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TLDR: Whole food diet. High potassium, low sodium, healthy fats (EVOO (single origin real extra virgin olive oil), avocado oil, and minor saturated fats). Avoid added sugars, avoid processed foods of all types, avoid refined carbs like white bread. Insulin resistance and excess weight are big drivers of hypertension—address those. Also a good fish oil supplement (or eat lots of fatty fish, if you can stomach it 5 times per week), kyolic aged garlic extract, green tea extract, magnesium glycinate. Also, stay hydrated.

I've been taking BP meds for over a decade now. When I was put on them, I asked the doctor what I could do to get off of them, to which he responded by telling me, even if I did everything perfectly—like a perfect diet, exercising like I was training for an Olympic marathon, and meditated to mitigate stress—I NEVER would get off of them. I'm currently proving him wrong.

It's worth noting that I've hated being dependent on meds since the day I was put on them and have tried MANY different supplements, remedies, and diets over the years with no real success. The dietary changes I'm referring to in this post are the ONLY thing that has truly made a difference for me. In my case, there was no quick fix or magic pill.

A couple of months ago, I had a bit of a hypertensive crisis. For whatever reason my BP went way up to the point I was having some concerning symptoms. Checked my BP: 170/110. Yikes! This was despite having faithfully taken my meds without fail every single day.

Went to the doctor; they decided to increase my dosage to 2 tablets of lisinopril (up from 1 tablet). Also checked my lipid panel while I was there. Triglycerides were high at 237, LDL was a bit elevated at 139, and HDL was low at 29. Time to go on a diet. After spending a while with ChatGPT and figuring out ways to optimize my diet, I had a plan.

So I did. Within a couple of weeks, with the new dosage, my BP was staying lower than I've ever seen it—110/70ish usually or sometimes even lower. Was getting dizzy a lot. Went back for a follow-up after a month; I had lost 15 lbs, mostly water weight. Told the doc I didn’t want to be on BP meds forever and asked about a plan to get off of them. (This is a different doc than the one that put me on the meds years ago.) She told me we could absolutely try that, and told me to go ahead and start taking 1 tablet less of my lisinopril since my readings had been looking so good. I did. Now, 3 weeks later, still waiting to go to the follow-up here in a couple of weeks, I'm seeing readings as low as 99/63—lower than the readings I was seeing with the double dosage even. I'm very confident that I will be taken off of Lisinopril altogether at the next follow-up. And I'm not even making any effort to exercise; I am moving a bit more simply because I have more energy, but nothing crazy. And this is also despite drinking about 5 cups of coffee per day on average, because I just happen to like coffee. I used to wrongfully assume that caffeine was a trigger of high BP for me.

An important thing to note that I was NOT aware of for many years: If you're on BP meds like Lisinopril, you will NOT know if you can get off of them by seeing readings get down to a certain point. They only help your body CONTROL your blood pressure and keep it in an optimal range—they don't keep forcing it down. Your body could be perfectly capable of controlling it without the meds, but you won’t know that until you actually try. But this is something to do with the supervision of a doctor, of course. So if you've been taking them for years, and assume, like I did, that since it's not "too low" or exceptionally low, that you must need to take them, that may not be the case if you've long since got your health under control. But again, talk to your doctor.

So, what's the secret? Simply eating good food, avoiding excess salt, avoiding added sugars, avoiding processed foods, and avoiding refined carbs like white bread/white flour. And only consuming healthy fats like REAL extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil. I eat real butter as well, but in careful moderation as I'm trying to get my lipid panel under control at the moment. I don't eat seed/vegetable oils at all. I decided on the idea of only eating foods that are not only "acceptable" but also medicinal in some way. It needs to provide more benefit to me than just a full stomach and calories for my body to burn. For instance, the fat I use most is extra virgin olive oil (2 or 3 tbsp per day typically) due to how beneficial it is to consume. I try to include a lot of high potassium items like bananas, potatoes, and tomatoes. Though I don’t go crazy with bananas as they're sugary. But potassium is exceptionally important for keeping BP under control, and unfortunately most of us don't get nearly enough on average. I can't remember the exact number, but the RDA is something like 4000 mg+ per day for most people or some crazy number, and you can't take that all in supplement form without it being dangerous—you've gotta get it through diet.

Some tips: the biggest one—use ChatGPT for pointers. Have it rate your meals and tell you how you can improve them. Use it to get well acquainted with your condition/situation and ask it for advice on getting better, etc. Knowledge is power. Of course, it's not a doctor and it does get things wrong sometimes, so make sure to double-check with a doctor.

