DOING OUR DUTY FOR DASH

Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) can be our own personal job and we can do it at one of our favourite places – at the dinner table. If our blood pressure reading is greater than 140/90 most of the time, we are living on the edge of high blood pressure (also called Hypertension). We are (along with 50 million other Americans) asking our hearts to work harder than normal to pump blood through our blood vessels and arteries, especially in the heart, kidneys and eyes. It strains the heart as it scars and hardens the lining of blood vessels. The higher the blood pressure reading, the higher the risk of heart disease becomes.

But help is on the way with power eating including a total of four fruits and five vegetables a day and two or three servings of low-fat dairy products per day for extra calcium. For example, a banana contains 650 mg of potassium and may help counteract the effects of our high salt diets (according to recent research.) Eating fatty cold water fish like herring, salmon or white tuna twice a week is also important. Include in your salad one cup of chopped celery ribs as one of the daily servings of vegetables. Add flaxseed to the diet, one of the most potent sources of omega-3 fats on a regular basis and can reduce the development of heart disease by 46 per cent. This keeps red blood cells from clumping and forming a clot which can block an artery. Sprinkle two tablespoons of flax on your cereal or salad each day or buy it pre-ground but better yet zip it through a small coffee or nut grinder. After it is ground keep it in the freezer (or refrigerate for about three months.) These are the main healing foods for hypertension but other proteins like chicken and turkey and other low fat proteins are important especially for vegetarians who otherwise need to include B12 in the diet.