How to Eat to Lower Blood Pressure

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette, and and I'm a registered dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic, and I'm going to talk to you about how to eat to lower blood pressure. One of the most common methods is to use the dash diet. That stand for dietary approaches to stopping hypertension, and it was a study that was done several years ago. What they found with this group of study is that if you eat a diet that is very high in fruits in vegetables, low in saturated fat, low in sodium, very high in whole grains, that you can actually have a significant decrease in blood pressure. So the basic premise behind eating this way; for the majority of people the ranges that you would look for from each food group are going to be, starting with the whole grains, having between six and ten servings of whole grains, and that would be items like brown rice, whole grain bread, wheat pasta, oatmeal, high fiber cereals. Any of those choices would be very good choices for the whole grain component of your eating plan. For fruits, it is a high quantity of fruit, anywhere in the range of four to seven fruits per day. For the vegetables, a very similar range; from about four to seven servings of vegetables each day. The meat portion is going to be a lot less than what most people are used to. It's really only about one and a half to three servings of meat, and by serving they're talking about a three ounce portion of meat, so even if you ate three servings that would only be nine ounces of meat total for the day. And that option is going to be for a very tall person, somebody with a large build who needs more calories. For the average person, they're really going to be angling more toward only two portions of meat. And then as far as the fat, you do want to limit it to primarily unsaturated fat. Things like nuts, seeds, and for cooking oil, things like olive and canola. It is also recommended that you do eat nuts at least three times a week in the amount of about a quarter cup each time that you eat them. All of these methods make sure that your body is obtaining a lot of fiber and a lot of nutrients, particularly potassium. That's one of the nutrients that really helps with lowering blood pressure, and it is found very high in a lot of fruits and vegetables. And because you are eating so many fruits and vegetables it will help lower your sodium intake, which is very important for controlling blood pressure. So, those are just a few tips for how to eat to lower your blood pressure."