Men’s Health, the world’s largest men’s magazine brand, publishes a list of top ten foods to decrease your blood pressure, if you are a man with hypertension. The idea behind is to add more plants to your diet instead of meat and dairy. To maintain blood pressure, plant foods are rich in potassium, magnesium, and other nutrients that counterbalance sodium, a mineral many Americans overeat.
The list contains leafy greens (European Journal of Epidemiology states that people who ate the most nitrate-rich vegetables had lower systolic blood pressures), beets and beet juice (the reason: It’s rich in blood-vessel-friendly nitrates), pistachios (in a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, researchers found that regular pistachio consumption is associated with a systolic blood pressure reduction of about two points), cashew (a study published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine showed that people who regularly ate cashews had systolic blood pressures about three points lower than those who did not), water (in a study published in the journal Nutrients, healthy adults who drank an extra 550 milliliters of water in the morning and at bedtime reduced their systolic blood pressure by about six points within 12 weeks), green tea (according to the Complementary Therapies in Medicine drinking about three to four cups of green tea daily may reduce systolic blood pressure by about 3.5 points and diastolic blood pressure by about a point), oat bran (in a study published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases, people with hypertension who consumed 30 grams of fiber-rich oat bran daily reduced their systolic blood pressure by an average of 15 points and their diastolic blood pressure by an average of 10 points within 30 days), beans and lentils (in a study published in the journal Nutrients, people who ate 55 to 70 grams of legumes (about one-third of a cup of cooked lentils or beans) per day were 43 percent less likely to develop hypertension over nearly four years than people who ate less, baked or boiled potatoes (In a study published in the Nutrients, people who added 1,000 milligrams of potassium per day from baked or boiled potatoes (that’s about a potato and a half) to their daily diets reduced their systolic blood pressure by about three more points than people on a control diet within just 17 days), salmon (Fatty fish like salmon are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which help transfer sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and fluids into your cells and aid your body’s regulation of an important hormone).
