Individuals with hypertension often require some medications to lower their blood pressure, especially for those at the stage 1 & stage 2 of hypertension. But changes in lifestyles also can give a significant contribution to lower high blood pressure, especially for people who have the early stage of hypertension. So, what are ways to lower blood pressure without medication (naturally)? Here are pieces of helpful information!
You might also like to read top foods to decrease blood pressure and causes of hypertension, before continuing!
Sometimes, lifestyle changes may be helpful enough for patients to treat their hypertension without needing drugs or medication. If you have been diagnosed with this health problem, you need to work with your physician so thus you can explore more any various things (changes in your lifestyle) to help your treatment.
In essence, if the strategies of your lifestyle changes are powerful enough to control your blood pressure, you may reduce, delay, or avoid the need of any medication.
And the following are some helpful tips about common ways to lower blood pressure naturally (without medication).
Get good support from your environment!
Your environment should support you so thus you can do your lifestyle changes more easily. Supportive friends and your family can be so useful to keep focus on your health goals. You may also consider joining a group of hypertension to increase your motivation and also get more experiences from other members who also have the same condition.
Control your stress as well!
You should clearly understand that stress also can contribute in increasing your blood pressure. Therefore, control your emotional stress as well. Write down any causes or conditions that can trigger your stress and then find out the right strategies to overcome them so thus you can be better to control your stress next time.
You may also consider other friendly activities to reduce your stress, such as deep-breathing exercise (yoga), massage, or take a vacation if necessary!
Keep far away from tobacco and caffeine!
Either cigarette smoking or chewing tobacco is not good for the pressure of your blood vessels. Even some chemical properties in tobacco can contribute to the damage of the wall’s muscles of arteries which then eventually can lead to the poor performance of your heart to pump blood throughout the body.
Furthermore, you need also to keep far away from secondhand smoke, because inhaling smoke from smokers also can increase your risk of some health conditions, including heart disease and hypertension.
Then for caffeine, there is still no final answer whether caffeine can affect the blood pressure or not! The blood pressure in some people may not be significantly influenced by caffeine, while others do! Generally, some doctors recommend drinking no more than 20 mg /day of caffeine.
To keep safe, it’s much better to avoid caffeine when you have hypertension or discuss with a doctor to find more advices!
Reduce/limit sodium (salt) in your diet, and drink alcohol in small amounts!
Sodium is one of major hypertension risk factors -- that’s why if you seriously concern to lower your blood pressure you need to reduce sodium or salt in your diet. In other words, your body needs sodium to keep functioning properly, but too much intake of sodium is bad for your blood pressure.
How low you should reduce it? People with hypertension should limit the sodium in their diet for ‘not more than 2,400 mg /day’ -- talk more with your doctor for more advices, especially if you are at the severe stage of hypertension.
Below are some helpful tips to reduce and restrict the sodium in your diet:
- Consider the food labels to find the composition of sodium/salt in each food that you eat, so thus you can tract the amounts of salt that you eat /day.
- Find low-sodium alternatives that you like -- talk more with your dietitian to explore and find more alternatives that you like.
- Reduce or avoid eating processed foods (such as; bacon, frozen dinners, and potato chips), because they usually high in sodium.
- Always remember that one teaspoon of salt contain about 2,300 mg of sodium! So, you need to avoid adding salt in your foods that you eat! You can consider other friendly salt-alternatives, such as spices or herbs.
- If you cannot change drastically your menu, you may need to do it gradually.
Another debatable topic when it comes to lowering blood pressure is alcohol. Some experts believe that drinking it in small amounts can be helpful to control hypertension, but if consumed too over can make your hypertension worse. Therefore, it is so crucial and important to get to know the right amounts of alcohol for your body in treating your hypertension -- talk more with your healthcare provider to find out it.
According to a published article in MayoClinic, you may be able to lower blood pressure level up to 4-2 mm Hg by drinking alcohol in small amounts. And once again, too much consumption (generally more than two drinks /day for men and more than one drink /day for women) will lose this protective effect.
Do your exercise with fun and regularly!
Lack of physical activity is one of hypertension risk factors. That’s why make sure you keep active in your daily activities. Furthermore, inactive individuals are more likely to have weight gain (another hypertension risk factor).
Choose a kind of exercise that you like so thus you can do it with fun and eventually you can do it regularly.
You may need also to discuss with your doctor to decide the right exercise and how you should do it so thus it can give a significant contribution to lower your blood pressure.
Consider healthy diet!
You can consider foods that lower blood pressure in your diet. Eating them in moderation can give a significant result in your treatment. Generally, these foods are high in magnesium, potassium, and fiber! They are usually also familiar in DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet).
Keep your healthy weight!
As mentioned before, obesity is one of factors that can put anyone at higher risk of hypertension. More pounds (over the normal weight) that you have can make your heart work harder to pump the blood throughout the body, which then can increase the volume of blood in the vessel bloods. As a result, this also can affect your blood pressure.
Consider also the length of your waistline! Asian women have high risk of hypertension if they have more than 80 cm (32 inches) of waistline -- and ‘more than 90 cm (36 inches) for Asian men’, ‘more than 88 cm (35 inches) for women’, and ‘more than 102 cm (40 inches) for men’!
Do blood pressure tests properly and regularly!
Generally, people with hypertension are more often to not have any symptoms. Therefore, it is so important to test your blood pressure on regular basis. Nevertheless, there are also a few signs of high blood pressure that can occur.
The blood pressure tests should be performed more often in people with hypertension or who have many risk factors of cardiovascular diseases. Ask and talk more with your healthcare provider to get to know how often you should do this test and what else you need to do/prepare before taking the test to get the accurate test-result, and ask also other ways to lower blood pressure effectively that you can do without medication.
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Reference: MayoClinic and WebMD
Image credit to ‘shutterstock’ for illustration
