High blood pressure

I've had HBP for years but all of the sudden it's out of control and I can't exercise until it's down. And btw, I still ought to lose thirty pounds. Without my four days at the gym? ? ? ? Grrr.

So any suggestions other than "don't fret" and "don't eat too much salt"? I'm hoping that the meds will work again and that maybe some underlying cause will be detected. In the meantime, any secrets of High Blood Pressure Living? Other than chocolate and red wine, I mean.

While you're off from your regular gym workouts, at least take a walk every day if you can.  At a non-strenuous pace, surely that would be okay.  And give the medications time to kick in (shouldn't take long) and I'm betting you'll be back on track in no time.

thanks for the sane calm reply, stellajo. I realized a lot of my problem was I was being too careful.  A nice stroll is a great idea.

I have it also.  I've lost 25# in the last 6 months and that lowered it, but not enough.  Dr said to keep losing.  I am eating healthier, but loss is slower now.

No, haven't added salt and avoided obviously salty food, but just past month discovered by carefully reading all labels how much sodium is in regular food, which I didn't know about, milk, eggs, celery.  also, quit using any processed or boxed or frozen foods.  Even noticed chicken which I eat a lot of, has sodium injected, so now buy organic chicken.  Mostly I've very annoyed it was in so many things which I wasn't aware of.  I've been eating fresh veggies and fresh fruit 'mostly'. 

I did have some canned veggies in a 3 bean salad and learned here to rinse them for "2 minutes" under running water, to remove 40% of sodium, if you can't find No Salt canned veggies.

my wieght BMR is 'moderatly overweight'.  I am trying for "slightly" overweight and at my age think thats as good as I can do!!!  I try to stay at 1,200 calories a day and thats hard also.

5'6" and 178#. 

I'm aiming for only 500mg of sodium a day, but can't seem to manage that consistantly.  800-1,200 are my normal days.  and thats still less than my Dr said to stay at.

I have to pay a higher ins. premium because of this and that is why I've I'm trying harder to lose weight.  This site has helped me so much, all the little things I learned to control appetiate here.

good luck to you.  There sure are plenty of ppl just like us with this problem.  Probably this isn't the info you were hoping to find, but I could condense it into 'don't give up'.

I have had some brief spells of high blood pressure. Losing weight helped. Other things that you might consider:

• Try to get enough sleep. My bp went high once when I was not getting enough sleep.
• If you haven't done so already, bring a list of all the meds and any supplements and over-the-counter drugs you are taking to your doctor. Sometimes adjustments to non-blood-pressure meds and supplements can have an effect.
• I agree with the posters who suggested walking. It can be a stress reliever.
• Make sure you are doing some things you enjoy (also a stress reliever)
  
  Good luck!

my bp would always be 18/8,until i lost 27 kg's in a year,after that all went fine , always 120/80 so if ur over weight u will have to lose weight and ofcourse consult your doctor.

ohio 45

i'm curious to know what a typical days menu looks like for you only taking in 1,200 grams of sodium. I have high blood pressure also and am very overweight and am at 1700 calories daily for weight loss and am having trouble getting in less then 4,000 gr of sodium daily. It seems the low carb lower fat foods they add more sodium in them to compensate for the taste loss or something.

Please help as I need to get my sodium down and am eating fresh fruits and veggies but cannot eat veggies alone.......i just can't stomach the taste without something on them. I tried Mrs Dash and it's too spicey hot for me and I don't like the taste of it. Is there anything else?

Shia try lemon juice on veggies- I also use the salt substitute tastes the same to me.  Also stay away from packaged food the sodium content is outrageous in those - especially lunch meats - I buy low sodium no salt added foods now.  Now when I have "regular" food it tastes salty to me so you have tog ive your taste buds time to adjust.

shiagirl:  I'll see later if I can copy my food log and paste it here.  oh wow, 4,000 mg is really high.  I started by keeping a paper log and writing down the sodium I'd consumed a day.  Now I'm using the food log here and LOVE the convenience.

I limit caffine to 2 mugs of weak coffee in the morning.

Have you tried roasting veggies?  I just did it and love the new taste.

