Make 2018 Your Healthiest Year: 5 Ways To Lower Your Blood Pressure Without Meds

High Blood Pressure is nicknamed “the silent killer” for good reason: you can have it and not know it’s there, while it gets busy wreaking havoc on your arteries.

If you know you’ve got hypertension, you can remediate it or reduce it by making simple lifestyle changes.

For instance, you can:

  •     Lose Weight – especially around your middle. Losing even 10 pounds can lower blood pressure, and risk of heart disease is further reduced by reducing your waistline. So drop some pounds and inches! Our guided imagery for Weight Loss can help with that.

  •     Exercise regularly – Some aerobic physical activity - maybe 30 minutes of walking, jogging or swimming - on most days of the week, lowers blood pressure.  But you have to keep it up. Traci Stein’s Healthy Weight & Body Image can help you beef up your motivation and your general health!

  •     Eat wisely – A Mediterranean diet, with fruits, veggies, legumes, whole grains, lean chicken and fish with heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acid oils, can be darn tasty and can also  – can also reduce hypertension. There’s a wonderfully clear, simple food plan with some great recipes in Barbara Holtzman's Conscious Eating, Conscious LIving.

  •     Lower your salt intake – Use less of it and give your palate a chance to get acquainted with the more subtle, nuanced tastes of food which get buried under all that salt taste. And please read food labels when you shop – get the low sodium broth!  Actually, if you reduce your consumption of processed foods, you’ll automatically reduce your salt intake too.

  •     Manage your stress – Occasional stress is actually good for you. Chronic stress, not so much. Find a mind-body technique that appeals to you and deploy it regularly – yoga, guided imagery, meditation, breathwork, qigong… or keep a gratitude journal – that has amazing effects on stress and depression too. Some resources you might want to check out: Julie Lusk’s Yoga Nidra, Traci Stein’s Mindfulness Meditations, Andy Weil’s Breathing: Master Key to Self-Healing and my Relieve Stress guided imagery.

For information on how cold weather can increase your blood pressure, check out Blood pressure: Is it affected by cold weather? by Sheldon G. Sheps, M.D.

Okay, that’s it for now.  Have a great week, and see you soon!

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