If you’re struggling with high blood pressure, there are many lifestyle factors that can help you to improve it. Following the Paleo diet is one way that you can improve your blood pressure and cardiac health.
Understanding Blood Pressure
First, it’s important to understand what blood pressure is. This is the force that your blood applies to your blood vessel walls. The lower number of the blood pressure, the diastolic pressure, is the pressure on your blood vessels when your heart is between beats.
The higher number, the systolic pressure, is the pressure on your blood vessels during heartbeat. This is measured in millimeters of mercury or mmHg. When those numbers are too high, we say that you have high blood pressure.
Why does it matter? High blood pressure can lead to damage of your blood vessels, kidney dysfunction, heart attack, stroke, and other organ failure. So it’s important to get blood pressure regulated as quickly as possible.
How Paleo Helps
The Paleo diet can affect blood pressure in positive ways by improving some of the risk factors that lead to high blood pressure. One of the greatest risk factors is diabetes and insulin resistance.
When you eat the Paleo diet, you’ll naturally lower your carbohydrate intake from not only sugar, but grains and dairy. If you have insulin resistance or are diabetic, this can help insulin to become more resistant as well as reduce or even reverse diabetes disease.
It can help you to achieve a healthier weight which will also lower your risk of developing high blood pressure. By doing this you’ll alleviate pressure on your hormone system and your kidneys and promote healthy blood pressure.
Salt intake has also been associated with high blood pressure. The Paleo diet isn’t expressly low in salt. However, by eliminating processed foods you’ll likely eliminate your greatest source of excess sodium. The salt that you add to flavor whole foods isn’t likely to be enough to cause problems for your blood pressure.
The Paleo diet is a safe and natural way to reduce your risk factors of high blood pressure and improve your health. One thing to note, however, is that some people who eat a healthy diet still have issues with blood pressure.
That can be a result of genetic predisposition or other health issues going on. But consuming the Paleo diet will help you to optimize your health whatever your underlying problems may be.