The hardest part about eating this way is food prep. It doesn’t need to be expensive—it hasn't been for me—but cooking a gourmet meal is a lot of work. So look for ways to make your life easier. For instance, rotisserie chickens are AMAZING—buy them (check ingredients; make sure there's no seed oils in the brine), cut them up, bag them and freeze them. You have a delicious cooked healthy protein ready to toss in the microwave for multiple people or multiple meals from a single chicken. Canned foods are your friends! Get low/no sodium canned beans and veggies (avoid the flavored stuff; just get plain stuff). I eat a lot of lunches at work that consist of canned green beans, canned black beans, and some rotisserie chicken. I toss it all in the microwave, heat it up, drizzle some olive oil over my veggies/beans and some spices, and put some type of sauce on my chicken for flavor... delicious and simple lunch; hardest part of it is opening the cans and rinsing them. Eggs are one of the healthiest things you can eat; hard boiled eggs, if you leave them in the shell and put them in the fridge, will last quite a long while. Super easy to boil a bunch of them and have them ready to grab.

I eat MUCH less now as well. Eating this way leaves you fuller for longer. I typically eat 1 or 2 big meals per day. For instance today, my breakfast was a lean pork chop, 2 eggs fried over easy (avocado oil), pan-fried potatoes (for the potassium), sautéed onions, garlic, mushrooms, and bell peppers. I LOVE THIS MEAL—highly recommend, lol. Some days this is pretty much all I'll eat; I'll snack on walnuts and maybe a banana and a couple of medjool dates throughout the day if I get hungry. Maybe a string cheese stick. Sometimes I'll eat a big lunch or big dinner in addition—just depends on the day and how hungry I am.

Do some research on fish oil. If you like fatty fish like sardines or sockeye salmon, to the point you can eat it 5 times per week—awesome. But if not, the best way to get omega-3s is through a fish oil supplement. But not all are created equal. So much so, that many are kind of useless unless you're going to take a couple truckloads of pills per day. So do your research on them and learn what makes them good/worth taking. And obviously, talk to your doctor before taking any supplements.

Also, check your oils. Extra virgin olive oil is often adulterated with junk oils and there's no real oversight, so don’t just go buy the cheapest "olive oil" off the shelf. Check the label—make sure it's single origin (not globally sourced or whatever), make sure it has a harvest date and best-by date, and do a refrigerator test to see if it hardens. The brand I use is Terra Delyssa; it's like $15 for a bottle at Walmart. Avocado oil is kind of the same story. I typically just go with the Chosen brand one.

One more—and this one I think is pretty important—don’t be too hard on yourself. I allow myself to cheat occasionally. Not a lot, of course, not a regular thing. But if the family wants to go out for ice cream on a special occasion, I will definitely get myself a single dip hot fudge sundae and I refuse to feel guilty about it and refuse to dwell on it. I think allowing myself to cheat on some few/far-between occasions without remorse has empowered me to stay on the diet as I don’t feel I'm missing anything. I don’t feel like I'm a prisoner to it or feel that I'm missing out on the simple pleasures of life. Not to mention, I legitimately am extremely happy with the diet—the food is top-notch excellent... much better than most of the crap I'd regularly eat in the past. I've learned, when it comes to dietary health, it's a matter of habit that actually changes your health, not the 1-off anomalies. Though they're not without consequence—for instance, a cheat day might cause my body to carry a pound or 2 of extra water weight for a couple of days. So it's worth keeping in mind. The inverse is true as well; this is why "trying" to eat healthy—when you try to have a salad once a week or have a couple of healthy meals per week while eating pizza, ramen noodles, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every other day of the week—doesn't seem to make any real difference. It's the consistent everyday habits that impact you, not the anomalies.

Root cause is an important thing to consider. Some people have hypertension due to chronic stress, sleep deprivation, sleep apnea, etc. In my case, I haven’t suffered from any of those in any meaningful way to cause years of chronic hypertension. In my case, I'm fairly positive the root cause is insulin resistance and likely being deficient in potassium. There are other factors, such as a relatively sedentary lifestyle and an unhealthy early life throughout my childhood, teens, and early 20s, such as smoking and eating MOSTLY processed crap, fast food, and drinking mostly soda. Despite significantly cleaning up my lifestyle many years ago of all of that, it never impacted the hypertension. It wasn’t till I really buckled down and addressed insulin resistance and potassium that I actually saw a difference. I was never actually diagnosed with insulin resistance, but I'm pretty positive it was a factor for me as I had a lot of symptoms that come with it.