How to lower BP by 20 mmHg naturally

my name is sanjay gupta i'm a consultant cardiologist in york and today's video is on the subject of high blood pressure this one is entitled how to reduce your blood pressure by 20 points naturally okay so the uh first thing to say is that there's a lot of information about blood pressure and of course people talk about how important lifestyle is but no one really talks about what kind of gains you may expect in your blood pressure readings with lifestyle so this is what this video is about okay so let's get started um high blood pressure is a major global health challenge and one of the main reasons why it has become more prevalent is because increasingly more economically developing countries are now adopting the western lifestyle which leads to sedentary behavior physical inactivity consumption of calorie dense fatty foods high sodium intake and also excessive levels of stress it is also well recognized that excessively elevated blood pressure numbers can be associated with harm to the body at a microscopic level initially and then over a course of many years that damage can start manifesting as strokes heart attacks kidney failure and therefore there's great emphasis by health care bodies around the world to reduce high blood pressure numbers through lifestyle and medication one of the things i have learned over my career in medicine is that whenever we are dealing with elevated numbers and the likelihood of possible harm we should not always assume that it is the number that is doing the harm it is also possible that the number may be a symptom of a more generalized underlying process and that is also doing the harm so in some ways the number is a symptom of this thing which is actually doing the harm if the number itself is responsible for the harm then surely it makes sense to aggressively reduce the number if the number is a symptom of an underlying process then making the number look nicer may detract from looking for the underlying problem which may then continue to cause damage despite the numbers looking better let me give you an example uh just a very basic example of this if you get regular migraine then taking a painkiller daily would take away your pains if on the other hand your migraines or your headaches were due to an underlying brain tumor then just taking a painkiller every day will simply take away the pain i.e the outward manifestation of the brain tumor and therefore you may be lulled into a false sense of security that you're okay even though the brain tumor may continue to grow and cause you harm so this is the whole idea behind blood pressure i think in most cases of high blood pressure i think the numbers are often a symptom of an unhappy body and mind and yes indeed if the numbers are left unchecked then the number itself can also do additional harm as i said current management of blood pressure is through lifestyle modification and medications whilst they may be equally effective in bringing the numbers down the way they do so is fundamentally different medications simply bring the number down and in so doing they may prevent harm that may be caused by that number being too high in the long run they don't really do very much for the underlying process lifestyle on the other hand makes you a healthier person and therefore may help tackle the underlying process and buying do and by doing so may reduce the numbers unfortunately a lot of modern medical management focuses more on the easy fix which is giving patients medications rather than focusing on lifestyle management in this video i was keen to talk to you about some of the lifestyle changes that you can make and how much of a difference that these changes can make to the numbers okay so as i said in this i'm going to talk about certain lifestyle changes that you can make and you would find that if you're able to incorporate all of these in your life then you could easily bring your blood pressure numbers down by 20 millimeters of mercury so the first is weight okay we know excessive weight contributes to high blood pressure and virtually all forms of cardiovascular disease patients with a body mass index of more than 30 have nearly doubled the risk of developing resistant hypertension which is probably the worst form of blood pressure which doesn't respond to treatment and causes more harm than any other form obesity is associated with many processes which are bad for the body including inflammation sympathetic overactivity reduced nitric oxide levels and even physical compression of the kidneys from visceral fat which may develop your aim should be to try and reach your ideal body weight wherever you're thinking about weight loss but most research points to the fact that for every kilogram of body weight you shed your systolic blood pressure will drop by one millimeter of mercury so the top value will drop by one so if you lose 10 kilos of body weight if you carry an extra 10 kilos then losing this will bring your blood pressure down by 10 millimeters of mercury another thing i would say about weight loss is it's always good not only just to focus on weight but try and focus on body fat percentage the shape of your body if you are centrally obese then i think it's really important to work with body fat percentages and try and change the shape of the body because i think that plays a big role as well especially with the visceral fat etc number two so that's 10 millimeters of mercury you could lose you could get down by losing 10 kilograms now i accept that some of you may not have any weight to lose so we'll go on to the next thing diet okay now the average american diet will contain about 3.4 grams of salt per day of sodium per day okay the usual recommendations are no more than 2.3 grams per day if we cut our salt intake if we make an aggressive attempt at reducing our salt intake to less than 1.5 grams a day or even if we can reduce our salt intake from whatever it is by one gram a day we can hope to reduce our systolic blood pressure by about five millimeters of mercury all right so lowering your salt and being aggressive about simply just doing that can bring your blood pressure reading down by five similarly if you increase the amount of potassium you take then that is good for the blood pressure there was an article in the american journal of nutrition that suggested that the average potassium intake is about 1.7 to 1.8 grams a day the usual recommended dose the recommended intake amount from the national dietary guidelines is that you should be taking 4.7 grams a day so if we can aim to increase our potassium intake through diet to between 3.5 and 5 grams per day then we can hope to see an average reduction in our systolic blood pressure readings by another four to five millimeters of mercury so just paying attention to your salt paying attention to your potassium can