Green Smoothie For 1200 Calorie Dash Diet

The green smoothie can help transform your body so quickly, you will be mad at yourself for not trying it earlier.
I first heard a passionate “ode to green smoothie” from Victoria Boutenko, a raw food enthusiast whose whole family is called “the raw family.”  Victoria gave a compelling argument for using green smoothies:

 ”A molecule of chlorophyll closely resembles a molecule of human blood. According to the teachings of Dr. Ann Wigmore, consuming chlorophyll is like receiving a healthy blood transfusion. Many people do not consume enough greens, even those who stay on a raw food diet. By drinking two or three cups of green smoothies daily you will consume enough greens for the day to nourish your body, and all of the beneficial nutrients will be well assimilated.

Green smoothies are easy to make, and quick to clean up after. In contrast, juicing greens is time consuming, messy, and expensive. Many people abandon drinking green juices on a regular basis for those reasons. To prepare a pitcher of green smoothie takes less than 5 minutes, including cleaning.”

That good for you and that easy to make? I have been making green smoothies ever since.

Some people try to make a green smoothie and get a foamy, unpalatable mixture.  They get turned off by  this. You can make your green smoothies tasty by adding fruit to them. Fruit contains soluble fiber as opposed to the insoluble fiber in green leafy vegetables. Soluble fiber makes the texture of a green smoothie creamy and delicious. The perfect green smoothie has 60% fruit and 40% greens.

Green smoothie for 1200 calorie diet

The green smoothie is a great food to lower blood pressure. Remember that the DASH diet lowers blood pressure by combining foods that are rich is Potassium and Magnesium. Making banana smoothies while on your 1200 calorie diet is a great idea because you take in your Potassium together with all the goodness of greens and it gets absorbed easily.

Here is a simple recipe that we call “Shrek’s Delight” due to its swampy look and green colour:

Green Smoothie Recipe – Shrek’s Delight

Ingredients:

• 1 cup spinach or kale
• 1 banana
• 1 cup almond milk
• Add water to taste

Directions:

1. Wash spinach and kale;  peel banana
2. Blend all ingredients together and add water or almond milk to taste

It’s important to not consume any empty calories when on 1200 calorie DASH diet – you simply cannot afford it. Green smoothies are low in calories and high in blood pressure lowering ingredients. You will surely receive maximum nutrition while on a restricted calorie diet. This helps you to keep losing weight.

You can add ground flax meal to increase the health benefits of your green smoothie.

Enjoy!

If you want to read the results of Victoria’s research on the diet of the chimps (whose DNA makeup resembles that of a human about 94%) , here is her own explanation of how she arrived at the need to eat more greens: Victoria Boutenko About Need For A Green Smoothie

Hibiscus Tea | Herbs That Lower Blood Pressure

If you are looking for natural ways to lower blood pressure, check out hibiscus tea, also known as karkade tea. What’s great about using herbal solutions to fight hypertension is that they are safe and have practically no side effects. It will take longer to achieve results, yet if it works for you, you can easily use this solution for years to control your hypertension. All you need to do is  incorporate a moderate amount of hibiscus tea into your daily diet.

Hibiscus Tea To Lower Diastolic Blood Pressure

If you have prehypertension, meaning your blood pressure is between 120/80 and 140/90, you especially need to consider gentle treatments such as hibiscus tea. You might be able to reduce your blood pressure without drugs and avoid all the horrible side effects that using drugs may cause to your body.

If you have moderate hypertension, you, too, are likely to benefit from drinking this kind of tea. In fact, studies were conducted specifically on people with mild to moderate hypertension.  Participants had to drink half a liter hibiscus tea before breakfast (group 1) or take captopril, a popular antihypertensive medication (group 2).  The reduction in diastolic blood pressure (lower number) was statistically similar in both groups: 79% of people drinking tea and 84% of people taking the drug had their blood pressure reduced by 10 points!

Ten points is a big deal. Have you ever experienced a death in the family, where a relatively young woman, a mother, dies of a heart attack? Have you ever witnessed the debilitating effect of a stroke on stroke survivors who lose mobility, the ability to speak, or eyesight?  For people who did, it won’t take long to choose drinking hibiscus tea to decrease their chances of avoiding such a tragedy happening to them.

