6 Diet Tips for Diabetics to Lower Blood Pressure
If you have diabetes, you try your best to reduce the intake of carbs and exercise more to help stabilize your blood sugar. However, more often than not, most people dealing with diabetes tend to forget another problem that comes along with diabetes is high blood pressure. According to studies, more than two-thirds of people with diabetes have hypertension as well. If you have both conditions and one of them is not well controlled, you risk many health complications such as stroke, heart attacks, kidney failure, and damaged blood vessels, among others. For this reason, it is essential to be on the lookout to ensure that both conditions are well managed and controlled.
Below are 6 tips that you can follow when you have diabetics to help lower and control your blood pressure.
1. Adding CBD oil to your diet
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CBD oil is made from a chemical compound found in the cannabis plants such as Sativa called cannabidiol. Unlike other products extracted from the cannabis plant, CBD has no psychoactive properties but instead has medicinal benefits.
According to research, CBD has several benefits on the heart and other circulatory systems, for instance, it can reduce high blood pressure. This may be due to its anxiety and stress-reducing properties, which are some of the reasons for high blood pressure. Therefore, when living with diabetes, the use of CBD oil can help you ensure that you maintain low blood pressure. For you to relax, you should use CBD from indica strain.
2. Clock your meals
When you have diabetes, you need to watch what you eat. In this case, ensure that all your meals are balanced. For instance, you could make sure that your plate is half-filled with vegetables and fruits. The other half can consist of proteins and carbohydrates. On the same note, avoid the intake of caffeine. Caffeine raises both blood pressure and blood sugar. Therefore, ensure that you limit or cut off the intake of caffeine.
3. Avoid salt
To help you control your blood pressure when you have diabetes, you should have less than 1,500 milligrams of sodium in a day. Therefore, try as much as you can to avoid salt in your food. To help add flavor or taste to your diet, go for other choices such as citrus zest, ginger, cumin, and rosemary, among others. Additionally, avoid buying food from a restaurant or ready to eat meals as you could end up getting a lot of sodium.
4. Reduce on drinking
When you socialize with your friends or family, have fun but try and eliminate the drinking part of it. Some of the drinks that you will be taking, such as wine, beer, and some cocktails contain sugar. This sugar can cause your blood glucose level to rise, not to mention the blood pressure. Additionally, alcohol will stimulate your appetite, making you overeat, which will be dangerous for people with diabetes. Therefore, for as much as you can avoid chances or cases that may make you end up being drunk and losing control.
5. Look for grains and seeds in your diet
When you have diabetes and high blood pressure, the grainer your food, the better it will be. Most of the whole grains that you will come across in the market today are rich in minerals, vitamins, and fiber. This helps keep you full as well as helps steady blood sugar. Therefore, ensure that half of the serving that you have in a day is of whole grains. You can find whole grains in the market today that come precooked, thus making preparation easy.
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6. Eat Foods Rich In Potassium
Potassium is one of the essential minerals in the body that helps the body get rid of excess sodium in the body. This helps ease the pressure on the blood vessels, thus reducing the blood pressure. For this reason, if you are trying to control your blood pressure when you have diabetes, you need to concentrate a lot of foods that are rich in potassium.
For instance, look for foods such as:
- vegetables,
- dairy products such as yogurt and milk,
- seeds,
- nuts,
- beans
- and fruits such as melons, avocados, apricots, oranges, and bananas, among others.
Eating such foods will help reduce the overall blood pressure in the body and it will not be an issue even when you are dealing with diabetes.
Conclusion
More often than not, diabetes comes hand in hand with high blood pressure. For this reason, when working to control diabetes, you need to have the idea of high blood pressure in mind. By considering what you eat, and keeping your diet in check, it is possible to manage your conditions easily. What you take in your body will help determine how your overall health will be. Use the six diet tips above to help lower your blood pressure even when you have diabetes.
