How i lowered my blood pressure reddit

Hi, I'm 61, BMI 29 and my blood pressure had been creeping up all my life. It was getting into the 160-170/100-115 range and I decided to get serious. The one BP pill I took a few years ago was one of the worst days of my life, so I am highly motivated to avoid drugs.

One fact I had established was that water fasting for 48 hours returned my blood pressure to normal EVERY time. So obviously, it was due to something I was ingesting. I did the ultimate elimination diet: carnivore. But I did it wrong.

I continued to drink coffee every day, so even eliminating all plants besides coffee didn't fix it, my blood pressure kept climbing.

I figured it all out when I decided to fast again, but NOT stop drinking coffee. 48 hours passed and there was NO CHANGE in my blood pressure. Turns out, it is something in coffee, presumably oxalates, that was driving my blood pressure ever higher and probably responsible for the kidney stones I'd had about every decade prior.

So now, I'm eating what Dr. Paul Saladino calls a "carnivorish" diet. Ungulates, tubers and berries. Seems dairy isn't causing me any problems either. I highly recommend the ultimate elimination diet: beef, salt and water and see what happens to YOUR blood pressure!

Try cutting out salt!

I have had high blood pressure(BP) for 10 years that has gradually been rising as my medication becomes less effective. There are a number of mechanisms that raise BP and I think I either read or was told that when one of these is supressed by medications the others gradually counteract this to raise BP to what your body "thinks" is it's correct level.

I don't want to take multiple tablets and have been on two NHS medical trials researching other ways of lowering BP.

One was Renal Denervation (an operation) which unfortunately had to be abandoned when they found I had branched arteries into my kidneys, and so now I am starting a Beetroot juice trial.

In the meantime a member of the team happened to say "Oh and you have given up salt haven't you?"

I said, "I don't ADD much salt to food if that's what you mean?"

"No, give up salt completely!"

So I gave it a go.

Within 4 days of giving up everythng with salt in it (using an app, helped) my BP dropped from 140/92 to 136/71

As well as the obvious foods (olives, anchovies, crisps) this meant cutting out all bread, all cheese, ready meals especially soup, ham and bacon, cured cold meats and smoked samon.

There's as much salt in a slice of bread as there is in a packet of crisps.

The mechanism is water retention. Lots of water in body means high pressure. It's just like plumbing! For a week I peed all the time as the water left my body.

I am off beetroot juice at the moment in preparation for a beetroot trial. My BP is a little LOW for this so I have started to eat wraps for lunch, and a small amount of lower salt cheese (emmental) and within a week my BP has risen to 142/88

They know that Beetroot juice definately lowers BP (by a small amount) but this trial is looking to see if it helps repair the heart once BP has been lowered. 10 years of working too hard has left me with a slight septal bulge in my heart which should go down after 6 months. There will be a sham Beetroot group to see if there's a difference in heart size. I suspect this will mean the placebo group drinking cooked beetroot juice, as cooking renders it ineffective. (This trial seems a bit quirky to me, but it's PHD research rather than a world-wide study like the Denervation trial, but something might come of it, and I get free NHS Beetroot juice for a year)

A low salt diet is not as restricting as you think. And there is a low salt sub here on reddit but there's only 3 members! I also posted somewhere about renel denervation if anyone wants to know more about that.

edit: spelling and grammer. edit2: I have my own calibrated BP monitor at home, and as user buscape says above, there's a strict method to recording these readings.

Practises the low Hanging Fruit theory, Go for the Easy wins, accumulating all the various easy wins, gathers a sizeable payout in the end, lower Blood pressure.

• Document the blood pressure reading regularly, to note which activity works for you, which is not effective.

• Rest/Sleep not too much, not too little, everyone is different.

• Meditation find one that works for you.

• Exercise, cardio is good, but some prefer Yoga.

• Food, watch sodium, sugar, fats. Moderation and variety. Greens is good

• Journal, have thoughts and emotions written somewhere, let it out of your system.

• remember to be kind to yourself and others. Watch that self talk. Practice the same self talk as one who give to someone of reverend. If you are not kind to yourself, who else is there to be.

Good Luck.