Low Salt Diet Guide for High Blood Pressure

If you suffer from high blood pressure, often you are advised to reduce your salt consumption, or what is called the hypertension diet. However, do you know what is the relationship between salt and blood pressure?

High salt intake can disrupt the natural sodium balance in your body. Sodium levels in the body can increase, causing sodium retention, and this can increase the pressure exerted by blood flow on the walls of blood vessels. Finally, high blood pressure or hypertension occurs.

Therefore, hypertension sufferers are advised to reduce their salt intake, even though they have taken medication to reduce their blood pressure. Reducing salt intake can help you control blood pressure.

Reducing salt intake from 10 grams to 6 grams per day can reduce blood pressure. Finally, it can reduce 14% of deaths due to stroke and 9% of deaths due to coronary heart disease in people with hypertension, as shown in a study in the Journal of Human Hypertension in 2002.

How to go on a hypertension diet?

A hypertension diet or a low salt diet is proven to help people with high blood pressure to control their blood pressure. In fact, taking medication alone is not enough to be able to control blood pressure, so it must be accompanied by this diet.

If you have hypertension, you are advised to consume only 6 grams of salt a day or about 2300 mg of sodium per day.

The salt in question is table salt added to cooking and also salt hidden in food, such as packaged foods.

In running a hypertension diet, it does not mean you only reduce your salt intake, but also other foods that contain hidden salt.

About 80% of the salt that enters our bodies we usually get from processed foods, such as bread, biscuits, cereals, fast food, and others. The rest, which is 20%, then comes from salt added when cooking or table salt.

The following are tips for you in implementing a hypertension or low salt diet:

1. Reduce salt in cooking

Judging from the name alone, you already know that you are advised to reduce salt consumption as much as possible.
You should not add your cooking to salt, including table salt, MSG, meat tenderizers, various kinds of soy sauce and sauces, pickles, and others.

You can add other ingredients, such as spices / herbs, herbs, lemons, garlic, ginger, vinegar, pepper, and black pepper to enrich the taste of your cuisine. You can also add oranges, lemons, lime, pineapple, or vinegar as seasonings for meat dishes.

Make a special dish for yourself while on a hypertension diet, if your other family members don't like it. You can also try cooking instead by baking or boiling instead of frying with more oil.

2. Be careful with foods and drinks that contain hidden salt

Don't forget to add fresh vegetables and fruits to your menu every day. In addition, limit processed foods or packaged foods, including canned foods and instant foods.

How about drinks? You should also limit drinking soft drinks because these drinks also contain additional salt. If you want to buy frozen food, choose one that contains about 600 mg of sodium or less.

Therefore, it's easy, you better eat food that is cooked alone at home while on this hypertension diet.

3. Read food labels when buying packaged foods

It's not that you're not allowed to eat packaged food at all during a hypertensive or low-salt diet. However, packaged foods usually contain high salt.

Or, usually if you read the nutritional value information, you will find a high sodium content in these food packaging products. High sodium levels can increase sodium levels in your body, so your blood pressure increases.

Therefore, don't forget to always read the nutritional value information if you want to buy packaged food. Choose foods that contain low sodium (140 mg or less per serving) or are free of sodium (less than 5 mg per serving). Remember, per serving!
Usually in one pack of packaged food presented more than one dish. To find out, you can see the number of servings per package. From here, then you can divide how much sodium is contained in each one of these food servings.

During a low-salt diet, here's how to read the salt content found on the label of ready-to-eat or packaged foods:

• Low: 0.3 g or less per 100 g of food. You may consume these foods.
• Moderate: 0.3-1.5 g of salt per 100 g of food. You should not eat these foods too often.
• Height: 1.5 g or more salt per 100 g of food. Avoid foods with this much salt.

In addition to salt content, you also need to pay attention to the sodium contained in packaged foods. 1 gram of sodium equals 2.5 grams of salt.

• Low: 0.1 g sodium or less per 100 g of food. You may consume these foods.
• Medium: 0.1-0.6 g sodium per 100 g food. You should limit consumption of these foods, not too often.
• Height: 0.6 g or more sodium per 100 g of food. Avoid foods with this much sodium.

Then, what if it's not written down how much salt or sodium is contained in a food product? Well, you can read the list of compositions. If the salt is first, it is possible that the product contains a lot of salt.

4. Maintain body weight

In a hypertension diet, you are not only required to reduce salt consumption. If you have excess weight, you should also lose weight.

You can start by limiting total daily calories, trying a low-fat diet, and most of all, doing lots of physical activity.

Why is maintaining weight so important? Reporting from the journal at the National Institutes of Health, being overweight or obese is one of the factors that can increase your risk of experiencing an increase in blood pressure. In fact, your blood pressure can rise if you gain weight.

If you want to lose weight, the most important thing you must remember is not to rush. In one week, you should not lose more than 1 kg. For long-term goals, try to lose about 10 percent of your body weight.

5. Follow the tips for ordering food outside the home

If you have followed the hypertension diet tips that can be done at home, what should you do if someone invites us to eat outside the home?

Relax, you can still go on a low salt diet while eating in restaurants, cafes, or ordering food from outside. Choose a menu with ingredients with the lowest salt content.

For example, when you eat pizza or pasta, you can choose vegetable or chicken toppings. Reduce, or if necessary avoid salt-containing toppings, such as sausages, cheese, pepperoni, or bacon.

When choosing rice, avoid rice with flavorings or additional seasonings, such as fried rice, uduk rice, or yellow rice. Choose white rice. If there is brown rice or black rice, of course it will be even better.

When you order a salad with dressing or salad dressing, make sure you don't pour thousand island sauce into the salad. Some sauces used for salads, including thousand island, contain high salt. Instead, enjoy the vegetables in your salad by dipping them into the sauce.

What foods should you eat while on a hypertension diet?

Fresh and low salt foods are foods that you should eat while on this diet. Some foods that contain low salt and are good for hypertensive diets are:

• Fresh vegetables and fruits
• Meat, chicken and fresh fish
• Eggs
• Nuts, but not beans in cans
• Milk, yogurt and ice cream
• Cheese containing low sodium, such as cream cheese and mozzarella

Meanwhile, foods that contain high salt (you should avoid) are:

• Salted peanuts or canned beans
• Processed or canned meat, chicken, or fish, such as sausages, sardines, corned beef
• Preserved foods, such as shredded, salted fish, salted eggs, boiled fish, jerky, peanut butter, etc.
• Canned vegetables or fruits
• Butter and cheese with high sodium, such as cottage cheese
• Finished seasonings, such as soy sauce, various sauces, shrimp paste, paste, tauco, and other seasonings

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