What Foods and Supplements Can I Use to Help With High Blood Pressure?

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What foods and supplements can I use to Help with High Blood Pressure? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. My favorite librarian, Donna Cruze from Instagram asks what foods and supplements help with high blood pressure and she went on to say, you know, my blood pressure has just spiked recently. What can I do? She posted this while I was recording some other podcasts. I love to record them live while I'm on Instagram and Facebook and so it's important to note what she just said. Recently my blood pressure went up because this is a long time follower of the Virgin diet. So I've got some tips for her and if you're struggling with this, they'll help you too. I'll be right back with the answer.

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All right, High blood pressure hypertension. There are so much that you can do with diet, lifestyle and supplements to help manage this. And ideally you do as much there so that if you do need to use medications, you use as little as possible. The first place that I would start now with Donna. She didn't have an issue before and I've had the chance. Donna actually came over to my house one time when we had a bunch of success stories come over to hang out for the day, which was super fun. I say she's my favorite librarian because she is, she is a librarian out in Santa Cruz, California has turned on more people to the Virgin Diet single handedly than anyone I know. So she's very healthy, she exercises, she takes great care of herself. And I would say, Donna, are you stressed out right now with everything going on in the world? Because that is definitely a risk factor. So I'm going to pull out some things that can contribute and stress is definitely one of those things. So if you're feeling a little more stressed, anxious than normal right now, hey, that's probably normal. That is the new normal. But that also means that we better put some strategies in place to adapt because we're in for a marathon here. So first thing I would say is what's changed if all of a sudden your blood pressure is shooting up. And let's look at if you need to do any stress stress management techniques and that could be tapping, shout out to my buddy Nick Ortner of the tapping solution. He's got a great app for free, the tapping solution. Also meditation could be a good one. High intensity interval training. So look for what finds gives you bl. I know that Donna's got a little doggy like my doggy Daisy. So hopefully that's given her some bliss. But look for those things that can help you calm down and relax and manage your mindset. Beyond that, let's talk about a couple things I just mentioned. High intensity interval training exercise is really important here and you know, wherever you are, find some way to incorporate exercise into your daily life. And I like to divide things between moving more, doing some restorative stuff like Y, that's restorative yoga, not power yoga for the restorative part. That helps lower stress hormones as well, and then some besides moving more like walking. High intensity interval training and resistance style training. And high intensity interval training can be helpful here in helping to manage blood pressure as well. Next thing, losing a little weight. If you're carrying extra weight, dropping 5 or 10 pounds can really help with your blood pressure as well. And then of my books, I'd recommend the Sugar Impact diet because really finding out where they're adding fructose in this isn't having a little bit of fructose. It's in fruit. We get fructose and glucose together. But fructose is primarily the sugar and fruit. But the challenge is we pull it out and we concentrate it and then we put it into things that creates a problem. So fructose can actually create more issues with hypertension. So make sure you're not eating something like apple juice concentrate, dried fruit, fruit juices, agave, crystalline fructose, because that can aggravate this as well. And read the Sugar Impact Diet will help you find where sugar is sneaking in and how to lower it, because that can definitely contribute to hypertension. All right, so with that, let's talk about some things then that you can do to help with diet. And you're going to love some of these foods I'm going to recommend. And I'm going to talk about a couple things that I would add in the supplements because you just can't get enough with food. Okay, first step, just so that we will become super good friends real fast, is dark chocolate. Yes, I would. I'm going to, I'm going to. I'm not a doctor, but I might play one for the moment and say I'm prescribing dark chocolate, right? So 1 to 2 ounces of dark chocolate, you really want to eat a high cacao content. Dark chocolate. 70% is kind of the minimum. I look for 85% or more. I'm advanced. I eat 90% and 100% cacao. But get yourself some very cacao rich dark chocolate. There was a review of a bunch of different trials that showed that it could reduce blood pressure in people with hypertension or pre hypertension. I say that's a great reason to make sure that you eat a little bit every day. I have made that just kind of one of my things that I must, I must eat a little dark Chocolate every day. All right. Deep green leafies. Oh, we talk about these all the time for so many reasons. But one big reason is for the potassium content, which can help your kidneys get rid of extra sodium through your urine, which can help lower your blood pressure. So think of things like romaine and arugula and kale and turnip and collard greens and spinach, chard, the rainbow chard, Swiss chard, beet greens. Also in terms of potassium, so. So let's talk about bananas. When I think about bananas, I want you to get a greener banana. You'll still get the potassium, but without a bunch of accumulated sugar. And you'll get higher resistant starch, which can also help you lose weight, which will be helpful for lowering your blood pressure. All right, next up, beets. All right, red beets especially. So what I like to do with beets, I love getting shredded red beets and putting them on my salad. Beets are high in nitric oxide, which can help open your blood vessels and help lower blood pressure. So there you go. That's another good one. It's one that you can just. I personally, I do not like those canned icky beets. I like the beets that have been roasted and then they shred them, put them into salads, put them on stir fries. Super yummy. Next up, another yummy one.

Fish.

Wild fish. Fatty wild fish, like salmon. Super good, rich in omega 3s. Omega 3s not only can lower blood pressure, they also can lower triglycerides and they can lower inflammation. Plus, with a lot of these, you'll also get some vitamin D as well. And vitamin D, by the way. That's when you're going to want to supplement vitamin D3 with vitamin K1 and 2 because it also can lower blood pressure. So put that in as one supplement. And I want you to be eating wild, fatty fish. But you'll probably need to supplement with that as well. Get a triglyceride. Triglyceride form of fish oil when you do it. It's most bioavailable. So fish oil, vitamin D3 with K1 and 2. Those are two that I want you to supplement, but I also want you eating wild fish and garlic. I actually take garlic. I take the alicidin is, or allicin is the part of the garlic that you want. Boy, your partner has to really love you when you do garlic. Or maybe I'm just one of those people who just exudes garlic when I eat it. But garlic can help with blood pressure by increasing the amount of Nitric oxide in the body, which helps promote vasodilation, which helps reduce blood pressure. So use garlic when you're cooking. You can take garlic supplements. You know, I always start first with food. So heavy hand it when you cook, too. Now next one, when you're cooking, when you're doing salads, especially olive oil. Olive oil has these polyphenols which can help lower blood pressure. So definitely make sure you're using olive oil. You know, to me, that's the easiest way to make a salad. Dressing is just olive oil with a little red wine vinegar, which, by the way, vinegar acts like nature's metformin to help with insulin sensitivity. So you get a double whammy there. Or I use a little lemon juice, which lowers your blood sugar response to a meal. So that's fantastic. Nuts and seeds. We're going to get some arginine. Helps with blood flow, magnesium and zinc, all great things. And then pomegranates. Now, pomegranates are another one that I tend to take a supplement of. I'm not keen on the juice, but boy, pomegranates have so much great stuff for you. It's just you also get the sugar with it. So try pomegranate seeds. You can get them from the store, but watch out for a lot of those juices. They add in all the sugar, too, so you might want to take the supplements. Speaking of fruit, berries are another one. The anthocyanins, the polyphenols and berries can lower your blood pressure as well. All right, like all of these foods, aren't you just going, yes, sign me up. I want all of them. So look at what you can integrate into your daily diet. But here's some other things I want you to think of taking supplementally. And you'll see these in, like, these blood pressure combination products. Look for a professional grade product that has hawthorn berry in it. Would be great if it had some pomegranate, some magnesium, some taurine. Helps with fluid balance. That's super important. So does B6. Taurine and B6 together help if you have a little bit of a diuretic effect. Zinc's also important, and potassium. All right, there you go. There you go. Donna, put that into play and report back in. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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