If you are looking for ways to lower blood pressure and improve the overall health of your heart, you might welcome some advice from someone else who has been there before and knows what works. Afterall, hindsight is 20:20 and someone who has already been through cardiovascular problems and found out what works for them can offer valuable insights.
But the thing is, we’re not all the same and what works for one person might not be the best option for someone else. Instead, it’s best if you can immerse yourself with the experiences of many other people and experiment on your own to discover what works for you.
Where can you find out what has worked for other people?
One way to get a broad idea is from books or scientific research studies about blood pressure and cardiovascular health. But the problem with these is that they give the overall picture, not the specific details of each person. Sometimes it’s the experience of just one individual that can offer the most help.
The only way to understand what really works in practice is to get involved in real-life situations.
You can start by asking your family and friends. You family is a fantastic place to start because you share similar genes and susceptibilities to certain health conditions. What has works - or didn’t work - for your parents or grandparents can really help you to understand your own body better. But even if you ask everyone that you know, you’re going to run out of options eventually. You need to cast your net wider and reach more people to see what they’re doing and what’s working for them.
Fortunately, with this thing called the Internet we have the opportunity to come together as a team and learn more from each other than we ever could alone.
We put the question to our online community…
As part of the email newsletter that goes out to the wonderful MedicineHow Community, we regularly ask questions and get BRILLIANT answers about what is going on in the lives of our community.
One of the questions that we asked was very simple but very helpful:
“What has worked for you to improve your blood pressure and the health of your heart?”
We simply wanted to extend an invitation to people to find out what sort of things they have tried to improve their blood pressure and what worked well (and not so well!)
The response that we got was quite incredible - thanks again to the warm members of the MedicineHow community and willingness they have shown to help each other grow.
The purpose of this post is to give all the juicy nuggets of real life experiences right back to the you so that you can learn from what others have already done.
So let’s get right into some of the best tips from people about how to lower blood pressure and work towards a healthier heart!
What Works to Lower Blood Pressure [REAL STORIES]
We asked and you answered. But we don’t like to keep valuable information like this to ourselves, so we’re putting it out there for you and other people like you to learn from. Here are a few of the highlights from what you and the other people in the MedicineHow Community shared:
Physical Activity
Physical activity is a big one for helping people to lower their blood pressure and improve the health of their heart.
We got numerous responses from people who had noticed the effects of exercise, like these ones:
“My blood pressure drops after a good workout. Typically 130/75 drops to 120/65 after I work out.
“Yoga practice works for me in lowering blood pressure”
“Walking a few kilometers every day. I never did 100 meters before making changes, but later I began to walk even more, up to 10km, and started riding a bike to visit some places with my friends that I had never visited before!
It makes a lot of sense that exercise has such as beneficial role in lowering your blood pressure. Your heart needs to become stronger to meet the physical demands of your body while you are exercising, and after the activity your blood vessels are wider and more relaxed than usual to allow the blood to pass through more easily. If the blood vessels are wider, there will be more room inside so it’s understandable that your blood pressure drops.
Calming exercise like yoga can also be beneficial because it helps to reduce stress in your body, which can wreak havoc on your cardiovascular system.
Nutrition and Diet
Eating the right foods (and the right quantities!) was also very important for a lot of people.
Those who responded mentioned that the frequency of eating, the foods they avoided and even gave examples of the types of foods that had worked well for them. Here are some of the direct responses:
“I started to eat healthier – NOT eating 50 times a day!”
“I rejected salt, sugar, refined food and all other food like chocolate, chips and other junk food”
“Breakfast must contain yogurt with oat flakes and flax seed + chia seed and NOTHING else. Lunch might be a piece of meat +a green salad or homemade soup etc. Snacks are usually fruit such as an apple, orange, pear, cherries or watermelon.”
As you can see, there is all sorts of advice from different people. It could be worthwhile to try out one or two of these tricks yourself and see if they make a difference to the way that your body feels.
Healing Meditation
Also related to benefits of stress reduction on your blood pressure and overall heart health is healing meditation.
Here’s the incredible experience of one person from our MedicineHow community about the effects of practicing healing medication and attending a related healing camp:
“I practice healing meditation called Shambhavi Sanjeevani Shakti following the Shivyog healing method. Two months ago I attended his healing camp and have become very regular with my own healing meditation. My BP started falling and two of my meds were stopped. I feel much more vibrant now and soon maybe even my last medicine may be stopped.”
It’s so encouraging to hear from someone who has tried something new with great success, to the extent that they may be able to stop taking blood pressure medication completely. This is also the best way to reduce your reliance on medications - focus on positive lifestyle changes first and then gradually decrease the medication doses as your body adapts.
Support and Self-Belief
Another thing that was important for many people is belief that they can actually follow through with the changes and begin to make a difference in their life. The encouragement and support of friends and family can also really help you to follow through.
“The WILL to do something for once in my life and doing a 180° of my life”
“My parents were happy see me doing something positive in my life, and friends too. Trust me, when person like me who has got such a problems and they see all that finally coming in right direction, I could say that only sky above is my limit!!”
“Patience and will is everything, support from family and friends also.”
If you are committed to change, it could be a good idea to tell your family and friends about it so that they can help you on your journey. They may have advice for you or be able to encourage you when the going gets tough.
Medication
Some people mentioned that the medications they had been prescribed by their doctor to help lower their blood pressure were the most effective - above diet and lifestyle - for lowering their blood pressure. That said, they still prioritized natural changes because of the side effects that came alongside the medication use.
“Medicine (Norvasc, in my case) for lowering my BP was largely responsible for making my BP at normal rate, at least in short period of time. It made me have some side effects but after all it worth it!!”
If your blood pressure is very high, medications are likely the best option to lower it into a safer range quickly to protect your heart. You can then focus on making diet and lifestyle changes alongside the medications so that eventually you could stop taking the drug. It’s an ongoing process!
What Has Worked For You?
Finally, we’d like to invite you to add you input to this compilation of real experiences about lower blood pressure and better heart health. If you’ve tried something that has made a difference below, please drop me a line in the comments section below. We’ll keep on updating this post as we get more answers in, too.
You experience could help to make a real difference in someone else’s life to improve their blood pressure and help prevent problems with their heart. So let’s hear it!
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