How does hibiscus tea work to lower blood pressure?

Most drugs lower blood pressure in one of the two ways:

• act as diuretics (increasing the volume of urine and reducing the volume of blood, and therefore reducing its pressure on the blood vessel walls)
• or increasing the diameter of the blood vessels, mostly by relaxing blood vessel walls so that they don’t constrict.

The current hypothesis is that hibiscus provides both of these effects due to the presence of flavonoids known as anthocyanins. Flavonoids in general provide antioxidants to protect the body from the environment’s oxidative effect, so the benefits of hibiscus tea go further than just lowering your blood pressure. It helps to protect your heart among other benefits.

hibiscus tea lowers blood pressure

Where to get hibiscus tea and how to use it

Unlike acai berry and other expensive exotic health foods, hibiscus tea is cheap and readily available both at the major supermarkets, specialty tea stores, and at the health stores. You can buy it online as well.

Hibiscus flowers are bright red, and the tea is bright red too. It has a pleasant taste, enjoyed by most people who drink it. It is very popular in some parts of the world.

Hibiscus tea ideas

Classic hibiscus tea can be made as per instructions on the package.  Experiment with adding lemon, honey or cinnamon to find the taste that you enjoy the most.

Hibiscus tea can be stored quite well, so you can make your tea concentrated and store it on the counter for up to 48 hours at the normal temperature of 20-22 degrees C, or even longer in the fridge with a tight cover. Make it concentrated, so that when you need it, you can add either cold or hot water, and won’t need to microwave it. Microwaving kills nutrients, so why do it if you can preserve them?

You can experiment by mixing it up with other teas.  You can try dried fruit tea with hibiscus, white or oolong tea with hibiscus, and even ginger tea with hibiscus.  Take a look at my ginger tea recipe, and add hibiscus to it. Ginger tea has excellent blood-pressure lowering effects as well.

Make sure to drink a lot of tea every day. If you mix it with other teas, ensure that 2 cups of your daily tea intake are hibiscus tea (so if you mix half fruit tea and half hibiscus tea, you need to drink 4 cups a day).

Make hibiscus tea a part of your 1200 calorie DASH diet. It’s hard to get 100% balanced nutrition on 1200 calories a day, so adding hibiscus tea that contains minerals, vitamins and antioxidants helps to keep your diet more nutritious (and blood pressure lowering.)

Hypertension is a tough condition to deal with as it doesn’t manifest itself and doesn’t always get cured by standard drugs or lifestyle changes. This is why it’s your best bet to find what works for you by trial and error. And it is reassuring to know that more than one scientific research backs up using hibiscus tea to lower your blood pressure.

Hypertension Warning Signs

The scary truth is that most people experience no hypertension warning signs at all.

Blood pressure statistics show that one in three US women has hypertension. This is a whopping 13 million women who are at elevated risk of heart attack, stroke, cardiac arrest and other heart events that lead to death or disability.

The sad part of this, though, is that one in four of these women is not even aware that she has high blood pressure. If you do your math, eight women out of every hundred have no idea that they are in danger.

Hypertension warning signs are practically non-existent. When most people feel them, their blood pressure is so high, that their lives are in danger.

However, some people do feel warning signs and symptoms of hypertension. Besides nausea and headache, frequently referred to by the representatives of the medical profession, people feel other symptoms of high blood pressure.

Women describe hypertension warning signs

Here are some descriptions by high blood pressure sufferers:

When my BP is up I have symptoms. I know they call it the “silent killer” but I know when it’s up. I get a terrible headache and frequent urination.

… I checked my blood pressure at Wal-Mart (I had been very nauseous for several days and had a constant, almost debilitating migraine) and it was 171/113! I knew I was a walking time bomb, and despite my own self-harming behaviors, I really DON’T want to die young!

I definitely felt WAY out of sorts, almost like an out of control hotness and just unwell. Some people do feel headaches when it’s really high too. There is a reason they call it the silent killer, because most people don’t know. But you are pretty astute to be able to sense when you are not quite right.

And the case where the situation went way out of control:

On May 21 I woke up to find I’d had a second stroke. When the paramedics took my B/P it was 170/95 on both sides. I was transferred from my local hospital to the hospital where my surgeon was and my surgery was put ahead to the next day.

