How to control high blood pressure without medication?

Food and your lifestyle are important factors in controlling high blood pressure. Anyone can control their blood pressure. The main reason for high blood pressure is being overweight. Shedding excess weight will reduce your blood pressure, and any medicines that are being taken for this problem will be more effective with reduced weight.  Besides losing weight, people suffering from blood pressure should always mind their waistlines because having too much weight around the waist increases a person’s risk of blood pressure. Men are at risk if their waist measurement is greater than 40 inches (102 centimeters, or cm) and Women are at risk if their waist measurement is greater than 35 inches (89 cm).

Besides losing weight regular exercising, at least 30-60 minutes at least 5 days of the week will help in lowering a person’s blood pressure. When a person starts to lose weight through regular exercising, he/she will feel the difference in a week or two when the extra weight around the waistline is shed. Talk to your doctor about developing an exercise program. Your doctor can help determine whether you need any exercise restrictions. Exercising it is not good if you try squeezing all your exercise in on the weekends to make up for weekday inactivity isn’t a good strategy. Those sudden bursts of activity could actually be risky even moderate activity for 10 minutes at a time, such as walking and light strength training, can help.

Besides exercising, quitting or reducing smoking and alcohol will invariably help in weight loss and reduced blood pressure. If a person does not consume alcohol, he/she should not try it just for reducing blood pressure because then it will cause more harm than good. A healthy diet is also very helpful in lowering blood pressure. A person suffering from blood pressure should use the minimum amount of fat and salt in his/her diet. The diet should be rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products and skimps on saturated fat and cholesterol can lower your blood pressure by up to 14 mm Hg. It might not be easy to change your dietary habits but a healthier you will more than compensate for changing the way you eat.

Drinking more than moderate amounts of alcohol can actually raise blood pressure by several points. It can also reduce the effectiveness of high blood pressure medications. If you’re a heavy drinker, suddenly eliminating all alcohol can actually trigger severe high blood pressure for several days. So when you stop drinking, do it with the supervision of your doctor or taper off slowly, over one to two weeks. Along with your food diary, keep an alcohol diary to track your true drinking patterns because one drink equals 12 ounces.