If I have my choice when buying foods, low fat VS regular I choose whichever has lowest sodium.

I've read fruit and veggies are good for high BP.  I eat 2-3 fruits a day and 2 cup of veggies.  Are there any veggies you do like?  What about cooked baby carrots with a pinch of brown sugar?  or what about some cream cheese on a green pepper?  1 oz has only 90 mg of sodium.  Can you eat veggie in a soup?

I rotate meat for variety from, roasts, lean hamburgers with no salt seasoning, turkey burgers, with seanoning.  To get the 80 g of protein the Dr wants me to eat, I've been having 2 meat patties for lunch and supper, no bun.  I just started buying dried beans (great source of protein & fiber & no sodium), and making bean soups (with a no or low sodium broth, refried beans on a low cal tortilla, etc.  The regular chicken at the store has sodium injected so I buy organic, which doesn't.

Breakfast is usually:  steelcut oatmeal or Kashi golean cereal.  Lately I put 1/2 C. of pure pumpkin on my oatmeal, with pie spice, flax seed (no sodium but does hav omega 3) and a pk of Stevia (a natural sweetner), no milk, but use do use it on the Kashi.

I have PB2, and fix 2 TB and eat plain, for a little tasty treat at only 54 cal. but it does have 94 mg of sodium.

I just had an orange as a snack.

Lunch is sitting out, 2 Cups of fresh turnip greens, and I just put vinegar on them as I was raised to eat them like that.  I don't know if vinegar has sodium, but won't bother looking it up as I don't use much.  I doubt the turnip greens have much.  I'll probably have a Whole Wheat English muffin with it, and that has 240 mg so will be the highest item today.

Dinner is thawing and it's fresh split pea soup and I plan to make some Hummus and the Tahini has 70 mg, but it makes enough to last awhile.

I like frozen berries and had those last night as a snack and also a small cereal box of Froot Loops which had 125 mg of sodium, but was a snack variety for me.

I make a lot of almost egg white omeletts.  Eggs have a little sodium.  I use 2 egg whites and 1 whole egg, and sautee whatever veggie I feel like, in a  teasp of EVOO.  I also eat hard boiled egg whites only as a low 17 cal snack.  Also, 5 walnuts daily for about 100 cal and 1 mg of sodium.

I always have a bowl of radishes or grape tomatoes sitting out and grab some as I walk by.

Have you ever heard this (I thought it was a neat theory) all the foods you need are on the outside aisle of the grocery store; produce, meat, dairy!!!

Any little change you can make will be good.  As someone posted above, do you walk or anything?

My Dr. was more concerned about me taking weight off than lowering sodium and said that will help the most.  What a slow process it is  :(

When I started lowering sodium I would look at a food and think, "ok, what if I have a stroke and have to live in a nursing home, drooling, having to be fed and use a bedpan,  if I eat this?" and thinking about a stroke sure took my appetiate away.

good luck and you're welcome to email me anytime.

One more thing.  6 mths ago when I started losing, I gave up sugar and don't miss it now.  BUT, salt was MORE DIFFICULT, for me to give up.  Slow changes help and now I find many things too salty.

Weekends I cheat and raise calories and here it is noon, and theres nothing special I even feel like indulging in.  I'm making chili and got No Salt tomatoes, cooked dried red beans, no salt, and with the ground beef, it shouldn't be too bad.  I use more onions to make up for no salt.

Original Post by shiagirl:

ohio 45

i'm curious to know what a typical days menu looks like for you only taking in 1,200 grams of sodium. I have high blood pressure also and am very overweight and am at 1700 calories daily for weight loss and am having trouble getting in less then 4,000 gr of sodium daily. It seems the low carb lower fat foods they add more sodium in them to compensate for the taste loss or something.

Please help as I need to get my sodium down and am eating fresh fruits and veggies but cannot eat veggies alone.......i just can't stomach the taste without something on them. I tried Mrs Dash and it's too spicey hot for me and I don't like the taste of it. Is there anything else?