As you can see from the testimonies of these women, they felt unwell, they had headaches and other subtle signs that something was not right. Always, always check your blood pressure if you feel these kinds of signs. Even better, go for your annual check up, and your doctor will measure your blood pressure and make sure you know where you stand.

If you happen to be an African American woman, you have even more reasons to be concerned.
Death statistics are hard to ignore:

In 2006 the death rates per 100,000 population from high blood pressure were 15.6 for white males, 51.1 for black males, 14.3 for white females and 37.7 for black females

As you can see, for some reason African American women and men alike die of hypertension three times more often that white men and women.

Controlling Hypertension

Your first step in controlling hypertension is simple: become aware that you need to control it. Measure your blood pressure using publicly available blood pressure monitors, ask your doctor, and find out whether you need to control your hypertension.

Your second step is to reduce your blood pressure, whether naturally or with the help of drugs.

Your next step is experimenting with natural ways to reduce blood pressure in order to find out which one is the most effective for you.

Most people who don’t want to take drugs, choose to control their hypertension with the following methods:
- Exercise
- Weight Loss
- Stress reduction (yoga, breathing, meditation)
- DASH diet for hypertension
- Low Sodium diet
- High Potassium-Magnesium diet
- Low fat plant-based diet.

As everyone is different, these methods have different impacts on the individual blood pressure levels.

Don’t wait to experience hypertension warning signs… Check your blood pressure regularly.

Purple Potatoes Lower Blood Pressure – New Research

Purple potatoes lower blood pressure in overweight individuals, says the new study, recently published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Not only do they lower blood pressure, but they also help to reduce weight.

People in Korea and Peru knew it for centuries, as purple sweet potato is widely used there for these health benefits along with a number of others. But this is the first study to scientifically prove this belief and quantify the drop in blood pressure in the test group of individuals with excess weight.

Purple Potato - Food That Lowers Blood Pressure

Test subjects were eating 6-8 small microwaved sweet potatoes (Purple Majesty) per day. They were able to drop both systolic and diastolic blood pressure by 4 percent. Although this seems small, this can move an individual out of the high risk zone for the heart disease into prehypertension zone. Interestingly enough, none of the study participants gained weight.

People in the US and Canada are careful to avoid potatoes when on a weight loss quest, but they should realize that different types of potatoes have different health benefits. Colour in sweet potatoes is a sign of antioxidants readily available to heal your body from a variety of ailments. Purple potatoes are not very popular in the Western diet, but perhaps it’s time to take another look at this root vegetable that may work better than anti-hypertensive drugs (and without side effects, too).

Purple Sweet Potatoes Recipes

Incorporate purple potatoes into your 1200 calorie DASH diet. One cup of purple potatoes provides two vegetable servings per day and contains only 114 calories. Two cups will cover your daily quota of vegetables. The trick is that you don’t just eat vegetables, you eat vegetables that lower blood pressure effectively.

The easiest healthy way to eat more sweet potatoes

We don’t generally advise microwaving as a healthy way to prepare your food, but we also believe we should look at the alternatives available. If you are so busy that microwaving is the only alternative to eating junk food, then by all means, go ahead and put those sweet potatoes into your microwave. They will store well and you can use them in a number of recipes.

If you can bake instead of microwaving, this option is much healthier.

I love baked sweet potatoes with a drop of lime juice instead of salt. It creates an amazing sweet and sour combination, pleasing to the palate.

Baked purple sweet potatoes can be mashed.

Baked purple sweet potatoes can be used in a salad.

One of the best ways to reap the benefits of the purple sweet potatoes is to juice them. Purple potato juice has healing properties not only for the high blood pressure, but also for digestion and the liver.

If you are BBQ-ing, slice purple potatoes in 1/2 inch thick slices, add some cayenne pepper and lime juice, and wrap them in aluminum foil, tightly closing any holes in it. Place on the BBQ together with the other stuff, and eat as a side dish.

I hope these ideas will help you start using more purple potatoes in your menu. If you are in the US or Canada, try oriental food stores. I always shop for purple sweet potatoes in the Chinese supermarket.

