More Mediterranean Magic
Study: Hypertension Risk Reduced with Mediterranean Diet
The last time I wrote about the Mediterranean diet – the diet that evokes thoughts of ocean and sand, yet is built on the brick-and-mortar foundation of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, and sea-faring protein sources – I talked about a huge study that showed how strict adherents to it reduced their risk of the country’s most pernicious diseases, like Alzheimer’s , cancer , Parkinson’s , and heart disease – America’s leading cause of death.
Well, you can now add another deadly disease the Mediterranean diet’s leaves in its wake: hypertension.
As most of you know, I’ve written extensively about high blood pressure. Hypertension runs in my family, and it took me several years to develop a program aimed at lowering high blood pressure that avoids the life-long cycle of having to take medications.
The proven techniques and strategies are compiled in my book, The Blood Pressure Miracle . Some of the strategies I talk about relate back to diet, with many of the foods I suggest straight out of the Mediterranean diet playbook.
So this latest study really substantiates much of what’s already been substantiated in my book (and substantiated by those who’ve given it rave reviews on Amazon.com). But it never hurts to have more evidence supporting natural health solutions – particularly for the skeptics and naysayers of natural health, for whom it takes an act of God to convince them of its efficacy.
The latest study comes out of the University of Navarra, hailed widely as one of Spain’s top private universities. The researchers there analyzed data collected from approximately 8,500 middle-aged men and women (average age: 41). They found that those men and women whose diets consisted of primarily fresh fruits and vegetables and limited doses of olive oil consumption (less than 15 grams per day) were at a reduced risk for hypertension than those who didn’t follow similar eating patterns.
Doesn’t get much simpler than that, does it?
The study’s full findings are published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition .
Just as hypertension is a huge problem in America, it’s just as big a problem throughout the countries that make up Europe. In the UK, for instance, it’s estimated that one in three Britons have high blood pressure, and one out of those three doesn’t even know it. In Germany, the prevalence of high BP is even higher than it is in America, as a 2003 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the prevalence of hypertension was highest in Germany and lowest in America (when comparing the prevalence rate among six European countries to Canada and the United States).
Hypertension is not just figures given to you by your doctor, where you either have it or you don’t, and that’s that. Because if you have hypertension, you’re often forced to confront a boatload of other health issues, be them intensely private (e.g. sexual), to intensely serious (e.g. heart disease).
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Whether it’s taking proactive steps to avoid hypertension from the get-go, to implementing the steps needed to get those numbers down from where they are now, hypertension does not have to be a part of your life.
And it all starts with diet.
Sources:
foodnavigator.com
bpassoc.org.uk
cat.inist.fr
Related Posts
- Why You Should Also Eat Mediterranean
- Among Young Adults, No Middle Ground- Study: Even Moderately High BP Readings Increases Risk
- Walk to Lower Blood Pressure
- Lower Blood Pressure Through Potassium Intake
- Blood Pressures Rising Among Youth: Researchers Believe Lack of Sleep May Be to Blame
 
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Posted: May 13th, 2009 under High Blood Pressure, Mediterranean Diet.
Tags: fruits, hypertension, Mediterranean Diet, nuts, Olive Oil
