7 Deadly Sins of Food for High Blood Pressure

You don’t need us to tell you that high blood pressure is bad news. It’s common knowledge, but do you know what you should be doing about it?

There’s a ton of research out there which tells us what to eat and what to avoid to keep our blood pressure healthy, but it can often be hard to find among all the ‘noise’ that exists.

Ads and articles for diet fads and superfoods are often ‘here today and gone tomorrow’. There’s a constant churn of information in the advice industry that’s often there just to get attention.

If you can manage to keep these things out of your mouth (especially if you have high blood pressure) you’ll be well on your way to getting a healthier cardiovascular system.

1- Alcohol – Ever had a friend tell you that one glass of wine is good for you, then look on in disbelief as they fill a glass for you that almost holds the entire bottle? Friends like that are great, but a large global study published in UK medical journal, The Lancet has confirmed that actually, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

Sure, we’ve all heard stories of people who drank booze every day of their lives and still lived to be a hundred years old, but most people aren’t that lucky. They’re more likely to wind up with serious diseases, and high blood pressure is just one of the ones on the list. Alcohol is the most popular drug on Earth, but for the sake of your health, avoid it if you possibly can. We know it can be lovely stuff—in the moment—but sooner or later you’ll always pay a price for the good times that it brings.

2- Frozen foods- Freezing freshly-picked vegetables is perfectly okay, and if that’s all supermarkets were packing in their freezer aisles then you’d be fine. A bag full of rock-solid veg is a great buy for your body, but you’ll want to avoid the less innocent packages that also lurk in the cabinets—if you know what’s good for you.

There are plenty of pre-prepared meals laced with salt, sugar and a laundry list of chemicals which masquerade as food, so with some of them you might be better off eating the package they came in instead of food! You’d like to think that they’re simply good food that’s been frozen at the perfect moment, but they’re often sullied with preservatives and flavorings straight out of the laboratory. So, check the label before you put anything in your shopping cart.

3- Canned foods- In 1974, canned foods were recovered from the wreck of the Bertrand, a steamboat which went down in the Missouri river in 1895. When cans were opened the contents may not have smelled or tasted great, but after 109 years, analysts couldn’t find a single microbe growing inside them. Even after all that time, the food was still edible!

Canned food is convenient, cheap, and it lasts a long time, but the foods themselves are often processed before they’re sealed into their airtight containers, which means many of them come with a heavy dose of salt and sugar.
If you do have to eat from a can then you can make it a healthier experience by washing the contents thoroughly, as most of the sodium content is dissolved in the water.

4- Prepared “Mediterranean” foods- When you hear the word ‘Mediterranean diet’ you probably think of sun-kissed vineyards, lush salads, fresh fish and fine cheeses. And that’s what manufacturers want you to think. It’s a label that helps them sell frozen, canned, boxed and freeze-dried foods that come loaded with extra chemicals, sodium, and sugar and which have also had the vitamins and other nutrients cooked out of them.

‘Always check the label’ if you can, but if you can’t then just avoid the stuff altogether, just to be on the safe side.

5- Instant foods and food additives- Oatmeal wasn’t born ‘instant’. It gets that way because it’s rolled and flattened between cylinders, pre-cooked, sweetened and flavored. In other words, it’s processed to within an inch of its nutritional life and then packaged to look as if it’s natural and good for you.

Many other foods suffer a similar fate, so any time you see the word “quick” in the title, be on your guard. Be suspicious of food additives like stock cubes and sauces that can sit in your fridge or cupboard ‘forever’ without going off. They usually come with extra sodium that should be avoided if you have hypertension.

6- Carbonated soft drinks- Many people consume canned and bottled sodas without a second thought. They’re almost everywhere you look, in vending machines, offered as part of ‘meal’ deals at fast-food outlets and they take up entire aisles in the grocery store. They’re also cheap, so it’s no wonder they’re popular, but they’re also drinkable junk food that can harm your health.

A can of something like Sprite or Coke contains eight teaspoons, or 33g of sugar, which is ludicrous! Far better to drink water, which is what your body was designed for. But drink these all day and the sodium content (14.7mg) will help to dehydrate you as well as play havoc with your blood pressure.

Switching to diet soft drinks may seem like the healthy alternative, but they often contain aspartame, sucralose and other artificial sweeteners too, substances that have been shown to cause weight gain (how ironic!), diabetes and more. Your high blood pressure will not thank you for indulging in fizzy pop.

7- “Energy” Drinks- You can think of these as the ‘evil twins’ of regular carbonated drinks (which are pretty evil to begin with). Manufacturers throw everything they can think of into energy drinks; caffeine, sugar, taurine, aspartame, and more. Some people have suffered from heart failure drinking these chemical cocktails in a can, while others experience symptoms of addiction and suffer from anxiety, agitation and sleep disturbances from drinking them.

Energy drinks can’t really give you energy. They can only give you the illusion of energy, a false sensation that comes from sugar and adrenaline spikes that always end in a slump and the desire for more.

The big lie is that these denatured substances are food. They’re pseudo-foods that taste nice and last a long time, but beyond this they have little to offer the body and are often harmful. If you want to experience how much of a hold they can have on you then try doing without them for a few days and see if you don’t feel like an addict suffering from withdrawal!

Real food shouldn’t do this to you. It should leave you feeling level, calm, and satisfied. Stick to foods that really are foods, that haven’t been altered, added to, or taken away from, and see how much better you feel.

Even if you can’t follow all of the suggestions here there’s still a natural way to lower your blood pressure without changing what you eat. Discover how these 3 simple exercises lower blood pressure down to 120/80 in just 9 minutes…