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We talked about blood pressure, and it's affects on the arterial system. Now we want to talk
about dietary approaches you can use to maintain healthy blood pressure. When talking about
this, we need to keep in mind that we're working on two basic mechanisms here. The overall
volume in the arterial system, and the overall resistance in that arterial system. When choosing
the diet for this blood pressure, the National Heart Lung and Blood Association looked at
these two basic mechanisms when they were trying to isolate dietary plans. They found
that blood pressure was reduced with a plan of low saturated fat, low cholesterol, low
total fat, a diet that was high in fruits and vegetables, low fat dairy, and there's
another portion of the diet where they actually reduce sodium. This diet is called "The dietary
approaches to stop hypertension. Its acronym is the "dash" diet. As you can see here, the
diet focuses on fruits and vegetables, and you want to get six to eight servings of those,
you want to get around twelve servings of your grains, which is here. We have some rice,
some grain cereal, some quinoa, and you also want to have some nuts and seeds, and what
we don't have here are lean meats. You also want to get some lean cuts of meats or poultry,
and we also have some low fat dairy. Now we want to talk a little more specifically about
how each of these components might be affecting those two basic mechanisms; the volume and
the resistance.