Studies abound that try to pinpoint which diseases, blood components, behaviors, or other variables will have the biggest impact on causing high blood pressure.

Oftentimes what was considered unhealthy yesterday becomes healthy today. Many types of foods are also advertised as heart healthy when indeed they’re a one way ticket to bursting high blood pressure.

[adrotate group=”5″]In today’s article we’ll list 7 types of foods that have always been and will always be the worst thing you can put inside your mouth- especially if you have high blood pressure.

Unhealthy food choices, especially when they are every day and over many years, can push your blood pressure to the boiling point.

Our bodies are designed to thrive on fresh foods as close to their natural state as possible. Processing it adds stress by the truckload and the biggest offenders are listed below:

1- Alcoholic beverages-
while it is true that ONE glass of red wine with dinner can be helpful to keep blood pressure in check because of the antioxidant power, other beverages are not to be included in the red wine’s rank. For instance, beer, grain alcohols, and liqueurs are terribly damaging; this is especially true when taken in excess.

2- Frozen foods- While fresh frozen varieties of vegetables can be a great way to keep and store what you SHOULD be eating, the great benefits of fresh can be completely undone if the food is processed outside of just picking or cutting. For instance- frozen prepared meals with sauces or seasonings are most often packed with MSG, sodium, sugar, and chemicals.

3- Canned foods- The canning process not only cooks away the nutritive value of fruits and vegetables, but it also introduces a mountain of salt and sugar into what would have been a great food choice. Even low-sodium canned foods are not recommended for people with high blood pressure.

4- Prepared “Italian” foods- Whether they are frozen, canned, boxed or freeze-dried, foods that are prepared and packaged for convenience are packed with unhealthy chemicals, sodium, and extra sugar. Again here, many of the vitamins and nutrients have been cooked out before the processing for shelf life even begins.

5- Instant foods and food additives- meals that include prepared chicken or beef stock, bouillon cubes, or that have “quick” anywhere in the name as with oatmeal, should not be used by people with hypertension. While they are advertised by the producers as ‘healthy,’ they certainly are not in reality. This also goes for fast and fried foods. Outside of a salad with no dressing or a simple vinegar and oil, there are very few choices within the world of fast food that are healthy at all.

6- Carbonated soft drinks- Canned and bottled sodas have been around for so long that they have become a staple of the American diet. However, the sodium and sugar content in these beverages is astronomical. As well, when we drink these we are NOT drinking water, which is what we should be drinking in abundance. And the diet varieties have artificial sweeteners, which are suspected in a whole litany of diseases and conditions whose symptoms include high blood pressure.

7- “Energy” Drinks- We might as well call these ‘guaranteed hypertension’ drinks instead. Between the extreme amounts of caffeine, sugar, and other chemicals, people have been found to actually suffer heart failure when consuming these beverages. If you find that you “need” these types of drinks, it might be that you need to first consider what other changes in your lifestyle should be considered to give you more energy that won’t place you at risk of heart attack.

It’s true that whenever possible, fresh should take a much higher precedence over canned, boxed, or otherwise prepared. The power to eliminate high blood pressure and many other diseases can be found in simply eating the foods that nature already gives us. Processing the benefits right out of those foods is akin to not only opening the door to hypertension, but also flushing your money down the drain.

There is however one natural method guaranteed to lower blood pressure with little or no diet or lifestyle changes. Discover how these 3 easy exercises drop blood pressure below 120/80 in as little as 9 minutes…

But first, what do you think? Did we miss something? Please leave your comment below.