A key to healthy eating is choosing foods lower in salt and sodium. Before the widespread availability of medication to control high blood pressure, people with serious hypertension had only one treatment option, a drastically salt-reduced, low-calorie “rice diet.” Some people can significantly lower their blood pressure by avoiding salt.

Studies show that people in countries that use a great deal of salt in their cooking tend to have higher blood pressures than people in countries that use little salt. For example, the Japanese, whose cuisine is among the saltiest in the world, also have the highest blood pressure; and so do Americans. Americans take it for granted that blood pressure will rise as we age. But in countries with low per-capita salt intake, blood pressure does not rise significantly after puberty. For example, blacks in Africa, who typically eat a low-salt, high-fiber diet, have relatively low blood pressure, but for African-Americans, just the opposite is true. Nearly 50 percent of all African-Americans have high blood pressure, often beginning early in life.

Excessive consumption of dietary sodium chloride (salt), coupled with diminished dietary potassium, induces an increase in fluid volume and an impairment of blood pressure regulating mechanisms. This results in hypertension in susceptible individuals.

A high potassium-low sodium diet reduces the rise in blood pressure during mental stress by reducing the blood vessel constricting effect of adrenaline. Sodium restriction alone does not improve blood pressure control; it must be accompanied by a high potassium intake.

Most of us consume more salt than we need. NIH recommends limiting the sodium consumption to less than 2.4 grams (2,400 milligrams [mg] ) of sodium a day. That equals 6 grams (about 1 teaspoon) of table salt a day. The 6 grams include ALL salt and sodium consumed, including that used in cooking and at the table. Recent research has shown that people consuming diets of 1,500 mg of sodium had even better blood pressure lowering benefits. So, your doctor may advise eating less salt and sodium if you are suffering from high blood pressure. The lower-sodium diets also can keep blood pressure from rising and help blood pressure medicines work better.

In a clinical study, researchers looked at the effect of a reduced dietary sodium intake on blood pressure as people followed either the DASH diet or a typical American diet. Results showed that reducing dietary sodium lowered blood pressure for both the DASH diet and the typical American diet. The biggest blood pressure-lowering benefits were for those eating the DASH diet at the lowest sodium level (1,500 milligrams per day). This study showed the importance of lowering sodium intake in your diet.

Watch what you eat. Do not add additional salt to your food. If you have high blood pressure, avoid eating certain highly processed, overly salted foods, such as frozen pizza, canned salted vegetables, meals from fast-food restaurants, and the like.

Beneficial Vegetables and Spices for Hypertension

A number of common vegetables and spices have beneficial effects in controlling hypertension. Incorporate these into your cooking. Alternately, you can make a tea or a vegetable soup.

Celery (Apium graveolens). Oriental Medicine practitioners have long used celery for lowering high blood pressure. There are some experimental evidence that shows that celery is useful for this. In one animal study, laboratory animals injected with celery extract showed lowered blood pressure. Eating as few as four celery stalks was found to be beneficial in lowering blood pressure in human beings.

Garlic (Allium sativum). Garlic is a wonder drug for heart. It has beneficial effects in all cardiovascular system including blood pressure. In a study, when people with high blood pressure were given one clove of garlic a day for 12 weeks, their diastolic blood pressure and cholesterol levels were significantly reduced. Eating quantities as small as one clove of garlic a day was found to have beneficial effects on managing hypertension. Use garlic in your cooking, salad, soup, pickles, etc. It is very versatile.

Onion (Allium cepa). Onions are useful in hypertension. What is best is the onion essential oil. Two to three tablespoons of onion essential oil a day was found to lower the systolic levels by an average of 25 points and the diastolic levels by 15 points in hypertension subjects. This should not be surprising because onion is a cousin of garlic.

Tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum). Tomatoes are high in gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), a compound that can help bring down blood pressure.

Broccoli (Brassica oleracea). This vegetable contains several active ingredients that reduce blood pressure.

Carrot (Daucus carota). Carrots also contain several compounds that lower blood pressure.

