What would lower your blood pressure?
Set your systolic (the top number), pick the changes you'd make, and see how far each one moved it in the trials.
Biggest single change you picked: Eat more vegetables, fruit and beans, about 11 mmHg off systolic in the trials. From 138 that's about 127. Yours can be more or less.
- Shows
- Within 2 weeks
- Evidence
- Strong. Controlled feeding trials
- Not for
- Anyone with advanced kidney disease, without their care team, because of the potassium.
Tested in trials as the DASH diet.
The sizes don't simply add up. In one feeding trial, the vegetables, fruit and beans pattern together with low salt lowered systolic by 11.5 mmHg in people with hypertension, and 7.1 without (DASH-Sodium, 2001). Expect less on your own than in a supervised trial. Never change a prescribed medication on your own. If you're pregnant, this list doesn't apply.
What your result means
Each size is the average drop the trials found, in people with high blood pressure or without it, depending on your answer. Food is the biggest single change, at about 11 points in people with high blood pressure, and it shows within two weeks. Less salt shows in about a week, while walking, lifting and weight take weeks to months. Your own drop can land higher or lower.
Two changes together take off less than their two sizes added up. In the ENCORE trial, the food change alone took 11.2 off clinic systolic, and food with exercise and weight loss took 16.1. To see what yours did, take a home week before you start and another a month later, and compare them in the home average tool. A drop that holds across two weeks is real.
If your number is 140/90 or higher, or you have heart disease, diabetes or kidney disease, these changes go alongside what your doctor recommends (lifestyle or more help). The full ranking, with who each change isn't for, is on how to lower your blood pressure naturally, and the biggest change has its own page, the best foods to lower blood pressure.
Sources
- Whelton PK et al., 2017 ACC/AHA high blood pressure guideline, nonpharmacological table, as reproduced in the HSHS clinical guideline, 2019.
- Neter JE et al., weight reduction and blood pressure, Hypertension, 2003.
- Roerecke M et al., alcohol reduction and blood pressure, Lancet Public Health, 2017.
- Sacks FM et al., DASH-Sodium, NEJM, 2001.
- Blumenthal JA et al., ENCORE, Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010.
