DASH Diet: How is it Good For Total Health Control?

In this crumb, we will learn about the DASH diet and its overall benefit for our health.

High blood pressure is a serious medical condition common to around 1.12 billion people around the world. 

A good percentage of the countries diagnosed with hypertension identify to be middle or low-income countries. 

The research says that it is expected that this disease is going to affect 29% of the world population by 2025.

High blood pressure happens when a person’s blood pressure rises to an unhealthy level. 

This disease cannot be identified in the early stage as it shows no symptoms in the beginning. 

Therefore, the only way to diagnose this disease is to follow your yearly full-body check-up. 

Hypertension is a serious disease indeed. It not only puts your heart’s health at risk but also the other organs of the body. 

According to studies, hypertension is most likely to affect the eyes, brain, and kidneys apart from causing serious heart diseases. 

Therefore, it becomes an important task to fight this disease. Because not only your health is at risk, but your life can be in danger as well.

As for the treatment of this disease, the doctor will give you prescription medicine and advice you to adopt a healthy lifestyle. 

However, with the rising number of cases, each year and the possible threat of the disease, medicines alone cannot do much.

This is where the DASH diet is introduced.

DASH diet or Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension is created to help lower high blood pressure in patients.

However, people also enjoy this diet plan to lose weight, manage diabetes and lower cholesterol.

The idea of this diet plan is to focus on foods like fruits, whole grain, low salt, vegetable, low-fat and lean protein. 

Moreover, this diet focuses on exercise as well. You need to do at least 60 minutes of intense and moderate exercise every day to prevent weight gain.

Exercise will also keep your heart in good health.

The diet is planned based on the portion size and the balance of nutrients. 

The reason that this diet works wonders for the patient’s health is that it offers all the vitamins and minerals required for a healthy body.

DASH diet provides potassium, magnesium, fiber, and calcium with necessary vitamins.

This diet plan restricts the consumption of alcohol, starchy food, and too much sweet or salty food. 

Red meat, high-fat dairy products, junk food are completely banned when you are on the DASH diet.

In fact, one of the goals of the DASH diet is to make the patient forget about processed food and focus entirely on healthy food.

Because when you consume processed food, you cannot avoid taking in sodium, sugar or starch, which is a complete no-no in this diet.

Is DASH Diet Prescribed Individually? / How to Start My DASH Diet?

Though DASH completely focuses on having a good nutritious meal, you can just look up to the NIH’s health guidelines related to the DASH diet and follow up the routine.

NIH is a US agency in the department of health and human services. This agency is the developer and promoter of the DASH diet.

However, you might want to meet a healthcare professional and consult about your DASH diet. This is because this diet plan is prescribed based on several factors such as age, weight, health, and sex.

The diet depends on the calorie demand of the individual, and it can range anywhere between 1200 and 3100 calories per day.

A professional will arrange your diet plan in such a way as to provide you maximum benefit from it.

Also Read – Hypothyroidism- Boost an Underactive Thyroid Naturally

Hypothyroidism- Boost an Underactive Thyroid Naturally

What Are the Common Foods Included in DASH Diet?

DASH diet includes fruits, vegetables, low-fat and lean protein food. 

You will be consuming less starchy food and will have to scrape of any junk food. 

This diet does include some amount of meat. It includes fish and eggs for protein build-up. 

However, if you are vegetarian, you can adjust your diet by substituting any vegetable or fruit with the same of calorie as that of meat.

You will be eating lentils, kidney beans, dried nuts, potatoes, bananas, and other such nutrient fruits and vegetables. 

You must include juice in your daily food.

What Are the Health Benefits of the DASH Diet?

The best part of the DASH diet is that anyone can benefit from it. It is fit for children as well as adults. Since it only focuses on healthy food with lots of vegetables and fruits, it improves the quality of life and makes a person happy and fit.

There can be numerous health benefits from the DASH diet. Let us see some concerning topics that the DASH diet helps to cope with.

Lowers Blood Pressure

According to researches, it is found that people who cut down on the intake of sodium experienced a considerable drop in their blood pressure. 

People who were not suffering from hypertension still experienced lower blood pressure.

This diet helped diagnosed patients to get relief from the daily troubles of hypertension. 

Manages Diabetes Type-2

A Pub Med research paper suggests that since the DASH diet lowers the consumption of sugary food and promotes healthy vegetable and fruit consumption, it has shown its effects on insulin.

The exercise helped people to lose weight, which ultimately affected insulin levels in the body.

Cardiovascular Health

A literary experiment conducted on patients with heart disease suggests that when these patients went on a DASH diet, they experienced a significant improvement in their health.

People with cardiovascular diseases, strokes, heart failure, and coronary heart disease were asked to follow this diet for a prescribed period of time.

The result showed that the DASH diet can significantly protect against these diseases. 

CVD can be protected by 20%, CHD by 21%, HF by 29% and stroke by 19%.

The Bottom Line

DASH diet is suitable for anyone willing to achieve a healthy body. 

It controls the overall health and makes a person fit. This diet is mainly used to control hypertension, which a major threat to world population today and in coming days. 

You can start your DASH diet today and focus on achieving a healthy body free of diseases.

Further Reading:

www.kidney.org

www.medicalnewstoday.com