What is the DASH Diet Plan?

What is the DASH Diet? The DASH diet simply stands for Dietary Approaches To Stop Hypertension. People in the beginning stages of hypertension are often placed on this diet in order to help control blood pressure.

The plan is based upon 2,000 calories per day, but can be adjusted to meet whatever dietary needs you may have. This diet comes highly recommended by the American Heart Association, since it helps to achieve optimal health in many areas other than just hypertension. The most important components to helping hypertension naturally is to include foods which are rich potassium sources, foods that contain calcium, and also magnesium.

To begin with, the DASH plan places a lot of importance on grains. With 7-8 servings daily as the daily allowance on this plan, it is good to incorporate whole wheat breads, wheat pastas, and whole grain cereals. Your whole grains have many more nutritional values than other ones which carry more refined sugars.

The DASH diet plan also favors fruits and vegetables.You need to eat 4 or 5 servings daily from this group. As you study the DASH diet book, the author tells you several great ways in which to include your fruit and vegetable servings daily.

Next on this plan is non-fat or low-fat products from the dairy section.You'll need to choose skim milk, or 1% at the most, low-fat or nonfat cheeses and yogurts.

Following dairy, you have lean meat choices. You'll get small serving sizes of these, meaning not more then 2 servings. Good choices are skinless chicken, low-fat frankfurters, and other lean meats.

When you come to the section where the plan mentions nuts and seeds, these are allowed but limited to not more than five small servings a week. This also included legumes.

The DASH diet plan book is really complete. As you need to fit the plan according to your daily calorie needs, it will show you how. This book also will tell you of healthier ways to eat out. Eating out is a real challenge when on a diet plan, but the DASH diet book does a great job of telling you how.

The plan has a section of the book where exercises are talked about, along with consumption of alcoholic beverages, and also ways to help you quit the smoking habit.

Other medical problems that this diet plan seems helpful with are insulin resistance, cholesterol problems, and inflammation. So if you are struggling with any of these medical issues other than hypertension, you should strongly consider taking on this meal plan.

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