Nowadays, hypertension has become a common foundational disease for the whole population. According to relevant data, most people over the age of 50 may often be troubled by hypertension. Moreover, with the continuous change in people’s lifestyles, the group of people suffering from hypertension is gradually getting younger. It is not uncommon for people in their twenties and thirties to have hypertension.
Although hypertension is a fundamental chronic disease, its harmfulness should not be underestimated. This chronic illness is a foundational factor for many cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases clinically. If patients do not pay attention to maintaining stable blood pressure in their bodies, in the long run, it will not only severely damage blood vessels and increase the risk of various cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases but also, in severe cases, the surging blood pressure may easily trigger sudden cardiovascular events like myocardial infarction or stroke, endangering the patient’s health and even life safety.
In addition to taking antihypertensive drugs as prescribed, patients with hypertension should also pay special attention to their diet and try to avoid foods that can lead to blood pressure fluctuations. Many people believe that hypertensive patients should not eat walnuts as they may cause blood pressure fluctuations. So, can hypertensive patients really not eat walnuts? To this, doctors also remind: If you don’t want your blood pressure to rise, try to stay away from these foods.
1. Can hypertensive patients eat walnuts?
We all know that walnuts are a nutritious food with high nutritional value. They not only contain abundant high-quality proteins and various vitamins but also have rich components of unsaturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and antioxidants. Therefore, regularly consuming walnuts not only can have a brain-nourishing effect but also is beneficial for nourishing the scalp, relieving stress, and has many other positive effects as well.
However, in recent years, many people have believed that for patients with chronic diseases like hypertension, it is not suitable to eat walnuts. The main reason behind this belief is that the cholesterol and unsaturated fatty acids in walnuts, once inside the body of a hypertensive patient, may cause blood pressure fluctuations, thereby affecting the stability of the patient’s blood pressure.
But in reality, this understanding is not scientific. Although walnuts contain a certain amount of fat, most of this type of fat belongs to unsaturated fatty acids like linoleic acid, which are often very beneficial in lowering cholesterol and lipid levels in the blood. It can effectively promote blood circulation in hypertensive patients’ bodies. Therefore, eating walnuts does not have much impact on blood pressure or cause fluctuations in the body of hypertensive patients.
2. Foods with high oil content that hypertensive patients should avoid
Actually, for hypertensive patients, common high-fat foods like fried chicken, braised pork, etc., are the ones that should be avoided. This is because the fats in these foods mostly belong to “bad” fats. If consumed in large amounts, it will not only burden the body’s metabolism but also increase the lipid content in the blood, thereby raising the blood pressure level in the patient’s body, which is not conducive to blood pressure stability.
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