Dash Diet. Invented by Doctors,
it's Worth a Look.

The Dash Diet is a diet for high blood pressure. The doctors who invented it should get a Nobel Prize for coming up with this way for lowering high blood pressure naturally! Let's see how it stacks up as a normal blood pressure diet.

Dash stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. Hypertension is a fancy word doctors use when they mean high blood pressure.

This high blood pressure diet might lower your blood pressure.

If you don't a have high blood pressure, but feel you might later on, you may be able to maintain normal blood pressure with this diet (or the others we'll go over) as you grow older.

The Dash Diet focuses on fruits and vegetables and low fat dairy foods. It encourages you to reduce saturated fats and salt.

There is enough protein in the diet, and it's low in cholesterol, and high in magnesium, potassium, calcium and fiber.

A cutting edge study in 1997 in the New England Journal of Medicine maintained that following the diet faithfully could be as effective as some high blood pressure drugs.

This diet may help you lose weight, which is important to blood pressure control in its own right.

The goal of the Dash Diet is controlling blood pressure in order to attain or maintain normal blood pressure.

Should you jump into it whole hog?

I wouldn't recommend it. Put your toe in the water first, then your entire foot and so on. Stick with the foods you love and change over gradually. See Your Diet Plan for how to do this.

The basic Dash Diet.

The serving sizes are pretty small. I grew up in the Midwestern United States where a serving of mashed potatoes nearly reached your nose. So, don't get scared by how many servings you're supposed to eat each day.

You can scale them down or up depending on your appetite and body weight goals.

See Foods for an indication of which of these recommendations might be most beneficial.

Here are the daily diet amounts:

1) Grains and grain products: 7-8 servings of whole wheat bread, English muffin, pita bread, bagel, cereal, grits, hot cereal, pasta, rice, barley, etc.

2) Vegetables: 4-5 servings of tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, peas, squash, broccoli, turnip greens, collards, kale, spinach, artichokes, sweet potatoes, vegetable juices, etc.

3) Fruits: 4-5 servings of apricots, bananas, dates, oranges, mangoes, grapefruits, tangerines, melons, peaches, plums, grapes, pineapples, prunes, raisins, strawberries, other berries, fruit juices, etc.

4) Low fat or nonfat dairy foods: 2-3 servings of milk, buttermilk, yogurt, mozzarella cheese, and other low fat dairy products.

5) Meat, poultry and fish: 1-2 servings of lean or fat trimmed meat, skinned poultry or fish, broiled or boiled (not fried).

6) Nuts, seeds and beans: 4-5 servings per week of almonds, walnuts, filberts, mixed nuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds, lentils, kidney or other beans.

Not ready yet to slide into the Dash Diet? Check out some alternatives: Low Sodium Diet, Vegetarian Diet, Mediterranean Diet, Blood Type Diet, Life Change Diet.

Return to Diets
Return to Home Page from Dash Diet