Eat to Beat High Blood Pressure
Natural Self-help for Hypertension, including 60 recipes
Dr Sarah Brewer and Michelle Berriedale-Johnson
Contents
Part One: The Facts about High Blood Pressure
Chapter 1: What is High Blood Pressure?
Chapter 2: Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment of High Blood Pressure
Part Two: High Blood Pressure and Diet
Chapter 3: Atherosclerosis, Cholesterol and Dietary Fats
Chapter 4: High Blood Pressure and Olive Oil
Chapter 5: High Blood Pressure and Oily Fish
Chapter 6: High Blood Pressure, Folic Acid and Homocysteine
Chapter 7: High Blood Pressure and Salt
Chapter 8: High Blood Pressure, Fruit and Vegetables
Chapter 9: High Blood Pressure and Garlic
Chapter 10: High Blood Pressure and Tea
Chapter 11: High Blood Pressure and Red Wine
Chapter 13: Soups and Starters
Chapter 16: Vegetables and Vegetarian Dishes
Chapter 19: High Blood Pressure and Food Supplements
Chapter 20: High Blood Pressure and Healthy Weight
Chapter 21: High Blood Pressure and Lifestyle
Whether or not you develop high blood pressure (hypertension) is influenced by several factors. These are your genes, the way you eat, and other aspects of your lifestyle such as the amount of exercise you take, whether or not you smoke, and the amount of alcohol you drink. Eating to beat high blood pressure is not only possible, it is one of the mainstays of effective treatment. This book looks at how various dietary changes can help to reduce a raised blood pressure and lessen your risk of developing associated complications such as coronary heart disease and stroke.
Making simple, healthy changes to your lifestyle can also significantly reduce your chances of contracting coronary heart disease. For instance, if you stop smoking, your risk of getting heart disease drops by 50–70 per cent within five years. If you take up regular exercise, your risk falls by 45 per cent. Keeping your alcohol intake within healthy limits will also have a beneficial effect. Drinking two or three units a day can reduce your chances of heart disease by as much as 25–45 per cent, but excessive intakes increase the risk. Losing excess body weight will bring your chances of heart disease down by 35–55 per cent. For more on lifestyle changes, see Chapters 20 and 21.
Food supplements are also effective in helping to maintain a healthy circulation. For more about these, please see Chapter 19.
The delicious recipes provided by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson will make eating to beat hypertension as pleasant and easy as possible.
CHAPTER 1 What is High Blood Pressure?
Everyone needs a certain blood pressure (BP) to keep blood moving around their body and maintain their circulation. Blood pressure exists because your heart pumps blood around a closed system, rather like a boiler pumping water through a series of central heating pipes. The pressure in your arteries therefore depends on a number of factors, including the volume of fluid inside your circulation, how hard your heart is pumping at any given time, and the elasticity or ‘resistance’ of the vessels the blood is passing through.
Normal BP varies naturally throughout the day and night, going up and down in response to your emotions and level of activity. If you have high blood pressure, however, your BP will remain consistently high, even when you are asleep.
The heart alternately contracts and relaxes as it pumps to produce the heartbeat. Each contraction produces a surge in pressure. The highest pressure reached in the arteries during this surge is known as the systolic pressure as it is due to contraction (systole) of the heart. As the heart rests between beats, blood pressure falls again and the lowest blood pressure