential nutrients.
Eight to ten servings of fruits and vegetables should be part of your daily diet. You can have fresh as well as frozen vegetables. Both fresh and dried fruits could be savored. Two to three servings of dairy products could be included in your diet.
Dairy products are rich sources of calcium, protein and vitamin D. For protein, vitamin Bs, zinc and iron you could rely on lean meats, poultry and fish. DASH diet recommends not more than six servings of meat, fish and poultry.
Meat servings should be small in size, a single serving being around 1oz. You can have up to five servings of nuts, beans and seeds every week. While our body needs fats for absorption of vitamins, excess fat could damage our blood vessels. In the DASH diet, fats and oil consumption should be restricted to three servings per day.
Thanks for sharing such nice diet plan for hypertension. I like this site.
Well my uncle is suffering from this problem and he uses lower sodium dash diet. He told me it gives good result.