There are a few ways of preventing high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, as the problem is linked to your diet, heredity and health. The best recommendation for controlling high blood pressure is to live a healthy lifestyle and getting regular physical activity, though what you eat is also very important.

The most important approach to successful high blood pressure treatment is to change your diet. There are several diets or eating plans that have been developed specifically to reduce blood pressure as many foods can cause high blood pressure. One of these diets, known as DASH, focuses on eating low fat foods, low cholesterol foods, fruits, vegetables and low fat dairy products. Whole grains, fish, nuts and poultry are all suggested sources of protein.

There is another diet known as the DASH-sodium diet, as your sodium intake affects your blood pressure. This diet limits your sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams a day. Research has shown that decreasing your sodium intake can help control high blood pressure.

Many other factors such as being overweight can also produce high blood pressure. You can prevent high blood pressure by losing a small amount of weight, such as ten pounds or so. Besides decreasing high blood pressure, losing weight also decreases the chance of developing cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol and diabetes. Losing weight has a great range of health rewards.

Besides losing weight, you also want to get regular physical activity, as the more you exercise the lower your resting heart rate will be when you are not working out. You do not need to go all out; simply start moderately. Just walking 30 minutes a day is enough to help reduce your blood pressure though it is recommended that you do different things to keep it interesting. Exercise also helps you when looking to lose weight.

Blood pressure is also related to alcohol consumption, and over consumption can lead to high blood pressure. You must drink moderately, which means two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women. One ounce of strong liquor, 5 ounces of wine and 12 ounces of beer is considered one drink. If you are endeavoring to lose weight then alcoholic beverages can make this challenging.

Smoking also causes high blood pressure and if you’re a smoker then you need to quit in order to prevent high blood pressure. You can bring your blood pressure back to normal in a year simply by quitting smoking.

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