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Cook your own (or buy) low-salt or unsalted foods. Avoid excessive table salt (sodium chloride, NaCl). You definitely need a small amount of salt (both sodium, Na, and chloride, Cl) in your diet. Sodium helps regulate electrical processes in the nerves and muscles but excess can cause you to retain excess fluids (edema), which makes your blood have more fluid volume. When your blood has more volume, your heart has to pump harder to move that excess volume throughout the body. This causes the blood pressure to go up. (Whether food tastes salty is not the point; so watering down soup will not help unless you also pour off 1/2, or all the water.) Remember, it's not just the salt that you put on your food while cooking or at the table, it's also the amount of sodium that's in the prepared foods that you buy. Several processed, packaged foods contain sodium benzoate as a preservative. You should become "label conscious" and buy "low salt/sodium" or "unsalted" foods and cook without salt. However, be aware that excessive use of products that replace sodium with potassium, K, just to make a "low sodium" claim can be harmful.
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Avoid ordinary processed-foods with salt and other additives, prepared, canned and bottled foods such as meats, pickles, olives, soups, chili and such, bacon, ham, sausage, bakery products and mono-sodium glutamate (MSG), and meats with added water (will have higher/added sodium content). Also avoid condiments such as prepared mustard, salsa, chile sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, barbecue sauce and other sauces. Many American diets include up to 5,000 milligrams (5g) of sodium daily which nearly all medical professionals consider extremely unhealthy. Try to get to below 2 g (2,000 mg.) per day.
- Medical professionals often prescribe "low sodium diets" that consist of between 1100 and 1500 mg. daily. The American Heart Association advises that the human body actually can function with eating as little as 200 mg. of sodium daily.
- To get "good" flavor, there are multiple brands of salt-free seasonings that are zesty combinations of ground, powdered spices and herbs. Plus, fake-salt products are not just low or "lite" salt products -- but are salt substitutes (such as potassium based: potassium-chloride, for example), and use that sparingly, as the flavor is different from sodium salt.
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Avoid using excessive amounts fake salt/salt substitute (usually potassium chloride, KCl). Like sodium, potassium is an electrolyte required in the diet in small amounts for your nerves and the heart to function.
- Caution: Excessive potassium in the blood (hyperkalemia) is a common cause of life-threatening heart rhythm changes (cardiac arrhythmias). It can cause a heart attack called ventricular fibrillation where the lower parts of your heart beat so fast or flutter so that it cannot pump blood. An extremely high amount of potassium in your blood can also make your heart suddenly stop beating at all.[1]
- Symptoms of dangerously high potassium in the your blood supply (hyperkalemia) can include: Abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) that can be life threatening or either too slow or too rapid heart rate, feeling very weak, heart failure.[1]
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Eat a moderate, lean diet and avoid stimulants. Avoid caffeine, much chocolate, sugar, white carbs (although pastas are not as quick to change to sugar as breads, pastries and cakes are), candy, sugary drinks and excessive dietary fats. Try eating a more plant based diet, instead of so much of meats, milk products and eggs.
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Use less caffeine. Stopping coffee and other caffeinated beverage consumption will lower blood pressure. But, even one or two cups of coffee can raise blood pressure into the unhealthy Stage 1 level. If a person already has Stage 1 Hypertension, the coffee usually complicates the problem further because caffeine is a nervous system stimulant. Thus, agitated nerves cause the heart to beat faster, which raises the blood pressure. If you are a person who drinks a lot of caffeine (more than 4 caffeinated drinks/day), you may need to taper yourself off caffeine to prevent withdrawal symptoms such as headaches.
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Increase fiber. Fiber cleanses your system and helps control your blood pressure by having digestive regularity. Most vegetables are high in fiber, especially those with leafy greens. Many fruits, nuts, and legumes (beans and peas) are also rich in fiber, as are whole-grain products.
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