 Shia, it's a shame you don't like Mrs Dash... I love the stuff and I use it on almost everything! I'm not actually eating sodium-free, but I love using Mrs Dash on meats that are already salty (like injected pork...) - it adds flavour without making it unbearably salty. (that's something to watch out for too - make sure that your meat is labelled 'minimally processed' so that it doesn't have salt or brine injected into it. Have you tried the Mrs Dash bottled marinades - they have more other things in them and much less pepper than the spices. '

Frozen vegetables have much less salt than fresh ones, as long as you make sure that you get the unseasoned kinds (the pre-seasoned ones are always sooooo salty they're inedible!). You can season them yourself and leave the salt out. I always buy frozen sweetcorn now - the unsalted canned kind is way too sweet (they put sugar in it instead! ick!) but the plain frozen kernels are perfect.

I actually love my vegetables absolutely plain and lightly-boiled or steamed. I really don't like them salted any more, but then I've been eating them that way since I was 15... There are things you can add to them to give them flavour, without adding salt or fat.

Lemon juice, lime juice, balsamic vinegar or a little regular vinegar are all great 'peppers-up' of plain vegetables. Also garlic and fresh or dried herbs.  If you make the vegetables tangy, it gives your tastebuds something else to notice besides the lack of salt.

Looking at my Analysis, a 'bad' day for me is when we go out to eat and I have restaurant/fast food and end up with  2500mg sodium in my day, slightly over the recommended amount. When I cook for us it's much lower (as long as I'm not using ham or bacon!)  If you cook your own food from scratch, it's almost always going to be much lower in sodium than processed food... and instead of going cold turkey on the salt (which will make everything taste terrible to you) see if you can get to the RDI and then work down from there. The more sodium-rich foods you have in your diet on a regular basis, the more salt it will take to make things taste good... 

Products to look out for:

- no salt-added tomato, tomato sauce, and tomato paste...
-  low-sodium tuna in water
- unseasoned frozen vegetables
- Hunts makes a no-salt-added ketchup. It's sweeter than the regular kind but tastes okay when you get used to it.
- Mrs Dash marinades

I got a lot of tips from a site called 'Low Sodium Cooking' - they send out an occasional newsletter of low-sodium recipes and have a huge archive on their site. Also lists of product-substitutions etc. I'll PM you the URL if you want... 

Hi!  Last year, I went through a period where my blood pressure was out of control.  I'm fairly young and would just shake like a old person throughout the day.  It was really bugging me, but my doctor made me realize just how much caffeine I was taking in.  I'm not of a pop drinker, but I love 1 cup of coffee in the morning and then I usually would drink iced tea all day.  That's when I had to stop all caffeine.  For some reason, I am very reactive to caffeine.  Even if I have a regular cop of coffee in the morning and water through out the rest of the day, I notice the difference now.  Just a little note to maybe cut your caffeine for a while and see if it helps.  If you can just make it through the headaches, it is worth it!

Thanks for all the ideas everyone for low sodium. I have gradually started switching out my canned goods to low sodium like low sodium tomatoe sauce and ketchup, and soups.

Oh I love veggie soup and made some a few weeks ago and that had very little sodium and was good.

Roasting veggies....hmmm I haven't tried that one yet but sounds good ........I will have to try that thanks.

I heard there are other kinds of Mrs Dash not just the one where the main ingredient is pepper so I have yet to try some of those too.

 

My DH recently found he needs to restrict his sodium, and since I do all the grocery shopping, let me tell you that this added hours to my shopping trips while I read all the labels and found out which items were OK and which were not.  Whew!  Since my BP is low, that is the one thing I had never had to do before.  Basically, we try to eat "natural" as much as possible (I even soaked my own beans overnight for chili the other night instead of buying canned) and keep his sodium allotment for the naturally-occuring sodiums in milk, veggies, etc. and those things he just CAN'T live without (e.g. sandwich bread and a few processed foods).

But ... here are some things I've learned:

- Get a Low-Sodium cookbook or two.  Sometimes a little change is all that's needed (and it's not always just "don't use salt") to make a meal great instead of just passable.  The two I use most (paperbacks) are the Low-Salt Cookbook from the American Heart Association and Cooking Without a Grain of Salt from the Baggs (family).