Add Pumpkin Soup Recipe Into Dash Diet Menu

Whether you are on 1200 calorie or 1600 calorie DASH diet,  sometimes it feels like you are starving yourself. The solution to keeping hunger at bay is using complex carb meals that will allow you to function till the next meal without feeling hungry. Even more importantly, you want these meals to be low calorie meals so that you can stick to your daily calorie allotment.

Check out this low fat pumpkin soup – originally from South America, it was sent to me by my friend who lived there for a long time. It contains high amount of L-Arginine rich beans, which means it doesn’t just suit the DASH diet, it acts as one of the quickest ways to lower blood pressure.

Produces 8 portions, about 170 calories each.
Each portion contains:

• 1 Serving of Grains
• 4 Servings of Vegetables (on the 1200 calorie DASH diet, that’s about how much you need for a day)
• 1 Serving of Beans (Nuts, Seeds, Legumes group)

Pumpkin Soup Recipe DASH Diet

DASH Diet Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 piece of pumpkin (or 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of frozen cubed pumpkin or butternut squash)
• 300 g dry kidney beans or 4 cups cooked  (or 2 cans cooked)
• 1.2  lbs frozen corn
• 2 medium carrots, sliced into matchsticks
• 1 tomato, cubed
• 1 big onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 2 tsp of olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Low-Fat, Low-Carb Or 1200 Calorie DASH Diet?

Do you want to lose weight using the most effective diet? Are you wondering whether you should go on low-fat, low-carb or DASH diet to get the best results?

Is your head hurting yet from all those diets promising you rapid weight loss, each endorsed by doctors and weight loss professionals?

New research has just come out and, thankfully, provided sound recommendations based on years of experiements with large groups of volunteers.

You’ve heard statements that you won’t need to count calories as long as you eat certain foods in certain proportions…  Well, this seem to work only if your overall calorie consumption is reduced.

The results of this study suggest that  as long as you reduce the total amount of consumed calories, it  doesn’t matter where these calories come from.

Christopher Gardner, a Stanford University professor, said upon reviewing the paper,“If you’re happier doing it low fat, or happier doing it low carb, this paper says it’s okay to do it either way. They were equally successful.”

Earlier conclusions suggested that low carb diets seemed to work a bit better than the others, especially low carb high protein diets, but there is no consencus among scientists anymore. The key to success is COMPLIANCE and PERSISTENCE, as in every diet group individuals who stuck to the diet consistently lost the most weight and kept it off.

Because many people struggle with dieting, study authors recommended that they should select the one that’s easiest for them to stick with.

Dr. Bray, one of the study authors,  recommended the DASH Diet Plan, a diet  endorsed by the National Institutes of Health

“We would encourage patients to follow this diet modified as they and their health care provider chose to emphasize macronutrient changes that they thought might work best for them,” Bray said.

1200 calorie DASH diet for weight loss

The DASH diet plan emphasizes macronutrients consumed and therefore doesn’t control calories well. In order to make it a weight loss diet, it is important to tune it to provide a calorie deficit for every individual patient.

The DASH diet is very successful in reducing blood pressure, and originally, weight loss was a side benefit of it. However, more people start using the DASH diet plan to lose weight and fight hypertension at the same time, feeling the snowball effect of these two actions taken together.

Add to this carefully designed meals with Top L-Arginine Foods that lower blood pressure, and you are practically destined to succeed in bringing your blood pressure down.

So if you are a moderately active woman who exercises two-three times a week, you likely need more than 1200 calories per day to keep going. You can lose weight on 1500 calorie DASH diet. But if you are a short, rather inactive woman with a desk job and car to deliver you to your work and back, 1200 calorie DASH diet is a great tool to losing weight and fighting your hypertension.

You can get great calculators of needed calories, best exercise, and encouragement to stick to your diet plan at the #1 Fat Loss Community on Internet, Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle Inner Circle Forum.

And you will get my best easy and healthy 1200 calorie DASH meal plans at this site. Stay tuned!

References: http://www.healthzone.ca/health/dietfitness/article/1123698–calories-count-but-not-where-they-come-from-study

DASH diet menu

Twice in my life have I successfully used DASH diet menu to lower my blood pressure. When the stress of everyday life becomes intolerable, when I lose my sleep and gain weight, my blood pressure starts to creep up to the high border of prehypertension range.

