Introduction: What are the dietary principles for patients with hypertension? A healthy diet is essential for maintaining a healthy body, and the right dietary concepts add to our health. Cultivating healthy eating habits in daily life is key to having a healthy body.
So, to prevent blood pressure from rising in hypertensive patients, what dietary principles should we follow? Let's take a look together:
General Dietary Principles for People with Hypertension:
The diet should be light, avoiding greasy, irritating, high-cholesterol, and preserved foods.
Cooking methods should mainly be steaming, boiling, blanching, and stewing; avoid frying.
Less meat, more vegetables. Meat should be lean, with fat and skin removed.
Less salt, less sugar, less oil.
The Ten Essential Dietary Principles for Hypertension
1. Control calorie intake and reduce high-fat diets.
For hypertensive patients, excessive dietary calorie intake, an imbalance between saturated and unsaturated fats, high sodium, low potassium, low calcium, excessive simple sugars, and too much fiber are all detrimental. Therefore, the amount of fat in the diet should be reduced, especially animal fats such as fatty meat and fat intestines.
2. Consume low-cholesterol foods.
High-cholesterol foods include animal offal, egg yolks, roe, and various animal oils. Low-cholesterol foods include milk (13mg per 100g) and various freshwater fish (90-103mg per 100g). In contrast, 100g of pork liver contains 368mg of cholesterol, and 100g of egg yolk contains 1705mg.
3. Limit foods high in sugar.
Especially for obese individuals or those with a tendency towards obesity who have hypertension, it is advisable to eat less sweet cakes, cookies, desserts, and candies.
4. Control salt intake.
Generally, for patients with mild hypertension, daily salt intake should be controlled to less than 6-8g per person. For those with acute hypertension, salt should be strictly limited to 1-2g per day (equivalent to about 5-10ml of soy sauce). Foods high in sodium, including pickled vegetables, cured meat, and fermented bean curd, should also be restricted.
5. Eat more fresh vegetables.
Depending on the availability of vegetables, while keeping fat intake low, the consumption of fresh vegetables such as celery, cucumbers, beans, and tomatoes can be moderately increased, all of which are beneficial for patients with hypertension.
6. Strictly control smoking and alcohol consumption.
It is widely recognized that smoking is harmful to health. However, drinking is still a habit for many people, especially those going through menopause. They may not realize that alcohol is very detrimental to hypertension, especially excessive drinking. Therefore, hypertensive patients going through menopause should strictly control their intake of tobacco and alcohol. The diet of hypertensive patients should be light, avoiding greasy, irritating, high-cholesterol, and preserved foods.
7. Choose polysaccharide foods.
Consuming polysaccharide foods, such as starch, brown rice, standard flour, corn, and millet, which are high in dietary fiber, can promote intestinal peristalsis and accelerate the excretion of cholesterol, which is beneficial for preventing and treating hypertension. On the other hand, glucose, fructose, and sucrose can raise blood lipids and should therefore be used sparingly.
8. Moderate protein intake.
Harmful substances produced from protein metabolism can cause blood pressure fluctuations, so animal protein should be limited. When planning a diet, consider the physiological role of protein. Opt for high-biological-value, high-quality protein, supplying 1 gram per kilogram of body weight. Plant-based protein can account for 50% of this, and animal protein sources can include fish, chicken, beef, egg whites, milk, and lean pork.
9. Limit lipids.
Reduce fat and limit cholesterol. Fat supply should be 40-50g/day. Except for coconut oil, vegetable oils such as soybean oil, rapeseed oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, corn oil, and safflower oil contain vitamin E and more linoleic acid, which helps prevent blood vessel rupture. At the same time, patients with hyperlipidemia and coronary heart disease should further limit animal fat intake. Long-term consumption of high-cholesterol foods, such as animal offal, brain, egg yolks, fatty meat, shellfish, cuttlefish, and animal fats, can cause hyperlipoproteinemia, promote lipid deposition, and worsen hypertension. Therefore, dietary cholesterol should be controlled to 300-400mg/day.
10. Patients should pay attention to scientific water intake.
The hardness of water is closely related to the regulation of hypertension. We know that drinking water contains calcium and magnesium ions. If the blood lacks these ions, it can easily cause vascular spasms, which in turn leads to an increase in blood pressure. Therefore, hypertensive patients should drink more hard water.
What is hard water? It includes drinking water such as spring water, deep well water, and natural mineral water.