DASH diet: Healthy eating to lower your blood pressure

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The DASH diet is a lifelong approach to healthy eating that's designed to help treat or prevent high blood pressure (hypertension). The DASH diet encourages you to reduce the sodium in your diet and eat a variety of foods rich in nutrients that help lower blood pressure, such as potassium, calcium and magnesium.

By following the DASH diet, you may be able to reduce your blood pressure by a few points in just two weeks. Over time, your blood pressure could drop by eight to 14 points, which can make a significant difference in your health risks.

Because the DASH diet is a healthy way of eating, it offers health benefits besides just lowering blood pressure. The DASH diet may offer protection against osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes. And while the DASH diet is not a weight-loss program, you may indeed lose unwanted pounds because it can help guide you toward healthier meals and snacks.

DASH diet: Sodium levels

A key goal of the DASH diet is reducing how much sodium you eat, since sodium can dramatically increase blood pressure in people who are sensitive to its effects. In addition to the standard DASH diet, there is also a lower sodium version of the diet. You can choose the version of the diet that meets your health needs:

• Standard DASH diet. You can consume up to 2,300 milligrams (mg) of sodium a day.
• Lower sodium DASH diet. You can consume up to 1,500 mg of sodium a day.

Both versions of the DASH diet aim to reduce the amount of sodium in your diet compared with what you might get in a more traditional diet, which can amount to a whopping 3,500 mg of sodium a day or more. That level is far beyond the recommendation of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans of a maximum of 2,300 mg of sodium a day.