Saffron (Crocus sativus). Saffron contains a chemical called crocetin that lowers the blood pressure. You can use saffron in your cooking. (It is a very popular spice in Arabic cooking.) You can also make a tea with it. Many Indians add a pinch of saffron in the brewed tea to give a heavenly flavor. Unfortunately, it is very expensive.

Assorted spices

High blood pressure (HBP) or hypertension means high pressure (tension) in the arteries. Arteries are vessels that carry blood from the pumping heart to all the tissues and organs of the body. High blood pressure does not mean excessive emotional tension, although emotional tension and stress can temporarily increase blood pressure. Normal blood pressure is below 120/80; blood pressure between 120/80 and 139/89 is called “pre-hypertension”, and a blood pressure of 140/90 or above is considered high.

The top number, the systolic blood pressure, corresponds to the pressure in the arteries as the heart contracts and pumps blood forward into the arteries. The bottom number, the diastolic pressure, represents the pressure in the arteries as the heart relaxes after the contraction. The diastolic pressure reflects the lowest pressure to which the arteries are exposed.

An elevation of the systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure increases the risk of developing heart (cardiac) disease, kidney (renal) disease, hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis), eye damage, and stroke (brain damage). These complications of hypertension are often referred to as end-organ damage because damage to these organs is the end result of chronic (long duration) high blood pressure. For that reason, the diagnosis of high blood pressure is important so efforts can be made to normalize blood pressure and prevent complications.

It was previously thought that rises in diastolic blood pressure were a more important risk factor than systolic elevations, but it is now known that in people 50 years or older systolic hypertension represents a greater risk.

The American Heart Association estimates high blood pressure affects approximately one in three adults in the United States – 73 million people. High blood pressure is also estimated to affect about two million American teens and children, and the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that many are under-diagnosed. Hypertension is clearly a major public health problem.

Here is a hypertension prevention list:

1. Get salt off the table. No getting around this one.
2. Monitor processed food intake-from salad dressing to peanut butter, the majority of items we buy in the grocery store all contain sodium. Soups, frozen dinners, luncheon meat, and smoked foods are the biggest culprits. When in doubt, read the label.
3. Cooking at home will almost always be lower in salt than eating out.
4. Exercise. Amazing how this one always shows up on the list…
5. Increase potassium. In school, I learned “bananas, potatoes, tomatoes, and milk” as the best sources of potassium. In general, go for fruits, veggies, and low-fat dairy to meet your potassium needs. Again, nothing new here.
6. Diffuse your salt. Convenience foods are time savers so I understand the need to use them here and there. To help lower your intake, try stretching sodium-ridden foods a bit further. For example, let’s say you’re making mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner. It’s a packaged food so you can count on there being sodium. Additionally it has processed cheese – another red flag. Diffuse the salt by adding steamed broccoli. This makes it a more balanced meal, stretches the box of mac ‘n’ cheese further, and in turn decreases the amount of sodium per serving. Another idea is to add more fresh veggies to canned soups.
7. Spice it up. You will be amazed how much different spices can enhance the flavor of food without adding sodium. Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme…

Finally, to put it in perspective, the Dietary Reference Intakes for sodium and potassium are as follows:

SODIUM
Adequate Intake (mg) Upper Limit
Children, 1-3 years 1000 1500
Children, 4-8 years 1200 1900
Children, 9-13 years 1500 2200
Ages 14-50 1500 2300
Ages 50-70 1300 2300
Age 70+ 1200 2300

POTASSIUM
Adequate Intake (mg)
Children, 1-3 years 3000
Children, 4-8 years 3800
Children, 9-13 years 4500
Ages 14+ 4700

Information obtained from the Institute of Medicine.

Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD is a nutritionist and founder of www.Skinnyandthecity.com. She is also the creator of The F-Factor Diet™, an innovative nutritional program she has used for more than ten years to provide hundreds of her clients with all the tools they need to achieve easy weight loss and maintenance, improved health and well-being.