Exercise is really the best medicine - motivation to continue

I have first written about struggle with high blood pressure in October 2005, about how the doctor wanted to put me on hypertension medication. I told the doctor, if I start taking those medicine, I may have to take them for life, and that I wanted to try exercise and diet first. I did and eventually the doctor told me he would not even consider me as pre-hypertensive.

Since then, my blood pressure have been fluctuating around the normal 120/88. Recently I have started an exercise regime of the following daily ritual - 5-10 minutes of warm up on the recumbent bike and 30 minutes of brisk walking on the threadmill at a rate which is close to the maximum heart rate for my age group.

The results were the measured heart rate were consistently below the normal 80/120. For example, I just measured with the heart rate and it was only 110/70

As such, I believe exercise was the best medicine for maintaining a healthy heart rate and for cardiovascular health.

However, exercise may be dull and monotonous and my motivation to continue is

1. exercise in step to the beat of a nice song or music
2. keep in mind that exercise keeps away hypertension and other cardiovascular problems, diabetes and cancer. Image those horrible medicine I would have to otherwise take if not for exercise.

Food for hypertension - low salt diet

It is well known that people wanting to lower their blood pressure should follow a low-salt (more accurately, low-sodium) diet regime. Here are some ways I have used successfully to keep my blood pressure in the 120/80 normal region:

1. When not cooking myself and eating out and being unable to control the amount of salt or sodium in the food I eat, what I do is have at least one meal which is mainly fruit based as many fruit have very low sodium content plus high potassium content.

Sodium and Potassium levels are in a kind of zero-sum situation with higher Potassium level being compensated with a lower Sodium level.

2. When cooking myself, by substituting salt with garlic, onions and spice, low salt dishes can be low-salt and yet tasty.

Related posts:
Food for hypertension: Beetroot juice
My (successful) struggle against borderline hypertension
Exercise regime to control blood pressure
Zero cost and very effective "threadmill exercise machine"
Sleep the best medicine for hardened arteries
Another weapon in the arsenal against hypertension

Food for hypertension - beetroot juice

Natural remedy for high blood pressure - drink beetroot juice. Want to bring down your blood pressure? Drink beetroot juice.

Amrita Ahluwalia, Professor of Vascular Pharmacology at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry researching the effect of drinking beetroot juice or taking nitrate tablets have shown that both brought down blood pressure within 24 hours. Apparently, the higher the blood pressure, the greater the magnitude of decrease in blood pressure. Their research paper was published the US journal Hypertension

It seemed the nitrate in the beetroot juice when eaten is changed to nitric oxide gas
and this gas keeps the blood vessels open and relaxed and thus reduces the blood pressure.

Beetroot at Amazon