High blood pressure can be a ‘silent killer’ because there are usually no symptoms. The only way to find out whether your blood pressure is high is to get it checked. The top number (systolic) measures the pressure of the blood when your heart pumps it out around your body. The bottom number (diastolic) measures the pressure when your heart relaxes and fills up with blood, ready for the next pump. Think of your arteries as a garden hose with your heart as the tap. If you turn the tap on high the water pumps out at high pressure. If you turn the tap down the pressure drops. Sometimes we need to get blood out to our muscles fast: jumping out of the way of a speeding car is one good reason! In this case high blood pressure may be a life saver. But if your blood pressure is constantly high, you increase your risk of a stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney disease. Here are the first three changes you can make to help reduce high blood pressure.  More tomorrow…

1.  Eat less salt

[tweetmeme]Most of us eat more salt, or to be exact, sodium, than we need. The NHMRC recommends no more than 1600mg sodium a day for healthy blood pressure. In New Zealand we eat at least double that amount. That’s almost 2 teaspoons of salt a day. Even if you don’t sprinkle salt on your food, around three-quarters of the salt we eat comes from processed foods such as bread, sauces, soups, processed meat, some breakfast cereals, cheese and salty snacks.

High sodium foods don’t always taste salty. A plate of cornflakes or rice bubbles has as much sodium as a small bag of potato crisps. And a slice of bread can have the same amount of sodium as the teaspoon of Vegemite you spread on it!

If you have to cut back on salt, don’t despair. For the first three or four weeks food will taste bland but your taste-buds do adjust. Then you will find your old food far too salty.

Cutting back on salt will likely reduce your blood pressure. This is especially so for older people and those who already have high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease or are overweight. However some people are salt insensitive. This means that the amount of salt they eat has no effect on their blood pressure. What else can these people do?

2.  Reduce weight

If you are overweight, losing weight is one of the best ways to drop your blood pressure. If you are already on medication, losing weight often helps it to work better and you may even need a lower dose. Studies have found that people who lost 3-9% of their weight reduced their systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) pressure by an average of 3 points more than people who did not lose weight (see BMJ Best treatments)

3.  Be active

Thirty minutes (not necessarily all at once) a day of moderate intensity exercise such as walking, cycling, dancing, gardening or swimming helps drop both your blood pressure and your weight. In fact it can reduce high blood pressure as much as some drugs. People who are physically active have a quarter to half the risk of high blood pressure. Building strong muscles is also important but skip the heavy weights if your blood pressure is already high. All that groaning and straining will likely send it shooting higher!

Part 2 here …

OK, I know eggs are a great food but I cannot believe that anyone would recommend eating 15 a day! That’s exactly what’s been recommended for the Indian rugby team to do in order to bulk up for next year’s Commonwealth Games Rugby 7’s. That’s a load of cholesterol and most nutritionists would have a heart attack just thinking about 15 eggs a day, not to mention the blokes who are actually eating them! I’m all for eggs but not that many (more about this later in the week).

More protein does not equal bigger muscles. If you want to bulk up and build bigger muscles you do need a bit more protein but not that much. An 80kg person needs around 100-160 grams of protein a day. 15 eggs provides 105 grams of protein but for all round good health and optimum energy for training this combination of foods suggested by the Australian Institute of Sport would be much better:  2 cups breakfast cereal with milk, 2 slices toast and a glass of juice; 2 chicken and salad rolls, a fruit bun, carton of flavoured milk and a banana; 2 cups of pasta with 100g lean meat and vegetables, a cup of low fat custard or creamed rice plus some extra fruit and a couple of cereal bars as snacks.

These foods provide carbohydrate as well as protein. It’s the carbs that give you the energy to train and it’s the training, not the protein, that builds more muscle. If you eat more protein than you need it doesn’t turn into muscle, it’s stored as fat!

I think a sports dietitian needs to offer his or her services to the Indian rugby team – soon!

Go to my other article on health benefits of eggs

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P.S. I’m not sure who needs to offer their services to our All Black rugby team after their two losses in South Africa against the Springboks. Maybe they feel OK, but I’m sure a few of their supporters could do with some grief counselling now that we have lost our number one world ranking!

“Chocolate is actually quite good for you,” my ten-year-old niece informed me yesterday. “It’s got iron and calcium in it.” “Not much,” I replied, bursting her hopeful bubble. What it does have is stacks of kilojoules (calories) which is why we’re meant to keep it for occasional treats… unless you plan to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

My cousin, Rob Hamill, and his rowing mate, Phil Stubbs, ate around 350 Cadbury chocolate bars during their world record breaking 41 days rowing from the Canary Islands, Spain to Antigua. “We could have eaten 12 (50g blocks) a day but we had to ration them,” he told me. Rowing two hours on, two hours off, they needed all the energy they could get. Chocolate, with 30% fat and 60% sugar was ideal – along with cereal and milk powder, macaroni cheese, fruit paste energy bars and heaps of fluid replacement drinks.

Never one to sit still for too long, Rob has taken on many challenges since the Atlantic race. But perhaps his greatest challenge is the current one – meeting and testifying at the trial of the man who tortured and executed his brother during the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Chocolate won’t give him the strength he needs to meet this challenge – he needs something more than food. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Rob.

Oh – and if you want to know the calcium and iron content of chocolate… To get as much calcium as in a glass of milk you need to eat five big blocks (about 1kg) of dark chocolate or a 150g block of milk chocolate. And our body doesn’t absorb calcium so well from chocolate as from milk. With iron, dark chocolate actually has quite a bit – 2.3mg iron per 100g. That’s pretty close to lean beef at 3mg per 100 grams. But there are two big differences: how much is absorbed and how many kilojoules each has. Iron in meat is far more easily absorbed than iron in chocolate, and 100 grams of chocolate has 2230kJ (530cal) compared to 770kJ (180cal) in 100 grams of lean beef.

For most of us who will never row across the Atlantic, it’s best to eat small amounts of chocolate for pleasure, not nutrition!

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Read about the making of  “Brother Number One” – a documentary about my cousin Rob’s journey to Cambodia to confront what happened to his brother at the time of Pol Pot.

Follow up: 18/8/2009 -  Rob at S-21 commander Duch’s UN trial in Cambodia.

I love to have a sweet treat in the pantry and to pop into the school lunch-box but I also want it to have some nutritional value. This week I’ve been into nut cakes – carrot cake with lots of walnuts and this moist orange almond cake. Nuts are rich in protein and healthy unsaturated fat – great for good health!

This cake is easy to make – but you do need a food processor. It’s very high in protein from all the eggs and almonds, and it’s gluten free. (Some baking powders are not gluten free so check the pack if you are making this cake for someone who can’t have gluten. If you dust the cake with icing sugar, as in the photo, check it is gluten free too.)

• 2 oranges
• 6 eggs, lightly beaten
• 250 grams sugar
• 280 grams ground almonds (I use 4 x 70g packs)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Boil oranges in a little water for 1-2 hours. (Yesterday I rushed out to do school pick-up and came back to burnt oranges and a black pot! But it still tastes yummy and looks good, don’t you think?)

Chop oranges roughly and let them cool down a bit. Then blend well in food processor with all the other ingredients. Line a large pan with greaseproof paper. Make sure the pan is large enough so the cake isn’t too thick or it will take too long to cook. Bake at 180C/350F for 1 hour – or perhaps a bit longer.

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