question - High & Low Blood Pressure Message Board

llama4u447 · 02-29-2008, 05:43 PM

Has anybody here lowered their blood pressure just by cutting salt and watching what they eat? I just had to be taken off my birth control pills due to high blood pressure. Its a stage 1 hypertension and it may be due to it being in my family or to the birth control pills. Up until the end of summer my blood pressure had been pretty much at like 110/70 and it just started going up. I hope it was the pill that was doing it even though I had been on it for 3.5 years. Anyways how long did it take for you to start seeing results? I've been keeping my sodium level at less than 2000mg a day but preferably between 1400 and 1800. should I try to go lower? Please help, I wanna lower it so I dont go on medication.

flowergirl2day · 03-01-2008, 07:01 PM

Hi llama,

Of course you can get your blood pressure back to normal through diet and exercise and other lifestyle measures. Discontinuing your birth control pill should make quite a difference in your blood pressure readings. You can improve those further by eating right and exercising. Do a little bit of research. There are some people on this board who have succeeded in doing what you are about to do.
Review the DASH threads by bethsheba, starting on 2/19/08. There have been several of them since then. Very interesting reading.
Good luck,

flowergirl

llama4u447 · 03-02-2008, 01:38 PM

Thanks for replying. I've been doing this for the past few days and I'm not exactly following the DASH diet but I am using a calorie counting website to keep track of everything I'm eating. My sodium levels have stayed below to 1900mg a day and I am eating tons at least 6-7 servings of fruits and vegetables. For the people who have had luck with cutting sodium and adding light activity to the lifestyle, how long did it take for you guys to see your blood pressure start to drop?

tamuprof45 · 03-02-2008, 07:53 PM

I'd hasten to add that lifestyle changes are not an exact science...meaning, you can make great progress without necessarily following things exactly and precisely to the letter. DASH offers great guidelines, but if you "fall off the wagon" here and there, you will still make progress. The key is not to get hung up on rigid point-by-point plans but to understand and internalize the basic logic behind things like DASH and exercise regimens...eat less salt, eat more fruits and vegetables and less bad foods...exercise 30-60 minutes a day, etc.

And don't beat yourself up for eating a piece of pie once in awhile, or a hamburger, or a glass or two of good wine. (Being aware of course of interactions with medicines!)

I truly believe that a very important lifestyle component of fighting high blood pressure is mental as well...being more relaxed, less stressed out, less worrisome, less "Type A"...however you wish to put it. A LOT of posts here have randomly brought up such things as having a dog or a cat, doing a good deed once a day, basically just "being a better person" to yourself and to others around you.

Among the things I do "for a living" is studying the various determinants of happiness and well-being (I actually have published on this as well), and I run across a LOT of connections between heart disease and blood pressure issues with psychological lifestyle issues: stress, being angry, being socially isolated and lonely, being completely self-centered or self-absorbed, etc. The mind and the body (both subject to lifestyle changes) it seems are both critical for cardiovascular well-being.

My point, such as it is, is one can get lost or hung up focusing on ONE particular attack on HBP, be it a diet, pills, a specific regimen, etc. But the more I learn, it seems that changing one's life in a broad way helps a huge, huge amount.

tamuprof45

marantz1935 · 03-03-2008, 04:36 AM

Your post makes total sense Tamu.

I was 'diagnosed' last October with EBP. As I look back over the time leading up to my blood pressure increase, I see that I was isolating a lot. I discovered too that my anxiety was slowly creeping up and my feeling of being stressed also seem to rise. I noticed it particularly when driving around. Another thing as well, was that my diet had gone to pot. I was eating more junk more often. Maybe it's all a coincidence, but I doubt it.

I have started making changes now to try and reverse it. I read on-line that although blood pressure can rise, then by that logic, it can also fall. For me, I need to keep my attitude positive.

This was the wake-up call I needed.

Marantz.