Today, more than a trillion people around the globe have elevated blood pressure. And calling a doctor home to very young patients increasingly involves not having to get a hospital sheet because of the flu, but an urgent need to reduce pressure. Medics from different countries speak out that the situation with the hypertensive disease is already characterized as an epidemic.
Malnutrition is mostly to blame. It is beyond doubt. How one should feed properly to avoid hypertension? DASH Diet for Weight Loss for Hypertension, will it help?
DASH diet origin
The denomination DASH Diet for Weight Loss – “Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension”. This dietary approach is often recommended for people with hypertension and those who want to prevent it from occurring. The diet includes fruits, legumes, cereals, and low-fat protein foods (chicken, fish). The quantity of salt should be no more than one teaspoon. There is also a low-salt variant allowing consumption of less than three/four teaspoons of salt.
A high-limited salt DASH diet shows better results than the standard option. But only in those ones who already have elevated blood pressure. Severely limiting salt intake to healthy people does not cause them to lower pressure. Why does this happen?
So far, there is no unambiguous answer to this question
Scientists presume that humans may have a different innate sensitivity to salt. Those with high sensitivity have a higher risk of raising blood pressure. And therefore, with a significant decrease in NaCl consumption, their well-being changes. While in people with low salt sensitivity, pressure rises much less frequently, and removing salt from the diet does not have a significant impact on their health.
General rules
Non-drug treatments for arterial hypertension are a critical component of complex therapy, which can affect negative risk factors, contributing to the promotion of arterial
blood pressure.
Prolonged and pronounced exposure to such factors reduces the adaptive capabilities of the body in general and of the cardiovascular system in particular, resulting in persistent chronic increases in arterial blood pressure (hypertension). It has been found that a properly organized meal in case of increased arterial blood pressure is not only a factor in stabilizing it, but also lowering to age norm.
The DASH diet is a diet of this kind. Its denomination means “the dietary approach to preventing hypertension.” Unlike a variety of other diets, the recommended “DASH” diet has in its roots the validly of confirmed clinical trial results of volunteers, which indicate that systolic pressure during a two-week diet decreased by 11 mm on average and diastolic by 6 mm Hg on average.
Such results suggest that the DASH diet may be an effective alternative to drug therapy, especially for patients with 1st degree of high arterial blood pressure, and may exclude/delay the onset of transition to intake of hypotensive agents.
The basic principles of the DASH diet are the following:
- Limit total salt intake to 1 tsp/day and 0,5 tsp/day in a stricter diet, which is achieved by eliminating salt during the cooking process (lightly salting can only be used for ready meals) and the exclusion from the diet of foods containing salt (smoked, fast food, marinades, canned foods, sausages).
- Replace wheat bread for cereal and wholemeal bread, and macaroni with brown rice.
- Eating exclusively dietary meat or fish in small quantities (0,5 lb/day).
Required presence of cereals and sprouted grains in the diet. - Increase in vegetables and fruits to 1,2 lb/day.
- Replacing animal fats/trans fats for vegetable (linseed, olive, sunflower) oils. The optimal rate is 2 tablespoons/day.
- Including low-fat, low-fat dairy, and dairy products in the diet.
- Include legumes and seeds (stew beans, boiled peas, soy and lentil dishes, pumpkin seeds, sunflower, sesame seeds) in the amount of 1 lb/week.
- Limit foods containing simple carbohydrates (virtually all sweets, sugar) to 2-3 oz a week.
The daily diet includes the following products: bread and cereals (4 cups of porridge, rice, pasta), meat/fish products (7-8 oz of meat or 8 oz of fish), vegetables (1 lb), fruits (8-9 oz), non-fat/skimmed dairy (17 fl. oz yogurt/kefir, or 1 lb non-fat curd), vegetable fats (3 tsp), legumes, nuts, seeds (3 cups per week), sweets (7 oz per week).
