According to the Mayo Clinic, hypertension or high blood pressure increases your risk of serious health problems, such as heart attack and stroke, and results from increased resistance to blood flow through your arteries. The more blood your heart pumps and the more resistance it meets throughout your arterial tree, the higher your blood pressure. Natural approaches to managing your hypertension include diet, exercise and meditation.
Diet
Altering your diet is a powerful way to help manage your elevated blood pressure. According to Dr. Russell B. Marz, an acupuncturist, naturopathic physician and the author of the textbook "Medical Nutrition From Marz," there are numerous dietary inclusions and exclusions that will help you control your hypertension. Dr. Marz suggests decreasing the amount of sodium in your diet while boosting your potassium levels and increasing your fiber consumption. He notes that in parts of the world where fiber consumption is high blood pressure tends to be low.
Eliminating sucrose, avoiding caffeine and alcohol and decreasing your serum glucose levels also are important dietary modifications. Consider getting checked for any food sensitivities that might be contributing to your hypertension and adopting a hypoallergenic diet. Consider also supplementing your healthy new diet with the following: calcium citrate, magnesium, ground flaxseeds, fish oil, coenzyme Q10 and garlic.
Exercise
The Mayo Clinic touts exercise as a natural, drug-free approach to lowering your high blood pressure. Your risk of high blood pressure increases with age, but your regular participation in an exercise program can reduce your likelihood of experiencing hypertension. If you already have hypertension, exercise can help you manage your condition.
Regular aerobic activity helps combat your hypertension by making your heart stronger. A stronger heart pumps more blood per beat using less effort. If your heart does not have to work as hard to pump your blood, there's less strain on your arteries, which lowers your blood pressure. Increasing your aerobic activity levels can lower your systolic blood pressure by an average of 5 to 10 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg), which is comparable to many blood pressure medications, without the side effects.
While strength training and stretching are important aspects of a well-rounded fitness plan, aerobic activity is necessary to successfully manage your hypertension. To help reduce your hypertension, consider performing aerobic exercise--which is any physical activity that elevates your heart and breathing rates--for 30 minutes, most days of the week.
Transcendental Meditation
According to Johns Hopkins University, research shows that meditation not only calms your mind, but affects your nervous system too. Researchers suggest that chronic stress may cause long-term increases in your blood pressure, but that numerous stress-management techniques may be useful in combating your hypertension, such as massage, yoga, tai chi and stress management classes.
The most widely-studied relaxation technique, however, is transcendental meditation, which was introduced to the Western world in 1959 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. You perform transcendental meditation by sitting in a quiet place, closing your eyes and initiating your session by taking several slow, deep breaths.
You then silently repeat a mantra--a relaxing, monosyllabic word--to center your concentration. Your session typically lasts for about 20 minutes, after which you open your eyes, reorient yourself to your surroundings and carry on with your day. Transcendental meditation calms your mind, slows your heartbeat and releases your muscle tension, all of which may help reduce your hypertension and promote optimal cardiovascular health.
