...continuation from part 1...
Lifestyle and Home Remedies
Lifestyle changes can help you control and prevent high blood pressure, even if you're taking blood pressure medication. Here's what you can do:
- Eat healthy foods. Try the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy foods. Get plenty of potassium, which can help prevent and control high blood pressure. Eat less saturated fat and total fat.
- Decrease the salt in your diet. A lower sodium level — 1,500 milligrams (mg) a day — is appropriate for people 51 years of age or older, and individuals of any age who are African-American or who have hypertension, diabetes or chronic kidney disease. Otherwise healthy people can aim for 2,300 mg a day or less. While you can reduce the amount of salt you eat by putting down the saltshaker, you should also pay attention to the amount of salt that's in the processed foods you eat, such as canned soups or frozen dinners.
- Maintain a healthy weight. If you're overweight, losing even 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) can lower your blood pressure.
- Increase physical activity. Regular physical activity can help lower your blood pressure and keep your weight under control. Strive for at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day.
- Limit alcohol. Even if you're healthy, alcohol can raise your blood pressure. If you choose to drink alcohol, do so in moderation. For healthy adults, that means up to one drink a day for women of all ages and men older than age 65, and up to two drinks a day for men age 65 and younger.
- Don't smoke. Tobacco injures blood vessel walls and speeds up the process of hardening of the arteries. If you smoke, ask your doctor to help you quit.
- Manage stress. Reduce stress as much as possible. Practice healthy coping techniques, such as muscle relaxation and deep breathing. Getting plenty of sleep can help, too.
- Monitor your blood pressure at home. Home blood pressure monitoring can help you keep closer tabs on your blood pressure, show if medication is working, and even alert you and your doctor to potential complications. If your blood pressure is under control, you may be able to make fewer visits to your doctor if you monitor your blood pressure at home.
- Practice relaxation or slow, deep breathing. Practice taking deep, slow breaths to help relax. There are some devices available that can help guide your breathing for relaxation. However, it's questionable whether these devices have a significant effect on lowering your blood pressure.
Alternative Medicine
Although diet and exercise are the most appropriate tactics to lower your blood pressure, some supplements also may help lower it. However, more research is needed. These include:
- Fiber, such as blond psyllium and wheat bran
- Minerals, such as calcium and potassium
- Supplements that increase nitric oxide or widen blood vessels (vasodilators), such as cocoa, Coenzyme Q10 or garlic
- Omega-3 fatty acids, found in fatty fish, fish oil supplements or flaxseed
- Probiotics, found in fermented dairy products such as cultured yogurt, buttermilk, acidophilus milk, cultured sour cream and cheese
While it's best to include these supplements in your diet as foods, you can also take supplement pills or capsules. Probiotic supplements, however, have been studied in a limited number of trials, and conclusions haven't been made regarding their potential effect on blood pressure. Talk to your doctor before adding any of these supplements to your blood pressure treatment. Some supplements can interact with medications, causing harmful side effects, such as an increased bleeding risk that could be fatal.
You can also practice relaxation techniques, such as yoga or deep breathing, to help you relax and reduce your stress level. These practices may temporarily reduce your blood pressure.
MEDICAL NOTES:
Most of the time, high blood pressure can be controlled with medicine and lifestyle changes. However, there is now an increasing number of patients who even with continuous and religious medicine intake and lifestyle changes, their blood pressure is still uncontrolled. Mr. Cabe even had some of the complications of chronic hypertension which is congestive heart failure and blood vessel damage or arteriosclerosis that needed a heart bypass. Current research and convention in Chicago on Integrative Medicine recognized that some of the causes of high blood pressure is deposition of heavy metals and pollutants in the blood vessel wall. One good example of heavy metal they intensively discussed is the lead that we get from inhalation of polluted air mostly from car exhaust or gasoline combustion. Actually, there’s a lot more of other pollutants that can deposit in our blood vessels like the pesticides from vegetables, toxic preservatives from unhealthy snack foods, chlorine from tap water intake, etc. These chemicals may inhibit the effects of antihypertensive drugs on the blood vessel wall making us unresponsive to conventional medications. Only detoxifiers like the ones contained in Quantumin plus will eliminate these deposits and eventually make hypertensives more responsive to medical treatment. Surprisingly at times, the blood vessel obstruction that made someone a candidate for bypass was also corrected by effective detoxifiers contained in Quantumin plus!