It is estimated that there are almost 73 million adults in the United States alone today who are suffering from high blood pressure and that in excess of 50,000 individuals will die as a direct result of this condition during the course of this year. Sadly, many of these deaths could be prevented and one of the fastest and easiest ways to lower your blood pressure is to alter your eating habits.
There have been significant changes in our lives in recent years and one particularly significant change for most of us is seen in what we eat. Those days of three square home-cooked meals every day have gone and have been replaced by to a large extend by convenience foods and fast food which has caused a variety of different problems including the increasing problems of both obesity and high blood pressure. Happily, this is a situation which it is very easy to reverse.
There are two major problems with many fast and convenience foods and these are salt and fat, both of which have been clearly shown to increase your blood pressure.
Salt is added to a huge range of food during the manufacturing and packaging process to both add flavor and act as a preservative and your daily consumption of salt can be extremely high without you adding further salt to your food at the table. Canned foods in particular normally contain high levels of salt as do pizza and frozen dinners, so look carefully at the label and determine precisely how much salt (sodium) products contain before you pick them. Your total daily intake of sodium should be as low as you can get it but ought not to be more than 2,400 milligrams which is equivalent to about a teaspoonful.
Fat is another enemy when it comes to high blood pressure and, although a bit of fat in your diet is good for you, high fat food should be avoided whenever possible. In addition to fats and oils themselves (like butter, vegetable oil, lard, margarine and meat dripping) a lot of our favorite foods are high in fat. Keep an eye out for foods like cream, sausages, french fries, cookies, whole milk, cheddar, pies, cakes, fried chicken, salami, nuts, bacon and almost all fast foods.
Now at this stage you may be thinking that this list contains just about everything you eat and that if you cut all of these out of your diet you will 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 extensive. There are two ways to tackle this problem.
The first is to merely replace items in your current diet with food items which are lower in salt or fat. For instance, you could replace ordinary full-fat milk with half-fat or semi-skimmed milk and regular ground beef with lean ground beef.
The second is to introduce new food items into your diet and replace some of your present favorite high fat foods. For instance, add more fresh vegetables and fruit into your meal planning and replace french fries with boiled or baked potatoes and instead of frying food {try grilling|grill it. Not only is grilled fish and meat much better for you but it also tastes delicious.
High blood pressure does not have to be a problem for most of us and some simply changes to what we eat can solve the problem very quickly and very easily.
Author Resource:-
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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