3 Diet Changes to Help Lower High Blood Pressure Fast

The firs thing I should do is explain what I mean by fast. Lowering blood pressure in a few minutes can cause several problems, one of them being you could pass out. Instead, I mean over a short period of days to weeks. Like weight loss, permanent change is often over time rather than speedy.

I understand, from the inside, how working full time makes choosing what we consume difficult. Like many, I eat both breakfast and lunch hunched over a computer keyboard. When I'm done on the computer, about the last thing I want to do is prepare a meal, even though I enjoy cooking. Pulling a frozen entree out and popping it in the oven sounds a lot better.

That is one of the diet changes that you can make, and it isn't as labor intensive as you may think. Our solution is that on Sunday, I prepare a lot of food and freeze it. Then I actually *can* grab a healthy, homemade frozen entree. Add some oatmeal cups for breakfast and one of the lean, healthy single serving entrees from the grocery store and it's a fairly healthy diet. The biggest problem is the sodium content of the single serving one.

I've also switched the kind of diet we eat. There are a couple of ways to do that, and they can coincide. The first is the DASH diet. DASH stands for "dietary approaches to Stop Hypertension." It calls for lean protein, lots of fruits, veggies and whole grains as well as lower sodium counts. It has a lot of room for personal preferences within the bounds of a healthy diet.

The second is the one we're using at home. It's a more Mediterranean way of looking at food. This diet fits within the DASH diet, because it, too encourages fruits, vegetables and lean protein. This diet uses more seafood than poultry, which can be beneficial in many ways, not just blood pressure readings. The large amount of olives, olive oil and garlic also come in very handy.

Garlic is the third change I recommend. If I had to choose one herb out of all those known to me, it would be garlic. It does help in the fight against hypertension, sometimes dropping the numbers by ten both top and bottom. It is also a weak antibiotic, may help block viruses and is thought to be helpful lowering cholesterol.

Hypertension can be a silent killer, but it doesn't have to be. Make sure you get regular checkups and monitor your numbers to see if there's a change, and by choosing to change your diet you may be able to overcome this problem.