Before you go out and buy any hypertension book, take a peak at what`s featured inside.
Ask yourself, “Will it help me achieve worthwhile goals by suggesting easy recipes, exercises that are easy enough to do and interesting enough to continue with, and help me understand how my body works?”
Questions like these are a guide to choosing the best book for you.
You Are What You Eat
This book will help you achieve what it claims to do, give you a total health overhaul.
The plan covers 8 weeks with the first half beginning with a 4 week “Kick Start” plan, followed by a 4 week forever plan. There is a planned menu along with the recipes to follow making life a little easier.
Read the short introduction! It echoes your daunting feelings about trying anything that seems “too huge”, and then helps you replace those thoughts with positive ones.
The book engages you in lots of self-assessment. It brings to the fore the lack of nourishment that a bad diet contains and shows the importance of, and in which foods, all the different minerals can be found.
The book contains a wealth of knowledge on diet, exercise, and well being. I particularly like pages 94 and 95 which list the long term benefits of eating healthily and exercising. The first 3 points mentioned are that eating nutritious food can keep your arteries clear, reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, and lower your blood pressure. Then it goes on to mention the foods that will help you do that.
Conclusion:
“You Are What You Eat” is well worth the pennies because it engages the person and motivates into action. It may well be your high blood pressure cure.
HBP Action Plan
This hypertension book will appeal to those of you who feel the need for a combination of exercise and medication. The contents focus on explaining what takes place in the body that leads to high blood pressure, and also how the body works to combat it through exercise.
Self-assessment to determine your fitness level is discussed in detail and which exercise suits your type.
A detailed explanation of the process leading up to your doctor`s decision on what medications he will prescribe for you was a part I took great interest in when I did this book review. Not enough people question their doctor on what or why they need to take their meds, so an important section to note, with information on each medication from page 150 to 154.
Another added bonus is the brief discussions on the low GI/insulin resistance diet and the Dash diet. Two very effective diets to control hypertension.
Conclusion:
A good guide book for the more active person who is willing to put the time in to work out the right body weight, type of exercise, and monitor the progress. But even if you`re not, the majority of the content is well worth knowing.
Overcoming HBP
This hypertension book is almost like a carbon copy of “You Are What you eat”. The layout is closely familiar with the recipes at the back, the different stages of the plan divided up into days rather than weeks, with gentle, moderate, and full strength programs.
It does have it`s bonuses! There is a section covering selected complementary approaches to treatment that will appeal to more readers.
A few pages cover the topic, “the complications of hypertension”, discussing what can happen to the eyes, kidneys, heart, and blood supply to the legs. These are common symptoms of high blood pressure that a sufferer needs to know about, but too much detail about the subject at the beginning of this book does not lend to it`s practicality, if those reading this particular hypertension book are looking for a prompt to action.
It would have served better to have been brief about those subjects rather than a long section of facts before getting down to “what can one do”.
Conclusion:
The book is ok, but is like a text book with all the really relevant stuff at the back.
Harvard Medical School Guide to Lowering Your Blood Pressure (Harvard Medical School Guides)
A hypertension book that has a world of practical information on high blood pressure. What I mean is that it gives you not only the basic knowledge of what high blood pressure is, what causes it, and how to read your blood pressure, but it goes on to show you natural ways of reducing it using exercise, diet and management of stress.
The chapter I like in this book is that it discusses the various degrees of hypertension, a valuable source of knowledge. Varying degrees will determine which approach a person should take to control the pressure.
It also helps you to know what risk factors you can control or change. You will be surprised to find that many of them are reversible, but there are risk factors that are hereditary and can`t be changed. What do you do about those?
I have high regard for Harvard Medical School literature because they lean on more natural ways we can help keep ourselves healthy.
You may like to consider the Mediterranean diet which is proving to be one of the healthiest diets in the world.