FOODS THAT MAY HELP REDUCE OR STABILIZE BLOOD PRESSURE…. AND ONLY 3 THINGS TO AVOID

Do you worry when they put the cuff on your arm and start squeezing? (I always worry that they lost count of the pumps and should have stopped earlier!!) Does high blood pressure run in your family? Do these 2 words pop up in your vocabulary more each year? Do you understand that the foods we eat or don’t eat can possibly have an effect on those numbers? Certainly not a guarantee that if I eat this or that and avoid certain things my blood pressure will stabilize at an ideal location..but… what if they could? I love this type of research because I actually love to be in the kitchen and I enjoy finding new ways to prepare foods that I like and could be helpful at the same time. Tweaking my nutritional needs over the past 3 years has helped me keep my cholesterol numbers down. If those tweaks can help cholesterol numbers, could they help the blood pressure numbers as well? Some of the foods I am about to list help short term and long term which means, you could see a change fairly soon IF this is right path for you. An awful lot of people have given fad diets a week or two to bring down scale numbers. Can you give a week or two tweaking some food choices to help with Blood Pressure numbers? A side note here is that I am finding a lot of the same foods on lists to help with all sorts of issues and the list is extensive in what you should and can eat and very short on foods to avoid. I am NOT a Dr. I just love being healthy and I love to cook and I know Food choices are important. Look at the list..Circle the foods you eat or would eat and try to get more of them into your meal plans thru-out the week. For 2 weeks, avoid the 3 things you shouldn’t eat or drink. Then… honestly assess. Check your Blood Pressure numbers. If they are even slightly lower, the trend is your friend. KEEP GOING!!! Hope this helps!!!!

Eat or drink:

Blueberries, Strawberries

Bananas (other foods rich in potassium which may also help: avocado, cantaloupe, honey dew, halibut, mushrooms, tomatoes, tuna, and beans)

Beets.. ( you can drink your beet juice as well as eat beets.. 1 cup per day)

Dark Chocolate 70% or higher 1 oz. daily

Kiwi

Watermelon

Oats (Barley is good as well)

Leafy green veggies (cabbage, Kale, collard greens, lettuce, fennel, mustard greens, spinach and Swiss chard)

Garlic

Lentils (beans, peas, chickpeas)

Fermented foods ( natural yogurt, Greek yogurt, Kimchi, Kombucha, apple cider vinegar)

pomegranate juice (no sugar added)

Cinnamon

Pistachios

almonds

FOODS TO AVOID:

Salt

Caffeine

Alcohol