There are several diet options, but on average, the energy value of the diet is about 2000 Kcal/day, allowing patients to drop excess body weight.
It should be noted that the DASH Slimming Diet, as such, is not intended, rather it is possible to speak of weight loss as a favorable side effect for patients since the antihypertensive effect of weight loss in patients with hypertension and increased body weight has been reliably proven and there is a direct correlation between weight loss in such patients and reduced blood pressure in the proportion of 2 lb/1 mmHg.
Additional beneficial effects of this diet include lower levels of total cholesterol and, especially, low-density lipoproteins (LDL), due to restricted entry cholesterol with food and saturated fats.
The mandatory conditions for achieving a dietary effect are heavy daily physical exertion, smoking cessation, and alcohol abuse.
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Allowed products
The DASH diet even includes:
- Dietary red meat inboard/baked form, as well as chicken, turkey, rabbit meat. Culinary meat processing involves pre-boiling it, draining the broth, and further cooking it in a new portion of water.
- White/rye whole grain bread or with bran added, dry biscuits.
- Vegetable broth soups with well-brewed grits/vegetables with added vegetable greens.
- Sea/river fish, seafood, seaweed, fish oil.
- Vegetables (potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, courgettes, pumpkin, eggplant), both fresh and culinary (baked, boiled, braised) or vegetable stews, with olive/flaxseed oil.
- Various types of cereals (barley, millet, buckwheat) are predominantly wholegrain and hard flour pasta in the form of a baked pudding with vegetable/cottage cheese.
- Low-fat sour milk products, milk/tomato sauces on vegetable broth, sour cream/creamy (meals only), chicken eggs up to 3 per week, cooked coddled ones.
- Cold-pressed vegetable oils (olive, linseed, sunflower, corn).
- Fruits/berries of any kind (fresh, in compotes, jelly, kissels).
- Drinks — unstrong tea, drinks (coffee substitutes), rosehip decoction, mineral non-carbonated water, vegetable/berry juices, herbal teas.
Fully or partially limited products
The DASH diet provides for an exception:
- Welded meat/fish broths and first courses based on them.
- Fresh wheat bread, puffed/laminated pastry, baking.
- Oily meat, culinary/animal fats, domestic waterfowl (duck, goose), sausages, smoked, byproducts.
- Salt/smoked fish, fish caviar, fish/canned meat, mushroom sauces, cream, sour cream, oily cheese/cottage cheese.
- Cream confectionery, ice cream, cocoa, chocolate, black coffee and strong teas, jam, jelly.
- Salt, sugar, marinades, grapes, mineral sodium water, alcoholic beverages are limited.
DASH Diet Menu (Nutrition Mode)
The DASH diet menu is prepared according to the aforementioned foods. The following is an indicative menu for the week:
Monday
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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Tuesday
| Breakfast |
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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Wednesday
| Breakfast |
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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Thursday
| Breakfast |
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| Second breakfast |
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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Friday
| Breakfast |
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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Saturday
| Breakfast |
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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Sunday
| Breakfast |
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| Dinner |
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| Supper |
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When feeling hungry, it is allowed to take a snack with fruit.
Pros and Cons
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Results
DASH diet, according to patient feedback, especially in the initial stages of hypertensive disease is an effective treatment that contributes to the normalization of increased body weight, arterial pressure, and cholesterol content.
The diet, in general, is tolerated well, but some patients suffer from lightly salted food, pack of smokes, restriction of sweets, and sugar.
Yes, the pressure on DASH-dieting is going down. However, it does not lead to a significant improvement in overall health overall. And we always want to lower the pressure not to see the beautiful numbers on the tonometer. And to avoid stroke and other complications of hypertension. So, DASH – fix health is drastically failing.
Diet price
The therapeutic DASH diet is not cost-effective, includes habitual foods. Some special cooking skills and knowledge are not required to prepare meals. The estimated cost of purchasing products is $20-25 per week.
