Less of a diet, more a lifestyle change (Dash Diet Eating Plan)

Member Name: laramax

Product:	Dash Diet Eating Plan
Date:	04/04/08 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You will feel much healthier and will put less strain on your body

Disadvantages: You need the motivation to get you started

This diet offers much more than the chance to lose weight - it will help you to be healthier, fitter and less likely to get some of the awful health problems people experience as they get older.

DASH actually stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and my interest was aroused because I had high blood pressure, but , this diet will do a lot more than help with hypertension - it is suggested it can hep to keep the heart healthy and prevent osteoporosis so I suggest that even if you haven't got high blood pressure you should read on ......

If you think about it our diet has changed massively over the last 50 years or so. It is only since around the 1960s that supermarkets have sprung up everywhere, prior to that people shopped at corner shops from a range of foods that didn't include ready meals, highly processed foods or anything like the range we have to choose from now. The trouble is we are paying the price for that change as our bodies struggle to cope. It is little surprise that there is a rise in obesity and some of the chronic health problems we have today where people can be on drugs for a lifetime.

How can diet help hypertension?
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This puzzled me at first but, as I wasn't keen to spend the rest of my life on medication, I was determined to find out. More than that I wanted to know why it was I got high blood pressure in the first place. My GP wasn't much help to be honest. He suggested I cut down on salt (and I do love salt!), lost a bit of weight, got more exercise and gave up smoking if I smoked (but I have never smoked anyway). I tried everything he said including giving up salt but my BP remained stubbornly high. I tried all the 'snake oil' remedies I could find - nothing worked. So I started to do some research.

I found an American book which was an enormous help. It actually explained all the mechanisms which contribute to high blood pressure and I began to understand. The revelation for me was learning about the relationship between Potassium and Sodium (salt). Apparently every cell in the body is composed of water and within the cells there is Potassium and in the fluid surrounding the cells is Sodium. The body keep these in balance in the ratio of three parts Potassium to one part Sodium. If you have too much Sodium then the body excretes it through the kidneys. If there is still too much Sodium then the blood vessels contract to force more Sodium out through the kidneys and as they contract your blood pressure rises.

Sorry about the technical bit but I do think it is important. The book suggests that what you need to do to manage your blood pressure is not just to reduce salt but to manage the Potassium/Sodium balance. Rather than take supplements to do so it is far better to manage this with your diet. It does warn not to replace salt with a Potassium Sulphate product as this will not help (and what I didn't know is that Potassium Sulphate is used in the USA in lethal injections!)

Plants contain a much higher Potassium to Sodium ratio of about 10:1 so the answer is to eat more plants in the form of fruit or vegetables and cut down on the salt.

What this means in practice
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This is the bit that I like - I have finally found a diet that tastes good, is easy to manage and one that can actually represent a change in liefstyle which will help me for the rest of my life.
Breakfast can be something simple like a cereal which is low in salt with added fruit such a banana, apricots or apples - in fact any fruit you like.

Lunch works well as a salad with a low salt protein such a chicken or lean meat, not ham as it is too salty. Bread is discouraged because that also contains salt but potatoes count as a vegetable with a good level of potassium.

Dinner can be any cut of fresh meat with loads of vegetables with a dessert of fruit with perhaps ice cream or cream.

So absolutely nothing complicated there - as long as you aren't permanently wedded to ready meals (because processed foods tend to be very high in salt and low in potassium). Manufacturers have discovered that by adding salt to their meals it makes them very tasty so we are loading our bodies with more and more salt.
Vegetables can be fresh or frozen but not tinned (too much salt in tinned veg)

To be honest what could be simpler - loads of fresh fruits and veg, some dairy to keep up the calcium levels, some nuts and grains and no processed food.

Does it work?
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Well it worked for me. After only a couple of weeks I was getting much better blood pressure readings and even got down to 120/60 on a good day. I have now been on this diet for around 9 months and not only is my BP down but it is staying down. That isn't to say if I have a stressful day it doesn't rise a bit - it does, but after only a couple of weeks and I felt better for it. Now nine months later I am amazed I can truly say the diet has benefitted me enormously, I can't remember when I last had a headache and I have been right through Winter without getting a single cold. I just generally feel healthier for it and previously I wasn't really eating much processed food anyway.

I find this diet is tasty, filling and it is easy to follow so far as I am concerned. I have never been fond of shop bought ready meals anyway so to be honest it isn't too much of a step change for me. I find it isn't too difficult to manage either when you go out to a restaurant - the other day I had a delicious chicken and asparagus salad instead of my usual something with chips and it was delicious.

Would I recommend it?
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I most certainly would - it makes no sense at all to put your kidneys under strain every day. I need my body to last and I want to stay healthy and not be on drugs for the rest of my life. Even if your BP isn't a problem at present it is a fact that in their lifetime around 25% of us will suffer from high BP and that is doing damage to all our organs. I believe we all owe it to ourselves to start eating healthier.

My mother suffered from high blood pressure and was on medication for years as a result. Her kidneys started to fail as she got older and her final years were spent suffering pain and discomfort as a result of renal failure and osteoporosis. This is something I would want to avoid if I can and I do know that often the medication for hypertension puts a strain on your kidneys so I am hoping that by reducing my BP by changing my diet I can avoid health problems in the future.

Certainly for me I plan to make this a long lasting change which hopefully will reduce my blood pressure the natural way without drugs.



Based on a review previously published by laramax on Ciao

Summary: It is never too late to make these essential changes