Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition.

I'm Kara Carper, a licensed nutritionist,

and I'm here with my co-host Brandy Burrow, licensed and registered dietitian.

Today, we're digging into a really important topic that affects

about half of adults in the United States, and that is high blood pressure or hypertension.

Think about that for a moment. Half of the adult population battles with high blood pressure,

and it increases with age. That is one risk factor.

70% of adults over the age of 60 have high blood pressure. So we're going to talk about what you

can actually do about it with changes to food and lifestyle. Yeah, I think this is a great topic because so many people deal with

hypertension, and it is a really common issue that comes up when I'm working one-on-one with

clients in the clinic. Somebody might go in for their annual physical, and sometimes I even

hear about clients learning they have hypertension when they go in for their

dentist appointment because they're often checking blood pressure there too. Also, that can come as a shock

and you might leave with a new medication after that physical. Or maybe you're getting the advice

just to lose some weight and maybe cut back on the salt shaker.

Sometimes that's really the only advice that some of my clients get,

and that's why they're talking with me to figure out what else can I do

because maybe they don't really want to start that medication.

Right. And for a lot of people, I imagine that feels really discouraging.

So if you are listening and you're thinking to

yourself, I have high blood pressure. I was diagnosed a long time ago. Maybe you were just

recently diagnosed. And you're thinking, I would love to get this under control, but I don't know

...