How to Prevent High Blood Pressure with Diet

How to Prevent High Blood Pressure with Diet

How to Prevent High Blood Pressure with Diet

High blood pressure, the #1 killer risk factor in the world, may be eliminated with a healthy enough diet.

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This is a video that’s long overdue. The downside of me just covering whatever pops up in the literature is that some really fundamental topics may not get immediate coverage.

Having a “normal” blood pressure may set one up for dying from “normal” causes such as heart attacks and strokes. For more on this concept, see When Low Risk Means High Risk (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/when-… It’s like having a normal cholesterol level. See Optimal Cholesterol Level (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/optim…
So it seems high blood pressure is a choice. Like cavities, or heart disease: Cavities and Coronaries: Our Choice (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/cavit…

Even end-stage malignant hypertension can be reversed with diet (thereby showing it was the diet and not other lifestyle factors that protected traditional plant-based populations). See Kempner Rice Diet: Whipping Us Into Shape (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/Kempn…

Flax seeds, hibiscus tea, whole grains, and nitrate rich vegetables may offer additional protection:
• Flax Seeds for Hypertension (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/flax-…)
• Hibiscus Tea vs. Plant-Based Diets for Hypertension (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/hibis…)
• Whole Grains May Work As Well As Drugs (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/whole…)
• Hearts Shouldn’t Skip a Beet (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/heart…)

Why not just take the drugs? See The Actual Benefit of Diet vs. Drugs (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/The-A…) and Why Prevention is Worth a Ton of Cure (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/Why-P…

Have a question for Dr. Greger about this video? Leave it in the comment section at http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-t… and he’ll try to answer it!

Image Credit: Shanta Rohse via Flickr.

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Content

0 -> How to Prevent High Blood Pressure
7.45 -> The most comprehensive and systematic analysis
9.69 -> of causes of death ever undertaken
12.32 -> allows us to answer questions like
14.32 -> how many lives could we save if people cut back on soda?
17.93 -> The answer? Our best estimate: 299,521.
25.55 -> Soda isn't just bad because it's empty calories,
28.519 -> so it's not a health-promoting food.
30.119 -> It appears to be an actively death-promoting food.
32.79 -> Of course not as deadly as bacon, bologna, ham, hot dogs.
37.17 -> 800,000 deaths every year,
39.28 -> killing twice as many women than domestic violence,
43.15 -> five times more people than all illegal drugs combined.
47.83 -> But eating more whole grains could save 1.7 million lives every year.
52.82 -> More vegetables, 1.8 million lives.
55.189 -> If only we ate more nuts and seeds, two and a half million lives saved,
61.059 -> but fruit is apparently what the world needs most
63.86 -> (they didn't look at beans).
66.04 -> 4.9 million lives hang in the balance every year,
69.88 -> and the cure is not drugs or vaccines; the cure is fruit.
75.95 -> One reason why plant-based diets can save so many millions
78.45 -> is because the #1 killer risk factor in the world is high blood pressure,
83.53 -> laying to waste 9 million people year after year.
88.14 -> In the United States, high blood pressure
90.82 -> affects nearly 78 million -- that's one in three of us --
93.59 -> and as we age our pressures get higher and higher,
96.6 -> such that by age 60, it strikes more than half.
99.28 -> If it affects most of us when we get older,
103.68 -> maybe it's less a disease and more just a natural,
107.14 -> inevitable consequence of aging? No.
110.67 -> We've known for nearly a century that high blood pressure need never occur.
116.54 -> Researchers measured the blood pressure
118.22 -> of a thousand people in rural Kenya
121.07 -> who ate a diet centered around whole plant foods:
122.86 -> whole grains, beans, vegetables, fruit, and dark green leafies.
126.35 -> Up until age 40, the blood pressures of rural Africans
129.039 -> were about the same as Europeans and Americans,
130.869 -> down around 120s over 80s, but as Westerners age,
134.28 -> their pressures creep up such that by age 60 the average
137.359 -> person may be hypertensive, exceeding 140 over 90.
141.279 -> But what about those not following the Western diet?
145.17 -> Their pressures improved with age.
147.54 -> Not only did they not develop hypertension,
149.639 -> their blood pressures actually got better.
152.129 -> The whole 140 over 90 cut-off is arbitrary.
156.519 -> Just like studies show that the lower the cholesterol the better,
160.419 -> there's really no safe cholesterol level above about 150.
164.499 -> Blood pressure studies also support
167.239 -> the kind of 'lower the better' approach to blood pressure reduction.
171.959 -> Even people who start out with blood pressure under 120 over 80
177.37 -> appear to benefit from blood pressure reduction.
181.409 -> But is it possible to get blood pressures under 110 over 70?
186.26 -> It's not just possible, it's normal for those eating healthy enough diets.
194.659 -> Over two years at a rural Kenyan hospital,
196.939 -> 1800 patients were admitted.
199.12 -> How many cases of high blood pressure did they find?
201.969 -> Zero. Wow, so they must have had low rates of heart disease.
207.18 -> No, they had no rates of heart disease.
210.65 -> Not low risk, no risk.
211.909 -> Not a single case of arteriosclerosis -- our #1 killer -- was found.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7DLVYwcDs