Pressure.....Under Pressure

High Blood Pressure? Drop 15 Pounds- 07/12/05

After decades of USDA guidelines and daytime talk shows, the fact that losing weight is good for you has been firmly etched into the minds of most every American adult. But how much weight, and exactly how good? According to a Boston University study on overweight adults and hypertension, losing as little as 15 pounds can decrease a middle-aged person's risk of developing high blood pressure by as much as 29%. If those concrete numbers aren't persuasive enough, researchers point to their findings that weight loss proved beneficial to high blood pressure relief even when patients eventually gained some of the weight back. The latest USDA nutrition guidelines, aimed at guiding healthy eating patterns for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, recommend a diet high in complex carbohydrates and lean proteins, and low in saturated fats and refined sugars

-from LifeScript