Lower Your Blood Pressure, Naturally!

High blood pressure, like all of our modern-day diseases, is a symptom of dysfunction at the cellular level, fueled by unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits.

Did you know that only 1% of hunter-gatherer populations following a traditional Paleolithic diet have high blood pressure? But its prevalence increases when those cultures adopt a Western diet and lifestyle that is characterized by processed and refined foods, sedentary behavior, chronic sleep deprivation, a lack of sun exposure, and excess use of caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco.

I’ve seen it time and time again — when we detox at the cell level and heal our bodies through a whole food diet and other healthy lifestyle changes, blood pressure tends to normalize and people who have been reliant on blood pressure medication often no longer need it.

In short, high blood pressure is caused by a mismatch between our genes and our modern diets and lifestyle.

Eat the rainbow for better health and lower blood pressure.

So, how can you support a healthy blood pressure with dietary and lifestyle modifications?

Dietary Changes

• Reduce carbs to 100 grams a day or less, and lower your sugar intake.
  An increased consumption of sugar, especially sugar sweetened beverages like soda, is associated with high blood pressure. Reducing sugar intake has been shown to lower blood pressure pretty aggressively!
• Increase dietary potassium.
  A diet high in potassium is associated with lower blood pressure. In fact, many researchers believe that the protective effects of potassium are one of the major reasons why hunter gatherers like the Kalahari Bushmen and traditional pygmies of sub-Saharan Africa have such a low incidence of high blood pressure. In Paleolithic diets, the average daily intake of potassium was approximately 10,500 milligrams per day. Nowadays, average Americans only consume around 2,800 mg per day. Pretty crazy, right? Fruits and vegetables like spinach, winter squash, bananas, avocados, sweet potatoes, broccoli, and watermelon are high in potassium, to name a few. Other great sources include fish like salmon — more on that next! I don’t necessarily recommend supplementing potassium, as a high level can be dangerous. Instead focus on eating these whole foods that are potassium dense!
• Eat three servings a week of cold water fish.
  Eating cold water fish three times per week is just as effective as taking a high-dose fish oil supplement. Salmon, tuna, mackerel, and sardines are excellent choices.
• Increase your dietary intake of magnesium, or take a magnesium supplement.
  Increasing magnesium & potassium while decreasing dietary sodium can be just as effective as a prescription medication, in some cases. Nuts and seeds, spinach, beets, greens, and chocolate are the highest food sources of magnesium on a paleo diet. On the supplement front, I prefer Magnesium Glycinate.

Lifestyle Changes

• Maintain a healthy weight.
  If you are overweight, your heart has to work harder to pump blood throughout your body — losing weight is a great way to lighten the load on your cardiovascular system and lower your blood pressure.
• Exercise regularly.
  Mix up high intensity interval training [HIIT] and weight training several times per week, and work on moving around more during the day — the more you move the healthier you’ll be!
• Improve your sleep habits.
  Get 7–9 hours of sleep each night, and treat sleep apnea if you have it. Sleep in a dark room and don’t play on your phone or watch TV right before bed.
• Increase Vitamin D levels.
  Go out in the sunlight for 20 minutes a day when possible to boost Vitamin D levels (or in the winter, take a supplement).
• Meditate and practice deep breathing.
  Meditation has a relaxing effect on our nervous systems, as does deep breathing. Just three to four sessions of deep breathing per week is enough to reduce blood pressure! Breathe deeply for 10–15 minutes at a time, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth to the same count (three or four seconds is comfortable for most people).

Get out and get moving!

Supplemental Support

I always recommend getting your nutrients through a whole food diet instead of relying on supplements. In the short term, however, supplements can have a pretty profound impact, because they’re often more concentrated than a raw food counterpart. In the long run, though, the secret to health is not in a pill — it’s in what kind of food you put in your body. That’s what’s going to determine whether you’re healthy or not!

A supplement should be, as the name implies, a supplement to an otherwise healthy lifestyle, it does not make up for a bad lifestyle.

If you want to try supplements to lower blood pressure, try one or more of the following after checking with your physician for approval:

• Coenzyme Q10
• Garlic
• Magnesium (500–1,000 mg/day)
• Liposomal Vitamin C (or juice two lemons a day and ingest to boost naturally)
• Calcium

Here’s to your happy, healthy heart!