Dash Diet
The acronym DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and is commonly recommended by physicians for their patients with high blood pressure. Hypertension, another name for high blood pressure, can be a silent killer. If it goes undiagnosed it can cause serious long-term damage to the body. It can result in kidney damage or failure, heart attack or stroke. While the cause for high blood pressure may not be clear, treatments such as the DASH diet can be highly effective.

Blood Pressure Basics
Blood pressure is defined as the force exerted on the walls of the artery when the heart is beating and while it is resting. The higher number is referred to as the systolic pressure and is used to describe the pressure exerted on the walls when the heart is contracting. The lower number is called the diastolic pressure and describes the pressure exerted when the heart is in the resting phase.

Blood pressure is described in the form of a fraction, with the systolic pressure going in the numerator and the diastolic pressure being recorded as the denominator. Blood pressure would be considered high if the top number is over 140 and the bottom number is above 90.

How the Dash Diet Works
The DASH diet plan has been proven to lower elevated blood pressure significantly. The diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, and low fat dairy products, while avoiding saturated fat, total fat, and cholesterol. The DASH diet has both 1200 and 1600 calorie diets

The DASH diet menu is a good source of fiber, calcium, protein, magnesium, and potassium. The level of these nutrients that your body receives on the DASH diet will vary from day to day, but in general are two to three times the amount that most American who are not on the diet receive.

The DASH diet meal plan is extremely effective because the food that it emphasizes, such as fruit, vegetables, and low fat diary products, act as a natural diuretics and can often help reduce blood pressure without the use of medication. This is because it encourages salt excretion and an increase in urination.

DASH Diet Research
The DASH diet was tested by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Scientists tested the results using 459 adults who suffered from hypertension. Results of the tests confirmed that the DASH diet reduced systolic pressure by an average of 6 mm HG and 3 mm Hg for diastolic in two weeks. There has also been several
DASH diet articles written based on some Harvard studies.