People with high blood pressure should be extremely careful with their diet, although diet itself is not necessarily the cause of high blood pressure. Stress, alcohol, smoking, overweight and a sedentary lifestyle are the 5 factors that, in addition to a genetic predisposition, can cause hypertension.

THE DIET FOR HIGH PRESSURE: GO UP YES OR NO?

In the diet for high blood pressure, the goal is to reduce the consumption of salt as well, but the salt itself causes momentary hypertension. In fact, studies on the relationship between salt and chronic hypertension reveal the lack of clear data that identify a cause-effect relationship.
However, in hypertensive people there is an increased retention of salt due to the fact that the kidneys cannot get rid of it in the urine. However, some experts warn people against diets completely without salt or with very little salt, because these diets can lead to even harmful cardiovascular effects ( source). The best thing would therefore be to act not only on the salt restriction and not in a rigid way. But on the improvement where possible of four of the five factors I mentioned at the beginning, namely: alcohol, stress, overweight, sedentary lifestyle.
To these indications we can add a very important fifth: that is, take more potassium from the diet, to counterbalance the action of sodium. So a high blood pressure diet should be inclusive of potassium-rich foods and not simply aim at eliminating sodium as this other study recommends.
Let’s see how.

HIGH PRESSURE DIET: CHARACTERISTICS

• People who have overweight or visceral fat and high blood pressure should lose weight with a satiating but slightly low calorie diet and increased focus on movement.
• Walking, cycling, exercises with small weights and without intense effort (for example avoiding exercises in which you are lying down or very intense slimming activities such as HIIT) are recommended.
• Activities that require intense cardiovascular effort are not recommended. Yoga, pilates, martial activities such as tai chi are also very good.
• Meditation works for stress control.
• The diet should not be drastic, but balanced and possibly with frequent meals.
• High protein diets and carbohydrate-free diets should be avoided.