Times Of India Dated: Nov. 04, 2002
By Rupa Chinai
Times News Network

New evidence shows that doctors recommended of a reduction in salt intake and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can indeed help to keep your one's blood pressure in check. In fact a new study says that this approach is as effective as medication in reducing blood pressure.
Frank Sacks, a blood pressure and cholesterol expert at the Harvard School of Public Health’s nutrition department, says that people who ate a low-salt diet – no more than 2.5 grams per day – for a month had a sizable drop in high blood pressure. In the city, Anju Venkat found similar results in her role as a nutritionist at Mumbai’s Health Awareness Center. Blood pressure, she says, is the body’s way of indicating that it is being abused. “It is a signal indicating that the body cannot eliminate the rising toxicity levels through natural processes.” says Ms. Venkat.
The solution lies in undertaking lifestyle changes, including right nutrition and exercise, to facilitate the processes of digestion and elimination.
This in turn, regulates the blood pressure, she said. Even Professor Sack’s study found that not only those who reduced salt intake but even those who followed a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy food showed a marked decrease in blood pressure problems.
According to Professor Sacks, the role of right nutrition in improving people’s health has been “completely underappreciated” in academic circles. His papers, published in scientific journals such as the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’ and ‘American Journal of Epidemiology’ have shown that a vegetarian diet fares better while controlling blood pressure and cholesterol.
“We have not been able to identify that one nutrient or one pill that can reproduce the effect of the vegetarian diet.” he told the ‘Harvard Public Health Review’ in its winter 2002 issue.
An eight weeks’ trial conducted in 1997 by Professor Sacks revealed that the fruit, vegetable diet could reduce hypertension as much as blood pressure medications. The millions of dollars spent on blood-pressure medication could be substituted with their recommendations for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, he said.
The DASH diet, now recommended in the national guidelines in the US, emphasizes fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products. It also includes whole grains, poultry, fish and nuts and recommends that only small amounts of red meat, sweets and sugar-containing beverages be consumed.
Meanwhile, studies conducted by the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol underline the need to develop new ways to reduce salt intake to achieve long term reduction in blood pressure. The impact will not to reduce hidden salt in foods such as bread and cereals, and other packaged and processed foods, the studies concluded.
According to the researchers, even a small reduction in blood pressure can reduce the numbers of strokes and heart attacks. Research findings here, too, have shown that people who were on medication to be able to come off it if they adopted a low-salt diet.