High blood pressure can inhibit a person from taking a jog or eating certain foods. To be fair, a lot of people develop high blood pressure from eating unhealthy foods, so making a few changes to your diet may not be the worst thing. The trick is to eat foods that work to naturally lower your blood pressure. If you haven’t had luck at lowering blood pressure, it might be time to get some sweet potatoes in your diet.
Some people like to avoid sweet potatoes, or potatoes in general, because of their starch content. This super spud is different! Sweet potatoes are rich in fiber and contain essential blood pressure-lowering nutrients like potassium and magnesium. Let it be known that if you top your sweet potato with butter, brown sugar, sour cream, or cook it in heavy cream, you negate all of the benefits.
How Do They Do It?
Sweet potatoes contain a lot of potassium, which is known to help naturally lower blood pressure. Potassium actually helps your kidneys eliminate excess sodium from the body. By naturally lowering the sodium content in the body, blood pressure can come down as well. Additionally, sweet potatoes contain essential nutrients like folate, manganese, copper, phosphorus, and iron. The concentration of iron and calcium in sweet potatoes help them to naturally lower your blood pressure. Oh, and did we mention that they also have carotenes, biotin, and vitamins? Well, we just did.
There are many ways to enjoy sweet potatoes. You can juice them, sauté them, boil them, or roast them in the oven. Merely adding sweet potatoes to your diet, though, won’t lower your blood pressure. It is beneficial to limit your consumption of meat, dairy products, salty foods, refined sugars, processed foods, fried food, and other oily or fattening foods. Focus on eating plant based foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds for the best results.
If you need a little inspiration for sweet potato recipes, check out the ones below!
Sweet Potato, Apple, & Carrot Juice
This is the juice to drink to help detox your body for healthy, glowing skin. Between the carrots and the sweet potato, this drink is loaded with beta-carotene and vitamin A, which is an antioxidant that helps repair skin tissue. It also helps lower your blood pressure.
Click here to make the recipe.
Vegan Pad Thai With Sweet Potato Noodles
When it comes to this dish, it is all about getting the dressing right. You want a balanced dressing to coat your “noodles,” so you can add seasonings to your liking to achieve the flavor profile you want. There are a lot of powerful ingredients in the dressing so get ready to taste amazingness.
Click here to make the recipe.
Vincent Stevens is the senior content writer at Dherbs. As a fitness and health and wellness enthusiast, he enjoys covering a variety of topics, including the latest health, fitness, beauty, and lifestyle trends. His goal is to inform people of different ways they can improve their overall health, which aligns with Dherbs’ core values. He received his bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Redlands, graduating summa cum laude. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
