Natural ways to lower your blood pressure
Take a look at these natural ways that can help you reduce blood pressure:
1. Attend yoga classes. Yoga is an effective exercise that helps you wash away stress, which leads to high blood pressure. If you want to lower your blood pressure, you should try the following recommended poses:
- forward bends like virasana and upavista konasana, which are both sitting postures.
- horizontal asanas which makes the heart beat slow down when they are practiced slowly and rhythmically.
- asanas like uttanasana and adhomukha savasana.
2. Do regular exercise. Any regular exercise like walking or biking can help lower blood pressure. Tai chi is a relaxing, rhythmical exercise that can also help reduce blood pressure, and has great benefit on the nervous and parasympathetic systems within the body.
3. Eat more bananas. Bananas are a great source of potassium, which is great for lowering high blood pressure. As well, including more fruit and vegetables, such as: lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, citrus fruits in your daily diet can improve your cardiovascular health.
4. Get your folic acid. Studies show that folic acid is highly beneficial in lowering blood pressure, particularly amongst younger women. Folic acid appears to have a protective effect against high blood pressure.
5. Eat dark chocolate. Study show that dark chocolate, foods and supplements that had high levels of cocoa including chocolate confectionary, cocoa sandwich filling and drinks, appear to help reduce blood pressure and decrease risk of dying from any cause. Researchers believe it is the flavanol component of cocoa that has this beneficial effect.
It’s very important to watch the amounts of chocolate you’re eating, as it is not recommended to have large amounts of chocolate as well as raw cocoa. In order to get the blood pressure benefits, you need about 100 grams of dark chocolate a day.