If your diet is rich in junk food and processed foods, staples of the American diet, you are probably contributing to your high blood pressure more than you think. High blood pressure increases your chances of having a stroke or heart attack. Healthy eating can help you to avoid both fates – even if your family has a history of hypertension.

Hypertension will probably affect a billion or more people in the next 20 years, says the Lancet medical journal. There’s more than enough medical literature available to begin to reverse that trend, starting with changing our lifestyle habits. Here are changes you can make today to dramatically lower the chance of you getting high blood pressure and helping to lower it if you already have it:

1. Eat more soluble fiber. Studies have consistently shown that fiber, particularly soluble fiber, results in the lowering of blood pressure. Soluble fiber helps to balance the cholesterol in your body. Soluble fiber also shows signs of providing protection from Type 2 diabetes symptoms and Irritable Bowel

Syndrome symptoms. Foods that are high in soluble fiber include – oats and oat brand, barley, beans and peas, soy, sweet potatoes, beets, mushrooms, bananas, and too many more to list here.

2. Reduce the amount of saturated fats that you eat. The human body needs fat to be at it’s most efficient, but eating saturated fats will increase your cholesterol levels and put you at greater risk for vascular disease. Even though it probably won’t be easy, you can reduce your cholesterol levels dramatically by dropping the amount of saturated fats from your diet. Them main sources of saturated fats in the American diet come from meat and milk products.

3. Replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats. These types of fats help to reduce your cholesterol levels. The more saturated fats you can replace in your diet with these types of fats, the healthier you will be. Olive oil and canola oil are good sources of monounsaturated fat.

Vegetable oils and fish are good sources of polyunsaturated fats.

4. Don’t drink alcohol to excess. There is a strong correlation between alcohol consumption and high blood pressure. Under two drinks a day is ok but anything over that and every drink you take increases the chance that you will get hypertension.

5. Increase the potassium in your diet. Although not conclusive, new studies seem to suggest that eating a variety of foods high in potassium may offer some protection against getting high blood pressure. Reducing salt intake is always suggested as a means of lowering your blood pressure, but just as important may be keeping your body’s potassium and sodium levels in harmony with each other. Foods rich in potassium include lima beans, sweet potatoes, oranges, and bananas.

6. Get your blood pressure checked periodically. This is one of the simplest things you can do, and yet many people never do it. It’s always better to stop a potential problem before it can turn into something worse. Even though foods can help to control high blood pressure, some people will have such an extreme case of hypertension that they will have to take prescription medication to control it.

If you are already taking medication for your high blood pressure, never stop unless the doctor gives you the ok. When the doctor sees the results reflected in the lifestyle changes you have made, he can make the decision as to whether your prescription dosage can be reduced or even if you can go off of medication completely – but let him or her make the decision.

Have you ever wondered if what you know about yoga chairs is accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare what you know to the latest info on yoga chairs.

Think about what you’ve read so far. Does it reinforce what you already know about yoga chairs? Or was there something completely new? What about the remaining paragraphs?

Yoga chairs are of course, chairs used for exercises for chair yoga, a fitness craze that has been sweeping across the ranks of senior citizens and people with low general mobility. Before we can discuss yoga chairs, we should first discuss the exercise for which yoga chairs are used: Chair Yoga.

Chair yoga, is the gentlest form of yoga. It makes use of yoga chairs (basically any sturdy chair that doesn’t move). The student uses the chair for support, to stand on, or for sitting- whatever a particular exercise demands at a certain time.

It is not a traditional form of yoga and consequently may not be seen as “real” yoga by some practitioners. The Asanas, or yoga stances and exercises are by and large, derived from Hatha Yoga.

Chair yoga is widely practiced in retirement homes, adult day-care centers, and senior fitness centers. This has led to the perception that chair yoga is only for senior citizens and that chair yoga was developed only for them.

On the contrary, anyone can practice chair yoga if they are so inclined. There are chair yoga students of all ages and all the spectrum of capabilities who use the practice to be able to reap some of its benefits. Conditions helped by chair yoga are numerous, from depression to hypertension, from vertigo to carpal tunnel syndrome.

Between Yoga Chairs and Asanas

Yoga chairs are used in the facilitating of the Asanas the students take. These yoga chairs are particularly important for chair yoga practitioners who suffer from disabilities or mobility problems.

Chairs will help the student keep balance, prevent them from exerting undue effort, and keep them from experiencing strain that they would otherwise feel if they were to eschew the use of yoga chairs. Many Asanas can be adopted to make use of a chair.

Yoga chairs are often used with yoga mats in order to perform some Asanas. However this is not the case in many classes as some classes are composed primarily of students with movement problems so severe that they have trouble getting off of a floor from a prone or supine position. In these classes, stances that involve sitting are most likely to be practiced.

Specialized yoga chairs are available that claim to have benefits but some of these claims are spurious and unproven. Care should be taken in purchasing a specialized yoga chair as they may cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars and not give back any concrete benefits to the user.

These are just very basic things; you can add more based on your own experience and knowledge.

When word gets around about your command of yoga chairs facts, others who need to know about yoga chairs will start to actively seek you out.