Food that lower blood pressure

Dietitian.Lauren Hmede
Feb 10, 2019
1 min read

High blood pressure: Six foods to include in your diet if you want to lower your reading

Hypertension or high blood pressure is a silent killer as symptoms don’t always show, when it is left untreated it can be serious as complications affect your body like stroke. Healthy and balanced diet is really important to control blood pressure while adding other food rich in potassium may be beneficial too.

Adding potassium rich food is really important to control blood pressure as potassium helps to lower blood pressure by balancing out the negative effects of salt.

Kidneys control blood pressure by controlling the amount of fluid stored in your body. The more fluid, the higher your blood pressure. The balance is done by filtering your blood and sucking out any extra fluid, which it then stores in your bladder as urine.

This process uses a delicate balance of sodium and potassium to pull the water across a wall of cells from the bloodstream into a collecting channel that leads to the bladder.

When you eat salt, your sodium will increase and disturb balance of electrolytes which make the kidney less able to get rid of sodium. When you eat potassium, you help your body to get back its balance and make kidneys work efficiently.

Potassium is found in most types of food, but the NHS says good sources include:

Bananas

Broccoli

Nuts and seeds

Beef

Chicken

Fish