Hypertension/high blood pressure health centre

Five lifestyle tips to lower high blood pressure

Adopting a healthy lifestyle is critical to preventing and treating high blood pressure and will significantly reduce your risk of heart disease, kidney disease and stroke. Not only can diet and exercise lower high blood pressure but they can also make your blood pressure medications work better.

How much can a healthy lifestyle help?

The Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure in America produced a chart to help you make healthy lifestyle changes, which we've updated with UK guidance.

The chart shows that lifestyle changes can reduce systolic blood pressure (the “top" number in a blood pressure reading and measured in milligrams of mercury/mmHg. By lowering your systolic blood pressure, your diastolic blood pressure may come down as well.

Lifestyle change	Recommendation	Approximate systolic BP reduction
Weight reduction	Normal BMI of 18.5-24.9. BMI is body mass index, a measurement of the ratio of height to weight. It can be calculated by dividing your weight (in kilograms) by your height (in metres squared). Even losing as little as 10 pounds if you’re overweight can help reduce or prevent high blood pressure.	5-20 mmHg per 10kg/22lbs lost
Follow Dash eating plan	Diet high in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy. Low in fat	8-14 mmHg
Salt reduction	Limit salt intake to no more than 6gm/day	2-8 mmHg
Exercise	Two and a half hours of physical activity spread across a week	4-9 mmHg
Moderate drinking	Do not exceed the recommended limits for alcohol. The current recommendation is that men should not regularly exceed 3-4 units of alcohol a day and women should not regularly exceed 2-3 units a day. A single measure of spirits is one unit of alcohol; a pint of normal-strength beer is two units; a medium glass of wine (175ml) is two units; a large glass of wine (250ml) is three units; a pint of strong beer is four units	2-4 mmHg

The US guidelines recommend people with high blood pressure follow the Dash diet - Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. This eating plan is based on a daily intake of 2,000 calories:

seven-eight servings per day of grains and grain products (these can include breakfast cereal, wholegrain bread, rice, pasta, etc)
four-five servings of vegetables
four-five servings of fruit
two-three servings of low-fat or non-fat dairy foods
No more than two servings per day of meat, poultry, and fish
four-five servings of nuts, seeds and legumes per week
two-three servings of fats and oils (serving example: one teaspoon of margarine or oil, one tablespoon of salad dressing or mayonnaise)
five servings of sweets per week (only low-fat treats)

WebMD Medical Reference

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