If you are worried about your blood pressure getting overly high, you will probably go to your physician to ask for advice. Your physician will invariably like you to attempt some lifestyle alterations or / and take medication if this does not work. Making lifestyle alterations is the first tactic, but it does not always do the trick. It usually does, but just not every time.

However, it is vital to strive to reduce your blood pressure, also called hypertension, before you go on tablets. Lots of people are of the belief that once your body relies on medication to moderate its hypertension, you will never be able to wean yourself off the tablets. This is what my GP told me. Therefore, if it goes against your personal philosophy to take tablets, now is the time to do something about it.

The first thing to do is give up smoking and if you regularly drink too much alcohol, to cut back on that too, as both actions will have the impact of elevating your blood pressure. Taking these measures will also have knock-on effects for the rest of your body. You will be fitter in general by not smoking at all and not drinking very much.

The next thing to do is to increase your level of daily activity. Do you take any exercise at all? If not, you will be amazed at how much two thirty-minute sessions of light exercise will help. Walk for thirty minutes in the morning and evening or replace one walk for thirty minutes gardening or swimming.

Diet is another manner of beating off the hypertension tablets. Salt, or sodium as it is frequently referred to, is a major cause of hypertension, usually because it encourages water retention. So, cutting back on salt or following a sodium depleted diet can have a major effect on your blood pressure.

Try substituting something else for salt: more pepper, a mixture of some other herbs or simply leave it out altogether. After a couple of weeks you will not notice, except that everybody else’s cooking will taste really heavily over-salted! I did this quite successfully.

Add more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet, because that will also decrease your hypertension. Eating less fat and red meat will also help. Stress is a major factor in hypertension, attempt to relax a bit more and possibly take up meditation or yoga.

If you are on medication, it is possible that the drugs are increasing your blood pressure. If you think that this might be true, take your drugs to the medical doctor and seek his opinion. You might be able to substitute some of them. Some of the drugs that can have an adverse effect are: oral contraceptives, steroids, anti-depressants and cold / flu medicines.

You will notice that lots of these methods for decreasing your (possible) hypertension are related, so if you are an over-weight, inactive smoker who likes a drink, you can do a great deal by remedying that and your pressure will fall and you will become healthier in other ways as well.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with work on the cause of high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, just go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

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