Top 5 Natural Ways To Reduce Your Blood Pressure

1. Try Yoga: Yoga is a great way to reduce stress, which contributes to high blood pressure. But there are some poses in particular recommended for those wanting to level out their blood pressure. These include:

* forward bends like virasana and upavista konasana, which are both sitting postures
* horizontal asanas which allow the heart beat to slow down when they are practised slowly and rhythmically
* asanas like uttanasana and adhomukha savasana

2. Regular exercise: It doesn't have to be yoga. Any regular exercise like walking, biking or gardening is great for lowering blood pressure. Your physician will be able to give you an exercise plan that suits your heart condition and physical fitness levels. It's important not to overdo it too quickly. Tai chi is actually an excellent way to reduce blood pressure. Like yoga, it is relaxing, rhythmical, a stress reducer, and has great benefit on the nervous and parasympathetic systems within the body.

Having a regular exercise program may even reduce your need for blood pressure medication.

3. Eat more bananas! Bananas are high in potassium, which is great for reducing high blood pressure. Other dietary improvements include eating more fruit and vegetables generally. Studies have found 8 servings of fruit and vegetables daily to be preferable, with these having a particular benefit for cardiovascular health:

* Lettuce
* spinach
* cauliflower
* cabbage
* broccoli
* swiss chard
* citrus fruits

and when these changes are combined with exercise, there are more significant improvements in blood pressure.

4. Make sure you get your folic acid: A study by the Harvard Medical School looked at the benefits of folic acid on blood pressure, and found it to be highly beneficial, particularly amongst younger women. It seemed to have a protective effect against high blood pressure. Younger women who took at least 1mg of folic acid a day lowered their risk of hypertension by 46%. Older women who had reasonable amounts of folic acid daily lowered their risk by 18%. The study was conducted on 156,000 nurses, 19,720 of whom had high blood pressure.

5. Blessed chocolate: Dark chocolate, and foods and supplements that had high levels of cocoa including chocolate confectionary, cocoa sandwich filling and drinks, have been found to be associated with a lower blood pressure and reduced risk of dying from any cause in a small study conducted on 470 elderly men (they were on average 72 7ears old). The study followed them for 15 years, and those that ate more than 2.3 grams of cocoa a day had lower blood pressure than those that didn't. Researchers believe it is the flavanol component of cocoa that provides this beneficial effect.

Before thinking this is a green light to eat lots of chocolate, you'll need about 100 grams of dark chocolate a day to get the blood pressure benefits. That equates to an extra 500 calories per 100 grams, with an average fat content of 30%. Raw cocoa is not well taken by people when it is eaten in large amounts. The calorie and fat considerations need to be taken into account, although there are some chocolate bars out there that have a higher flavanol content.

For high blood pressure herbs, check this article. For other articles on blood pressure, click here. Submit health articles here.

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Fitness - Different Exercise Routines For Men And Women

We live quite rightly in an age of equality where we are slowly but surely tearing down many of the traditional barriers that exist between men and women. Despite this though, there are still some areas where differences do, and will continue to, exist and exercise is one such area.

Although a few women can achieve the upper body strength of some of even the fittest men, the vast majority of men have a natural physical advantage in this area. This advantage is reinforced by male aesthetic values and many men will favor their upper body when it comes to putting together an exercise routine.

Women, by contrast, will focus their attention more on exercises aimed at the legs and buttocks, possibly in part out of a desire to look more attractive. In this case women again have an advantage as a woman's pelvis is tilted at a slightly different angle from that of a man. This means, for example, that women can gain greater benefit from exercises such as squats by tilting their feet outward with their legs further apart, and do not need to squat as low.

Although women have additional layers of muscle in the stomach, on average, most women have less muscle mass than men and a greater percentage of body fat. This means that a well designed female exercise routine will focus less on bulking up and more on toning and achieving flexibility.

Men are also somewhat less flexible than women as a result of natural differences in their joints and also a difference in attitude. This difference in attitude often results in men tending to skimp on their warm-up routines, including essential stretching exercises.

Of course to some extent these differences are very much a matter of degree and some convergence is possible and both men and women can benefit by adapting some aspects of the routines of the opposite sex.

Women are more often open to trying out something new or different, such as yoga or pilates, which focus on an awareness of different parts of the body in order to maximize flexibility and raise overall fitness. Such practices focus very little on achieving strength, although increased strength often results a good yoga or pilates routine.

For example, a number of yoga routines focus on balance and balance is at its greatest when all the body's muscles are supporting the joints and skeleton correctly and dynamically. This is both the cause and consequence of improved strength in the muscles that help achieve that balance.

Pilates, especially, is a coordinated system aimed at achieving better strength and posture and breathing by using one to assist the other. Once again, it concentrates more on controlling muscle groups rather than building them up.

While men will undoubtedly continue to focus their attention on upper body strength and women to concentrating on flexibility and toning in their legs, both can undoubtedly benefit from taking a look over the fence and seeing how the other half lives.

If you are looking for fitness made simple and information on any aspect of fitness such as creating a custom fitness program then please visit Lifetime-Fitness-Made-Simple.com today.

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