bring your blood pressure down by about nine millimeters of mercury okay there is a diet which is recommended which incorporates low sodium high potassium uh this is known as the dash diet and this promotes the increased intake of fruits vegetables fiber low-fat dairy products in addition to a low sodium content and increased potassium content and if you adhere to a to this kind of diet then research indicates that you could bring your blood pressure down by an average of 11 millimeters of mercury okay if you can replace animal protein with plant protein if you can avoid refined carbohydrates avoid processed meat avoid sugar sweetened and artificially sweetened beverages then all these changes can make a huge impact your overall health and you can see you can hope to see about 10 to 11 millimeter of mercury drop in your blood pressure readings if you then combine it with a magnesium supplement the magnesium supplement will bring your blood pressure down by one one or two millimeters of mercury and you take an omega-3 fatty acid supplement fish oils then that can reduce your blood pressure by another four millimeters of mercury so just diet can bring your blood pressure easily down by 10 to 15 millimeters of mercury if you do the dash diet the low sodium the high potassium and the magnesium and the fish oil another thing about diet is alcohol in individuals who drink regularly reducing the amount of alcohol you take to maybe no more than one drink a day can reduce the blood pressure by an average of four millimeters of mercury so already just by targeting diet you can bring your blood pressure down by 15 or even more millimeters of mercury which is a huge huge drop if you think most medications don't achieve that kind of drop so incredibly useful to know about diet and how beneficial it can be for high blood pressure the next thing to talk about is exercise now physical activity and exercise to my mind are perhaps one of the best therapies in existence for virtually all forms of chronic disease exercise is one of the most potent anti-inflammatory agents in all of medicine exercise is also a very meditative experience and therefore stress relieving in that sense despite it is also very safe exercise is also very safe despite this 50 of all adults in the usa do not meet minimal physical activity recommendations it is generally a good idea to exercise but when you start doing exercise it's a good idea to start at a lower intensity such as slow walking and then try and build up to recommended levels even though exercise is generally safe but it's always good to do things gradually if you can the current recommendations is that you should aim for a cumulative amount of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise per week what do i mean by moderate aerobic exercise brisk walking at 2.4 to 4 miles per hour biking 5 to 9 miles per hour ballroom dancing recreational swimming yoga et cetera so that 150 minutes of that over the whole week is a good amount of exercise to do for your blood pressure you could do vigorous exercise and you probably only need to do 75 minutes per week of intense exercise to have really good effects on your blood pressure numbers by intense exercise i mean jogging running biking at more than 10 miles per hour swimming laps playing tennis singles tennis that kind of thing it doesn't matter whether you do these exercises in very frequent short duration sessions or whether you do them in longer duration sessions it is the cumulative amount of exercise that you do in a week that matters if you increase the amount of exercise you do benefit more but the incremental benefit gets less and less and so what i'm trying to say is doing some is so much better than doing none and doing more is a little bit better than doing some so the more you can do the better it is but at least use some and that in itself can be extremely effective at lowering the blood pressure most people would say that if you do aerobic exercise you're looking to bring your blood pressure down by about four uh four to five millimeters of mercury okay it's um also worth just talking about the different forms of exercise there's the dynamic aerobic exercise which is the regular and purposeful purposeful movement of large muscle groups in moderate or of vigorous physical activity such as cycling running dancing we've already spoken to you about that if you do that regularly you try and get 150 minutes per week of that then you would reduce your blood pressure by about three four millimeters of mercury something like that uh there is another form of exercise which is dynamic resistance exercise this is where exercise is characterized by effort against an opposing force such as weight lifting and in and this is less well studied than arabic dynamic exercise but what we know about resistance training is it is not harmful in high blood pressure and it could reduce your average blood pressure measurements by another 2.7 millimeters of mercury average finally there is isometric resistance exercise which is characterized by the sustained contraction of muscles with no change in the length of the muscle or in the angle of the joint so examples of that are like the plank or sitting against a wall without a chair and this is a form of exercise which has not really been very well studied at all so far but what we do know is it is not harmful in patients who have high blood pressure and this is probably beneficial so whatever your form of exercise is or whatever your preferred form is the important thing is to get out there and do some exercise so you can see that just combining diet weight loss and exercise can easily bring your blood pressure down by 20 millimeters mercury you would ordinarily need maybe two different medications to try and achieve that kind of result so this is well worth doing right so i hope you found this useful uh there are other things by the way that can also reduce blood pressure stress management sleep and i'll do a video on those in the near future but thank you so much again for all your support all your kindness i'm enjoying this time in quarantine i love the idea of getting up and trying to do a video and interacting with everyone and i'm really really grateful for everything you do for me so thank you so much all the best bye

Channel: York Cardiology

Views: 202,087

Rating: 4.9314408 out of 5

Keywords: Heart palpitations anxiety, Heart palpitations after eating, Heart palpitations causes, Heart palpitations symptoms, Heart palpitations treatment, Heart palpitations cure, Ventricular ectopics, Heart disease symptoms, Heart racing, Heart flutter causes, Heart palpitations at night, blood pressure, hypertension, natural remedy for blood pressure, reduce blood pressure, exercise for blood pressure, diet for blood pressure

Id: Q8RQz8jd1qc

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021