First thing my doctor have ( correctly) advised was to completely cut off Sodium from my diet. No processed foods with hidden Sodium, no salt in my soup… Nothing.

I don’t know about you, but I like salt on my food. Not an excessive amount, but a bit of natural sea salt to make the dish taste better. And if you are engaged in your own fight with hypertension, you know that salt if the first thing to go from your diet and you are probably struggling with this too.

If the thought of completely cutting off salt from your menu sounds like the worst news of the day, try going on DASH diet instead. If it doesn’t help to bring your blood pressure down in 14 days, you can go on DASH diet with reduced sodium intake. Harvard researchers has proven that it is more effective than DASH diet.

And DASH diet is more effective than doing nothing, or conveniently forgetting about your elevated blood pressure, or, even worse, finding more reasons to try anti-hypertensive drugs than to try a simple down to earth diet.

Or Try This Method To Quickly Lower Blood Pressure

There is another approach that helped people lower blood pressure naturally and without drugs within first week of using it. How would you like to lower your blood pressure below 120/80 in one week by doing three easy exercises? Discover more about lowering your blood pressure with exercises

DASH Diet Menu

For two weeks, you will cut off sweets and excessive fat. The base of your diet will be fruit, veggies and grains.
It really is easy to adopt the DASH diet, and here is an example of the DASH diet menu:

Breakfast:
Oatmeal with almond milk and berries

Lunch:
Lentil Soup with pita, veggies, and hummus

Snack:
Banana and almonds

Dinner:
Potatoes with lean chicken breast and green salad on the side.

Not that hard, eh? And if you really suffer without sweets, I have recipes for the black bean brownies and banana ice-cream that are not only allowed, but are good for you.

DASH diet menu likely contains less fat than your usual menu, and so you will be losing weight while on this diet plan. And this is another positive side of it as losing weight is another advice your doctor would give you to fight hypertension naturally.

How to reduce Sodium to fight hypertension

I did go on the Sodium-free DASH diet, and here are the top five tricks that helped me to survive it:

• Use a lot of lemon juice and more vinegar. They add taste without adding Sodium
• Use lime juice
• Use spices – COSTCO sells great natural spice mixes
• Use red and yellow pepper – it has some Sodium naturally and enhances the taste
• Have a bit of patience – after initial shock, your body starts getting used to less Sodium and food doesn’t feel that tasteless as it was before

I plan to post more of DASH diet menu plans in the future. Hope you found this information helpful!

___________________________________________________

Go to Foods that Lower Blood Pressure
Check out more about The DASH diet plan for hypertension
Check out Ways to lower Blood Pressure

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://forms.aweber.com/form/57/split_1832784757.htm”></script>

Lower Blood Pressure Naturally With Top L-Arginine Foods

Feeling like your high blood pressure won’t go down no matter what you do or how hard you try? It may be time to take a look at one of the least understood causes of hypertension and the easy way to deal with it that women often don’t know about.

Doctors recommend exercise, a stress-free life and a low sodium DASH diet to lower your blood pressure naturally. What if you do it all – relax, eat tasteless salt-less food and work out until you drop – and still cannot get off your hypertension medication?

It may be because one vital piece of the puzzle is missing.

Your blood vessels may not be flexible enough to regulate blood pressure properly.

Did you know that your blood pressure is primarily regulated not by arteries or veins, but by the smallest blood vessels called arterioles? They deliver blood to every part of your body to exchange oxygen, water, proteins and other substances with your tissues. If they can expand and contract as blood volume changes, your blood pressure will get adjusted to the level of activity you are engaged in. If their walls are stiff, your blood pressure raises when your heart starts pumping up more blood.

Flexibility of small arteries and arterioles is an important mechanism of systemic vascular resistance, which is one of the three proven causes of high blood pressure1.

How To Lower Blood Pressure Naturally

So if you can relax your arterioles and make them more flexible, your blood pressure will go down.

This is the principle many drugs, such as calcium channel blockers, exploit.

Mechanisms of this are still being researched. For example, scientists just reported the discovery of a protein in blood vessel walls of experimental rats that causes raised blood pressure when it functions improperly. It is called Kv7.4 and identified as a Potassium channel³.

