High Blood Pressure seems to be a very common problem here in the United States as 1 out of every 3 Americans has it, including me. But I don’t worry about it anymore as you can see in the photo.
In this post, I am going to tell you exactly How I Lowered My Blood Pressure Naturally …. with a Mary’s Mini Diet.
Ok but first, let’s talk about Blood Pressure – because this is something pretty important.
As your heart beats, it squeezes blood through your arteries throughout the rest of your body, which creates pressure. This is the top number, or the Systolic Number and is usually 120mmHg or less.
In between beats, as your heart rests, it fills up with oxygenated blood and this is the bottom number or Diastolic which is 80mmHg or less.
The higher those numbers, the higher your blood pressure. At one point in time, my own personal blood pressure was as high as 175/106, which as you can see was pretty close to crisis stage.
And THAT…. was when I began taking blood pressure medication.
There are many causes of high blood pressure (including genetics), but in my case, I think it was simply a combination of a poor diet, lack of exercise, and the stress from working a night-shift job I hated.
And those are probably the MAIN reasons so many of US have High Blood Pressure –
- our highly processed Standard American Diet which is mostly salt, sugar, and fat (source)
- the fact that 34.9% of Americans are overweight if not obese (source)
- and 80% of us fail to exercise (source)
- and then throw in stress from our relationships, jobs, finances, politics, what have you….. it can all add up to be a deadly combination!
High blood pressure is normally treated by pharmaceutical medications. I was taking 25mg of Losartan which works by relaxing your muscles cells and dilating your blood vessels, which reduces pressure.
The problem “I” had with taking medications – is the fact that they really don’t treat the cause of the problem, only the symptom. And unless you fix the root cause – you’ll probably end up taking this for the rest of your life.
Now if your root cause is indeed genetic, there may not be much you can do. But for many of us…..this is a LIFESTYLE DISEASE. So I changed my lifestyle, which in turn has changed my entire life.
In 2014 I adopted a low-fat, Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet. I became Vegan, and I started blogging about my experience which is how Brand New Vegan came about. And my blood pressure naturally dropped.
But because of all the years I spent damaging my arteries, it only dropped to about 145/95. Sometimes a little lower, but generally in that range. And – my doctor said that for someone my age (55), this was about normal.
But I wanted better than normal…..
Mary’s Mini Diet
So last week I began what is known as a Mary’s Mini Diet, which was created by Dr. John McDougall and his wife Mary.
You can read my article What Is A Mary’s Diet that will explain the details, but let’s just say for 10 days straight I ate a very boring, very monotonous diet full of potatoes, and the results were nothing short of remarkable.
Why Potatoes? The diet forces you to choose A starch, any starch, so I chose potatoes because I really like them. And the fact that potatoes have takes such a bad rap for being unhealthy, I wanted to prove that wrong.
For 10 days I ate hash browns (no oil), baked potatoes, air-fried french fries, mashed potatoes…. I even created new recipes for Potato Soup and Homemade Potato Chips.
I had NO oil or fatty foods, NO processed foods, NO bread or grains, NO other starches, and NO alcohol. Just potatoes, a few condiments, and some leafy greens and non-starchy vegetables. That’s it.
10 Days later, I had lost 8 pounds, had TONS of energy, slept better than I have in years, AND dropped my Blood Pressure to that ridiculous number you see in the photo above – 104/76. And that was with NO medication!
And now I am medication free.
So what does this prove? To me, it proved what I have been learning for the last 7-8 years…..that there is most DEFINITELY a link between how we eat and our health.
It proved to me how IMPORTANT our food choices are and that by simply doing this one and very simple thing ….. we may just prevent – if not reverse many of the chronic conditions that will affect so many of our friends and loved ones.
FIX our FOOD FIRST!