 - Mrs Dash's has TONS of seasonings, including marinades which I adore to put on roasts, chicken, even use some (diluted) as salad dressings.  DH doesn't have a clue that it's salt-less.  Check out their website: http://www.mrsdash.com. 

- By reading labels, you'll soon enough find the "lowest" sodium items, such as bacon (we use the  no-nitrite, low-sodium version since DH can't seem to give it up), salad dressings, bread (surprisingly HIGH in sodium - sigh).  I buy all no-salt canned corn, tomatoes, tomato sauce, green beans, peas and Enrico's no-salt Spaghetti sauce at the regular store.  Frozen veggies instead of canned are also convenient.  They also have a few soups (e.g. no-salt Campbell's tomato).

- Puffed Wheat, Rice, etc. cereals have no sodium.  I personally love them.  You can add flavored soy milk, fruit, even sugar for taste if you need to; I like mine with flavored yogurt.

- If you have a Trader Joes or Whole Foods, they have some no/low sodium items (including bread, which is good toasted ... but no comparison to white bread), tomato sauce, soups, etc.

- If you ever get really tired of cooking and want to take some time off (or will be down due to a medical procedure, etc.) I've found a place that delivers lower-sodium meals (like Nutri-System would, but much lower sodium):  DineWise

- PS - if you are near a Safeway, and you can't get rid of the white bread, they have a very low sodium sandwich bread (which I can't get, because I'm not near one!) :):

- At the deli, we have found a couple of low-sodium sandwich meats (usually less processed than the normal ones), but you have to ask for them. Don't be fooled by the "LOWER" sodium products, which are still high in sodium. Boar's Head and Dietz & Watson have one or two turkey breast at under 55mg/oz, and roast beef products at under 190mg of sodium per oz, and I've found ham at Whole Foods.

- Once you find a product you like, don't be afraid to request that your local grocer bring some in for you.  Most of them have a special form you can fill out at Customer Service, and they'll call you when they get it in.

- These websites have helped me stock up on staples such as no-sodium canned mushrooms (we love them in everything), macaroni and cheese (not the same, but you get used to it), and a few other staples, and bakeries. 

My favorite, with over 500 items:  www.HealthyHeartMarket.com

www.MegaHeart.com

www.SaltWatcher.com

Low Sodium Cooking

Alvarado Street Bakery

www.islandgrove.com/caribbeangarlic.html

Honestly, cutting out the sodium has been much harder than cutting back the calories in my household, but once you find the "staples" it gets easier.

Good luck!  And if anyone has any more tips, I'm all ears.

I agree that it's really hard to cut back on the sodium.  I recently told my doctor that I think it's harder than cutting calories & fat.

It takes some planning, but it can be done! I usually try to stay at about 1800 mg/day or less.

A couple of times a week I go out, so I don't do those days back to back, and I try to stay as low sodium as possible -- finding nutrition info online is key!! Some of the "healthy" alternatives are brimming with sodium! Check out low fat soups some time! EEEK!

Anyway, good luck to all out there trying to reduce the sodium!

Thanks so much for this thread. I recently has a spell with high blood pressure and have been told to watch my salt intake, plus no weight training. My regular workout routine included strength training using resistance band, so now I'm limited to cardio (which puts a bit of a kink in my weight loss journey).

I've not been given a specific mg limit yet, as I've only seen the ER docs and not my regular doc yet, so I'll be interested to see if she gives me one. I'm on daily medication which is a diuretic, and I've already lost 3-4 lbs from it (in only 3 days), so the cardio will be key to burning the fat.

I'm at 1200 calories for my activity level since I have a desk job, but I have a 2 yr old, so keeping at that many calories plus watching my salt intake is extremely hard, especially for someone who isn't a big veggie or bean eater! Plus I have high cholesterol, so I have to watch my sat fat and cholestrol intake as well. agh!

I'm only 34. I should have all these issues just yet. So I'm trying to get back to a healthy weight in hopes that it will help my medical issues. Although I'm not extremely overweight, I need about 10-15 lbs less on me.

A lot of changes in the past few days, since my blood pressure went crazy, but hopefully I can adjust to this strange new diet soon and be on my way to a healthier life.