Blood Pressure Down: The 10-Step Plan to Lower Your Blood Pressure in 4 Weeks--Without Prescription Drugs

Blood Pressure Down: The 10-Step Plan to Lower Your Blood Pressure in 4 Weeks--Without Prescription Drugs

Author: Janet Bond Brill Ph.D. R.D | Language: English | ISBN: 0307986357 | Format: EPUB

Blood Pressure Down: The 10-Step Plan to Lower Your Blood Pressure in 4 Weeks--Without Prescription Drugs Description

From Booklist

Given that nearly a third of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, the audience for this sensible, just-do-it book should be a large one. Certainly, Brill knows what she is talking about professionally. She is a registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and wellness coach who also knows her stuff personally, since her father had his first heart attack at age 45, and her brother died of kidney failure brought on by complications of high blood pressure at age 56. Brill does a good job of explaining that hypertension is a silent killer that hurts blood vessels without pain or symptoms and then causes huge problems, such as stroke, kidney failure, and heart attacks. Brill’s 10 steps aren’t earthshaking (“lose five pounds,” “eat bananas,” “eat yogurt,” “exercise”). But they’re doable. Helpful charts show “power foods,” including magnesium-rich cocoa powder, and 50 recipes include useful nutritional information. Overall, anyone who wants to try nondrug approaches to lowering blood pressure can find much useful, potentially lifesaving information in this guide book. --Karen Springen

Review

“Brill does a good job of explaining that hypertension is a silent killer that hurts blood vessels without pain or symptoms and then causes huge problems, such as stroke, kidney failure, and heart attacks… Overall, anyone who wants to try nondrug approaches to lowering blood pressure can find much useful, potentially lifesaving information in this guide book.”
—Booklist

“What sets this 10-step plan apart is the simple way [Janet Bond Brill] lays it out for the readers….The steps and the implementation are presented so that readers can easily start tomorrow.”
—BlogCritics.org

"A detailed, well researched book for anyone serious about lowering his or her blood pressure."
—Examiner.com

“The brilliant Dr. Brill…has a knack for making cardiac disease simple to understand and conquer…This book is the ideal tool to supplement a doctor's visit to effectively lower a patient's blood pressure with or without medications. This book is so comprehensive - it gives guidance on how to monitor one's blood pressure at home, reminds people about stroke symptoms, what type of exercise works best and of course the foods that can lower blood pressure. The recipes at the end of the book emphasize how delicious a heart healthy diet can be.”
—Annabelle S. Volgman, MD, FACC
Professor of Medicine, Rush College of Medicine
Medical Director, Rush Heart Center for Women

“A simple, holistic, and achievable 10-step plan that is highly effective in reaching the ideal blood pressure in 4 weeks. Maintaining optimal blood pressure is critical in preventing heart disease and stroke.” 
—Jennifer H. Mieres, MD, FACC, FASNC, FAHA
Professor of Cardiology & Population Health, Hofstra North Shore - LIJ School of Medicine

See all Editorial Reviews

• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (May 7, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307986357
• ISBN-13: 978-0307986351
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

The author starts this book off describing the ways in which this topic has affected her personally. She lists family members who have died from stroke, kidney failure due to complications of high blood pressure and she includes details about her father's heart attacks.

Brill delivers a couple of messages with this book, "High blood pressure is the most preventable cause of premature morbidity and mortality in the United States and the world, and that lifestyle therapy is the cornerstone of treatment of the disease."

The author offers a lifestyle therapy that she believes can lower blood pressure in conjunction with prescription medications or without. At the heart of the book is the 10-step plan that, Brill writes, can work in four weeks.

Readers will have to admit that this10-step plan is one of the easiest plans to implement that's been offered in so many other self-help books. Here is a list of 5 of the 10 steps recommended by the author:

1. Lose five pounds
2. Cut the salt out of your diet
3. Eat bananas
4. Eat spinach
5. Eat yogurt

A few of the other steps include eat dark chocolate every day and drink red wine. She recommends readers have 2 tablespoons of natural, unsweetened cocoa powder or eat 1 or 2 squares of dark chocolate every day.

While cutting out the salt may be the most difficult step, it would be tough for any reader to argue with those kinds of steps to lower blood pressure. The author does include warnings with some of the steps such as eating chocolate. She writes that chocolate is an "energy-dense food, meaning it carries a lot of calories in just a few bites.

Forgive my rush to the conclusion, spilling Dr. Brill's thesis first: Americans, and increasingly other peoples too, are just not conscious of what we put in our bodies. We eat packaged filth because it's easier than thinking about food or paying attention to health effects. We don't cook at home, and we don't ask about what goes into the recipe. As a result, hypertension now sits at epidemic levels.

High blood pressure afflicts around a third of Americans. Worse, it's a ripple effect disease. People with hypertension have higher risk of heart disease, kidney disease, stroke, and certain cancers--many of the most common causes of preventable death. Doctors habitually treat hypertension with drugs, which aren't worthless, but don't do everything. According to Brill, solutions and preventions exist which don't involve costly medical interventions.

I'm old enough to remember when everyone thought they could control blood pressure by watching their salt. But Brill, a nutritionist with specialization in cardiovascular disease, collates the latest science suggesting that salt is only one part of a much larger machine. Many of us regularly consume foods that, in small amounts, keep us running, but in large quantities, bog us down. And we think we're eating healthy.

For instance, what foods hit you with the greatest sodium content? Did you say potato chips or french fries? While nobody should mistake these foods for healthful, foods which taste salty are often a fairly low sodium risk, because sodium forms compounds besides salt. Most packaged bread and cheese contains more sodium than salty-tasting foods. Same with commercial sauces, marinades, and salad dressings. Many supposedly healthy foods are hypertension bombs.

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