Lifestyle Medicine: Reduces Your Blood Pressure & Need for Blood Pressure Medication
I love when I stumble across research that highlights the power of lifestyle medicine in the treatment of chronic disease. What is lifestyle medicine you ask?
Lifestyle medicine focuses on the use of therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary way to treat chronic conditions such as, abnormal cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Emphasis is given to eating a plant-predominant and whole-food eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connections. Lifestyle medicine is not only an effective tool for treating chronic disease, but also prevention of these conditions.
So back to the research.
In 2021, an article in the American Journal of Hypertension titled Lifestyle Interventions Reduce the Need for Guideline-Directed Antihypertensive Medication demonstrated how lifestyle interventions can not only reduce high blood pressure, but also decrease the need for blood pressure lowering medications based upon current guidelines from the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology 2017 Hypertension Guidelines.
The following three groups were studied for 16 weeks.
Group 1: DASH diet + weight management with physical activity
Group 2: DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet alone
Group 3: Usual care or control group
Both groups 1 and 2 significant decreased their blood pressure and calculated cardiovascular disease risk. But what is so cool is that this study also showed that these specific lifestyle interventions (group 1 and 2) significantly decreased the number of people who were candidates for starting blood pressure lowering medications.
Figure citation: Hinderliter, A. L., Smith, P., Sherwood, A., & Blumenthal, J. (2021). Lifestyle Interventions Reduce the Need for Guideline-Directed Antihypertensive Medication. American journal of hypertension, 34(10), 1100–1107. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajh/hpab090
The study concluded “...that in men and women with mildly elevated BP, lifestyle interventions can lower the calculated CVD risk and dramatically decrease the number of individuals for whom guideline-directed antihypertensive medication is indicated.”
Why is this important?
Because 1 in 4 Canadians have high blood pressure, and 90% of people will likely experience high blood pressure. But fret not. Even though high blood pressure is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease, we also just saw that it is modifiable and treatable with lifestyle medicine.
Lifestyle medicine is powerful and can help prevent and treat high blood pressure, as well as reduce the likelihood that you may need to start medication. So if you are looking for a natural or non-drug approach for high blood pressure, schedule a free 15 minute consult to learn about how lifestyle medicine can improve your heart health.