There is, however, one proven way to regulate blood pressure effectively: make sure you get enough protein called L-Arginine. It relaxes blood vessels and helps lower blood pressure.

L-Arginine and Nitric Oxide To Lower Your Blood Pressure

How does L-Arginine works? In your body, L-Arginine is converted into Nitric Oxide, a gas that lowers blood pressure by relaxing your blood vessels2.

In 1998, a group of scientists got awarded a Nobel prize for discovering this connection between hypertension and nitric oxide. Nitric oxide was called “The New Hero of Human Biology” by the Psychology Today. Not only can it change blood flow by as much as 200%, it also helps to deliver glucose and adrenaline in the blood.

Nitric Oxide can prevent or cure erectile dysfunction in men and speed up muscle growth. These are significant benefits crucial to most men’s health and wellbeing. Ever since this was discovered, interest to Nitrc Oxide and L-Arginine among men has jumped through the roof. Most women, however, did not understand that main effect of Nitric Oxide is to lower blood pressure naturally.

Some people do a “smart move” and try L-Arginine and Nitric Oxide supplements. Doctors, however, are still researching safe doses, and warning about dire side effects including death in case of overdose.

The safest way to get enough Nitric Oxide is from your food.

Eat L-Arginine Foods That Increase Nitric Oxide

The only natural source of L-Arginine in your body is food you eat. And we are not talking about exotic goods. Beans, nuts, seafood, fruits and vegetables contain this critical component that can help you to get off your hypertension medication.

They do the job best because they also contain other elements that support the absorption of Nitric Oxide. They are safe because it is hard to overdose on them.

Top L-Arginine Foods

Here is a list of the top L-Arginine foods that you can add to your diet:

• Sesame seeds
• Soy products and soy protein
• White beans
• Seafood
• Turkey
• Egg whites
• Fish

Other foods that help produce Nitric Oxide

• Garlic
• Walnuts
• Cashews
• Fruit and vegetables (notably, Pomegranate juice)

Unlike meats, fruit and veggies contain vitamins that increase Nitric Oxide production in the body.

Easy Healthy Recipe to Lower Blood Pressure

Only two minutes are required to whip up this low fat high calcium white
bean spread that lowers your blood pressure.
Ingredients:

• 1 can white beans with liquid ( if you prefer to remove the liquid, replace
  with boiled water)
• 1 marinated pepper
• 5 cloves of baked garlic or 1 clove of fresh garlic
• 2 tbsp Sesame tahini
• Lemon juice to taste
• Water or bullion to dilute to the consistency you like
• Sea salt
• Herbs (Italian seasoning, parsley, oregano, rosemary)This spread contains more than three elements producing Nitric oxide. It can be used as a dip should you decide to add more liquid.

Diets That Lower Blood Pressure

Eating foods that help produce Nitric Oxide every day for 14 days in a row can reduce blood pressure by as much as 10 mmHg. Among diets that recommend these foods are the DASH diet, Dr. McDougall’s diet and Dr. Ornish diet. All three have documented success rates and also help to lose weight and improve heart health.

Next time you have a choice between soft drink and pomegranate juice or fruit smoothie, you know what to choose to lower your blood pressure. A little bit of food that produces Nitric Oxide every day helps women fight hypertension and reduce chances to get heart attack and stroke.

Sources:

1. R. Klabunde, PhD. Resistance to blood flow http://www.cvphysiology.com/Hemodynamics/H002.htm
2. R.Klabunde, PhD. Endothelial mechanisms regulating blood flow http://www.cvphysiology.com/Blood%20Flow/BF010.htm
3. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/babs-ndt071111.php

Seaweed – food that lowers blood pressure?

Recent study done by the Teagasc Food Research Centre in Dublin analyzed data from 100 existing studies and found that adding seaweed to your diet can help lower blood pressure.

But wait – haven’t the Japanese believed in it all along? A lot of Japanese studies show that traditional miso soup lowers blood pressure. People on the West often can not believe this because miso itself is a high sodium food. It was thought to be a synergy of ingredients of the miso soup, especially seaweed, that made this dish effective in fighting hypertension.

Does seaweed lower blood pressure?

