What Should I Do to Maintain Healthy Blood Pressure?

It can be nearly impossible for some to find a starting point for their health journey.

Do you cut all salt out of your diet immediately, start going for long runs in the morning, or do you have to do both?

The good news is that you don’t need to redo your entire diet or run constantly to maintain healthy blood pressure.

Verywell’s recent article entitled, “Diet or Exercise: Which One Is Better for Managing Blood Pressure?” says that diet is usually the best place to begin because most patients who have high blood pressure are also overweight or obese NYU Langone cardiologist Sean Heffron, MD, told Verywell. Exercise is easier once you lose weight, and dieting is usually more effective for weight loss.

Other factors affecting your high blood pressure risk include age and genetics. Therefore, lifestyle changes won’t always be enough. Some individuals require meds to manage hypertension. However, gradually reducing sodium intake is the right place to begin for most.

While physical activity is also essential to a healthy lifestyle, preventive cardiologist Marc Katz, MD, told Verywell that “you can never out-lift a bad diet.” In other words, no amount of exercise can undo the damage caused by everyday eating choices.

Reducing the amount of sodium in your diet can help lower your blood pressure. However, it’s not easy, Katz said.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), much of the food you eat contains “too much sodium,” and that’s before you reach for the saltshaker.

More than 70% of the sodium consumed in the standard American diet comes from packaged, prepared, and restaurant foods, according to the AHA. In many cases, salt is added for flavoring or preserving foods with a longer shelf life.

However, in the human body, added salt leads to excess fluid retention.

Katz said that when you have more salt, your body holds more fluid to maintain equilibrium—more fluid results in more pressure in the bloodstream, which ups your blood pressure.

With this balance in mind, one of the best things you can do to lower your blood pressure is to decrease your salt intake.

Experts say cutting back on salt in the long term may also reduce your risk of hypertension-related illness.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that people who don’t add extra salt to their foods have a significantly lower risk of heart disease-related events.

Reference: Verywell (July 26, 2023) “Diet or Exercise: Which One Is Better for Managing Blood Pressure?”