A scientist has spoken out to say people can lower their blood pressure through changes to diet and lifestyle – without ‘relying solely’ on medication such as amlodipine, ramipril and losartan. Speaking on the Zoe podcast, Tim Spector professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and founder of the Zoe health app said reversing high blood pressure is possible.
Around 14-16 million adults in the UK have high blood pressure (hypertension), with roughly one in three adults affected, but a significant portion (around 5-6 million) are undiagnosed, making it a major silent health issue contributing to heart attacks and strokes.
Prof Spector said today: “If I want to reverse high blood pressure, I want to increase your potassium intake. As always in nutrition, we’ve tended to over focus on one element, and that’s been salt. Studies have now shown that as well as salt being important, things like potassium are actually even more important. You do that.
“By giving you some bananas, but also most green leaf vegetables also have high potassium intake, so people on high plant diets are naturally getting a lot of potassium. The more you do that, the more you’ll be able to improve your blood pressure naturally, even before you’re going onto blood pressure medications.”
Writing on Instagram he added: “Often called the “silent killer,” is already affects millions, and the numbers are rising fast. But emerging research suggests its reach is even broader than we thought, with links to cognitive decline, diabetes, tinnitus and even vision loss.
“The good news is much of it is within your control. Earlier this year on the @zoe podcast, I shared how diet and lifestyle can lower blood pressure naturally, without relying solely on medication.
“We discuss how blood pressure connects to gut health, the foods that can help bring your numbers down, and the small but powerful lifestyle changes that may have a lasting impact.”
The advice is intended to help people on medication and there is no suggestion people should stop taking their medication without seeking medical advice.
Previously Prof Spector explained that 96,000 people took part in a diet study which looked at the link between diet and blood pressure. Prof Spector said the size of the study meant there were some key insights if someone has been diagnosed with high blood pressure. He explained: “Age and your body weight are the two biggest factors. You can’t change your age. You can to some extent change your body weight.”
He said actions that people could take to reduce blood pressure included medicines, and that being a woman also made it less likely. He said: “Men always have higher blood pressures. Although it does go up at the menopause.
“Alcohol is generally negative for blood pressure. And the one thing so you can obviously do is reduce alcohol consumption.” He said minerals and nutrients in food could play a big part – and potassium could be a game changer.
He said: “So people who have a lot of potassium in their diet have lower blood pressures and studies have shown this is more important than salt. And so this is actually quite a major finding because this is something all of you can do. You can actually improve the potassium in your diet.”
Other factors which can reduce blood pressure include exercise, stopping smoking and HRT for the menopause. But Prof Spector said that he was surprised at the types of food which were shown to contain high levels of potassium.
He said: “I thought it was just bananas, which tennis players eat, but, it turns out that the top 15 ones are things like yeast extract, which vegans use to sort of mimic cheese. and potato crisps.” Yeast extract is a key ingredient of marmite, so having some toast with the spread on could also be a good food for those with high blood pressure.
But he added that crisps could be seen as healthy – as long as they are the right ones: “Now, that’s an unlikely one, isn’t it? If they’re fried in sunflower, which most of them are. So good quality potato crisps have a lot of potassium, and obviously, they have a bit of salt in them. But if we think potassium is more important, that’s really interesting.”
Other foods with lots of potassium include tomato purees, power shakes, pistachio nuts. He added: “I love pistachio nuts and again, a really good source of potassium.” Strange other foods with lots of potassium included coffee whitener along with dried raisins, dried fruits, dry prunes, pumpkin skins, quinoa.
He said: “If you like an exotic snacks Bombay mix fresh parsley, all bran type cereals and almond butter. So a very diverse list of things that you probably hadn’t thought about that just makes people think differently.
“But generally most plants, vegetables and fruits do have pretty good levels of potassium in there.”