I haven’t come across conclusive studies except the one I mentioned in this post and Japanese studies about benefits of seaweed-based diet and miso soup. However, here is how researchers from Teagasc Food Research Centre think seaweed works to lower blood pressure:

Seaweed is full of microelements essential for health, but, most importantly, it contains a lot of bioactive type of proteins called peptides. It is thought that bioactive peptides in seaweed have similar properties to ACE inhibitor medications that is often prescribed to hypertensive patients.

I buy nori sheets regularly in the Korean and Chinese supermarkets. Nori sheets are easy to use in cooking. You can cut them with scissors and add to your soup, you can make nori wraps or maki as an appetizer, and even eat roasted nori sheets as a snack.

Another super beneficial seaweed available in stores is kelp. The most interesting use of it is raw kelp noodles that I enjoyed at the raw food restaurant. Imagine eating pasta that is good for you! Dried kelp is added to homemade miso soups – you really need a pinch of dried, dehydrated kelp to make a soup.

So eat your suchi, shake some dried seaweed flakes into your soup and buy some vegan seaweed snacks. After all, whatever works to lower blood pressure naturally may save you from taking medications.

Frequently Asked Questions About Foods to Lower Blood Pressure

Answers to the most frequently asked questions about using foods to lower blood pressure. Check out foods that help to lower blood pressure, and start putting them into your menu as soon as possible!

Q: Will bananas lower your blood pressure?

Bananas are very high in Potassium which is proven by many studies to reduce blood pressure when consumed as a food, not as a supplement. The Indian scientists report that natural compounds in bananas act in a manner similar to anti-hypertensive drugs called ACE-inhibitors. Researchers in India have reported that blood pressure fell by 10% in people who ate two bananas daily for a week.

Q: Will apple cider vinegar lower blood pressure?

A: The health benefits of apple cider vinegar have been promoted by many well-known authors such as Dr Jarvis, Paul C. Bragg and Patricia Bragg. While many of the folk medicine uses of vinegar are not proven, others show that apple cider vinegar could help with obesity and diabetes.

How does apple cider vinegar lower blood pressure? Apple pectin is a natural circulatory health boost. It helps your body clean its veins and arteries out. There is an opinion that since cleaner arteries have bigger diameter therefore blood pressure goes down. Vinegar also boosts metabolism. The higher metabolism gets the apple pectin moving quick through your body because of increased blood flow, therefore delivering more pectin to more areas. This same method also helps in weight loss. These findings are not scientifically proven yet, however many people attribute their lower blood pressure to the magic powers of apple cider vinegar. Take it with a grain of salt.

Q: Does garlic lower blood pressure?

A: Several recent studies have been conducted over the last two decades in India, Australia, and the United States. Researchers looked for the relationship between garlic and high blood pressure. All came to the same conclusion– garlic actually helps to lower blood pressure. Recently, Australian researchers concluded that “Supplementation with garlic preparations may provide an acceptable alternative or complementary treatment option for hypertension.”

Q: How much will garlic lower blood pressure?

A: In the study from Australia, those with higher blood pressure at the beginning of the study benefited from consuming garlic the most. The findings demonstrated a 4 to 5 point drop in systolic blood pressure (the number on top) by an average of 4 to 5 points and diastolic blood pressure (the number on bottom) by 2 to 3 points.

Q: Does celery lower blood pressure? Will eating celery help lower high blood pressure?

A: Several studies on humans and rats found that celery had properties that lowered blood pressure. Researcher Dr. Le took an interest in celery when he found out that his father ate a quarter-pound of celery a day and this lowered his blood pressure from 158 over 96 to 118 over 82.This significant drop in blood pressure was replicated in the University Of Chicago Medical Center study. The researchers reported that a small amount of celery extract, equivalent to four celery stalks, lowered blood pressure in rats by 12 to 14 percent and lowered cholesterol by around 7 percent.

Q: I want to know more about using beet juice to lower blood pressure.

A: Beet juice can help to lower high blood pressure fast. A study from the London School of Medicine (2008) found that drinking two glasses a day can lower blood pressure by as much as 10 points within 3 hours of drinking it. Beet juice is a very powerful food that helps hypertension. Note that it is not recommended to drink freshly squeezed beet juice. Let it stand for about three hours and mix it with other juices like apple juice, for example.

Go to the home page of Foods That Lower Blood Pressure