All About Blood Pressure What Is Blood Pressure? What Is Low Blood Pressure? What Is High Blood Pressure? Are You At Risk Of A Heart Attack Or Stroke? How Much Caffeine’s In Your Coffee? What Is A Normal Cholesterol Level? What Causes High Cholesterol? Search Search Search … Search Search Search … Losing weight is one of the most effective natural remedies for high blood pressure. Being overweight significantly increases your risk of developing high blood pressure. While carrying excess weight is bad for your blood pressure, the opposite is also true. If you can lose even a few of those excess pounds, your blood pressure will come down significantly. Some of my patients have reduced the dose of their prescribed blood pressure treatments or even managed to stop them altogether by losing half a stone (seven pounds). Being overweight increases the work load of your heart, which has to pump blood through a larger than normal volume of fatty tissue.
Fat cells also release substances that have an adverse effect on the liver, increasing the level of inflammatory chemicals produced and making your arteries more likely to constrict. Hormone changes associated with carrying excess fat also promote fluid retention. When 9,000 Finnish women aged 47-56 years were followed for five years, the results showed their risk of developing hypertension increased by 5% for each excess kilogram of fat they carried. The good news is that losing at least some weight can help to prevent your blood pressure from creeping up further and can bring your blood pressure down. Even after taking other factors into account, such as age, initial weight/height, exercise level, GlucoLife Wellness smoking and alcohol intake, a weight loss of 6.8 kg or more can reduce the risk of developing hypertension by 28% for middle-aged adults, and by 37% for older adults. If you already have hypertension, losing a relatively small amount of excess fat will produce significant results.
For each kilogram of weight lost, your blood pressure will fall by around 1/1mmHg in the short-term. Longer term trials show that each 10kg of excess weight you can lose will reduce your blood pressure by an average of 6/4.6 mm Hg. Some people see significantly greater improvements with blood pressure reducing by as much as 10/20 mmHg with a weight loss of 10kg (22lb). This is by no means as easy to do as it sounds, however, and you will need lots of motivation, encouragement and support to achieve this. The blood pressure benefits of losing weight are not just due to increased levels of physical activity. This was shown in a study involving 133 sedentary, overweight adults with high normal blood pressure, and hypertension, who were asked to either exercise, take exercise and lose weight, or to carry on as before, with no diet or lifestyle changes. In those who just exercised, without losing weight, average blood pressure fell by 4/4mmHg compared with those who did nothing.
Those who both exercised and lost weight, however, saw their blood pressure come down by 7/5 mmHg compared with those who made no lifestyle changes. So, although exercise alone is effective in reducing blood pressure, losing weight enhances this effect. When you are first diagnosed with hypertension, your doctor will usually suggest that you lose at least some excess weight as part of a general lifestyle plan which in most cases will include following the DASH diet and cutting back on salt intake. In many cases, losing excess weight can mean you avoid the need for antihypertensive medicines altogether. If you are already taking BP medication, then weight loss can improve your blood pressure readings enough for your doctor to prescribe fewer medicines or lower doses. Don’t let your weight go too low, however, as this can also lead to long-term health problems. Aim to stay within the healthy weight range for your height. What is an ideal weight?
Measuring weight isn’t as simple as just stepping on the scales, as it depends on factors such as your muscle build, bones density and body fluids as well as your fat stores. A weight of 75kg (11stone 11lb) may be ideal for one person but seriously overweight for another. For greater accuracy, a way to estimate body fat stores was developed that uses the relationship between your height and weight to estimate body fat stores. Called the body mass index, or BMI, it is calculated by dividing your weight (in kilograms) by your height (in metres) and by your height in metres again. You don’t have to work this out yourself - use the free BMI calculator below which can use metric or imperial units. Although BMI is a useful guide, it’s not a perfect measure of body fat and is not accurate for people who are less than five feet tall, or those with a lot of muscle mass.