Two Ways to Lower Your Blood Pressure

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a leading cause of stroke and heart disease. See my recent post on the importance of checking your blood pressure at home. Hypertension or prehypertension (elevated blood pressure not reaching the level of hypertension) affects more than half of Americans. The reasons are obvious: We are overweight and out of shape, and we eat a huge amount of salt.

Many, if not most, people will need medical treatment to control their blood pressure. Some, though, can make a real difference on their own. The two best ways are to eat less salt and to exercise.

In medical school, we learned that eating salt affects blood pressure. In nature, animals get little salt, and humans were no exception. Now, salt is in all prepared foods, and restaurants load the salt into the food. We love the taste of salt. That is why we eat it. It’s the same reason we eat sugar. We evolved to love salt because it was scarce thousands of years ago. We needed as much as we could find, presumably to keep our blood pressure up if we bled or became ill or dehydrated. If we started with low blood pressure, we would die sooner.

Now, we eat way too much. There are tribes in South America that survive on a few hundred milligrams of sodium a day. Last night, my wife and I had ham, and my serving had 1800 mg of sodium. Soups are nearly as bad. Few people know that a serving of cottage cheese has 500mg of sodium. We love salt.

Experts have debated the importance of lowering your salt intake, but now it is clear that it helps. An elegant study published a few months ago showed that switching from a high-sodium diet to a low-sodium diet may lower your blood pressure by eight points. That is impressive. If you go slowly, you will hardly notice the change in taste. Some of you will not want to cut your salt intake that much. Fine, cutting it less still makes a difference.

How can you cut your salt intake? Start with never adding salt to anything. Then, decrease your reliance on packaged foods and restaurants. Especially avoid prepared foods with liquids. The reason soup has so much sodium, compared to salted nuts, is that the salt has to dissolve in all that liquid to allow you to taste it. On nuts or even pretzels, you taste it right away. You can also try low-sodium salt. I have tried no-sodium salt but found it tasted like metal. I like Morton’s 50% sodium salt. The taste is fine. You should talk to your doctor if you want to try it. There is potassium in it, which also lowers blood pressure. However, potassium supplements can pose a risk in some medical conditions.

The other way to lower your blood pressure is exercise. Regular exercise lowers blood pressure. It also helps in many other ways. It doesn’t even take brutal workouts to lower your blood pressure. In a recent study, the authors showed the already-known benefits of aerobic and resistance training on blood pressure. Surprising to me was the benefit of isometric exercise, which is when you work your muscles without moving, such as when doing planks. Tai chi may also be beneficial for your blood pressure. You can lower your blood pressure by several points with virtually any form of exercise. Do it regularly.

Again, many people with prehypertension and hypertension will require medications. But if you cut your salt and exercise, you may not. At the least, you will likely not need as much medication. Accomplishing something on your own is its own reward.