Blood Pressure Down: The 10-Step Plan to Lower Your Blood Pressure in 4 Weeks--Without Prescription Drugs

Dr BRILL’s book “Blood Pressure Down” is easy to understand and great at explaining high blood pressure and things that I can do to change my blood pressure immediately. I’ve included exercise by walking right now because that’s the easiest for me to do and I’ve mapped out my course that I can walk and I get a good mile in every time I do this which is at least probably 3 to 6 times a week. I had been walking and what I thought was a good amount of space but I timed it and got a smart watch to help me figure out how many steps I was taking and it actually wasn’t enough. So now I’m plugging 1 mile every time I walk. This book has helped me focus on myself my stress, changing my personal habits like exercising/walking more, which is really easy. Makes me feel great my dog loves it too etc. etc.. She includes easy to make recipes that all sound good and mostly have just a few ingredients which is nice. Most of the ingredients are easy to get. They’re not exotic. The biggest plus for the recipes is she includes all of the nutrition breakdown of each recipe -12 total nutritional ingredients - which are critical. This nutritional information is needed to fully understand how much of the minerals, calories, potassium, fats, etc you’re getting. This way you can realistically gauge how well you are doing. And also right now since I’m still reading through the book to get all the base of knowledge, I can easily plug in these ingredients that are helping me lower my blood pressure just by swapping out something for whatever I’ve planned to make already. Excellent book! Highly recommend! I know far more about blood pressure now than I could find out poking around online. I haven’t read the entire book yet but so far I have learned so much and just spot reading throughout the book I have incorporated her info into my every day. I’ve greatly expanded my knowledge thanks to her extremely well written and articulate book (what a breath of fresh air - someone who knows how to write, spell and punctuate!!!) making Bp easy to understand and the simplicity of changing it. I have already started changing my food intake. I wish Dr. BRILL would write a book about the DASH Diet as I am finding far too many that are just slapped together with a few simple recipes with no real nutritional breakdown. Rather a joke in my opinion, if you wanna “kinda do something”, then definitely order one of these no info dash books that has three pages of information about the dash diet. I’ve ordered a few books about the dash diet and they are so lacking in this area it is just not funny. But doctor BRILL includes all of the information that is critical if you want to bring your blood pressure down and eat healthy. I highly recommend her back. It is the best! It is easy to understand so that you know the ins and outs of blood pressure and includes the recipes which are very helpful and life changing. With a complete nutrition breakdown, super big plus!

Great Book on this topic by a Phd. I've looked at many books on this topic, and found this one to be the absolute best, in that it is hard-science based with very little reliance on anecdotes, folk-legends, and gossip. Especially liked the individual chapters on specific foods to eat, the quantities to consume, and little gotchas to beware of. For the Blood-Pressure-Down book, here is the (ONLY) caveat I had: Chpt-8 "Drink Red Wine" REALITY-CHECK, just a few years back, there was a big discovery that "resveratrol" in red wine had very favorable impacts on Hypertension. Unfortunately, it turns out that you would have to drink gallons and gallons of wine to get the amounts necessary for the promised benefits to occur. Just now, I googled ["Blood Pressure" AND "Red Wine"]. At the top of the results, I checked WebMD, and MayoClinic; both of them dismiss drinking Red Wine as any kind of big factor in lowering hypertension. To be fair, the author does mention some factors, and this book was written in 2013, just about the time that the big resveratrol factor exploded on the news. The one best tidbit in the book was on the chapter on "Dark Chocolate". First make sure the ingredients list ONLY 100% "Cocoa", as the terms 'REAL-Chocolate, MILK-Chocolate could mean ANYTHING. Second, make sure that the ingredients don't mention "alkali" or "Dutch-Process" as these are inferior products and have far fewer benefits. Beware this 100%-Cocoa is extremely bitter, what works best for me is to mix it in with low-fat vanilla yogurt, and even then, it is so bitter that I reluctantly add some sugar, since otherwise I couldn't tolerate much of this Dark-Chocolate. RECIPIES GALORE, although I didn't bother with any of them, because I make my own recipies. I also strongly recommend Ms Brill's other book Cholesterol-Down, as Cholesterol & Hypertension tend to go together

After borrowing from the library and reading several books related to lowering blood pressure over a couple of months, I found this one (Blood Pressure Down by Janet Bond Brill) to be beneficial. The author writes clearly. Information is easy to read and understand. I liked how the chapters were broken down and when reading a downloaded copy, I simply wanted a book I could write in, dog ear pages, and highlight passages. I am a 54 year old Black women who is active, meditate, not overweight, but am considered prehypertensive. I don’t eat fried foods or salt laden foods, I fail to eat the rainbow and I am learning to control my stress. While the author offers a 10 step process, I will not follow all of the author’s step to lower my blood pressure, but will focus on incorporating steps 3 (potassium), 4 (magnesium), and 5 (calcium), some of 6 (soy), 7 (dark chocolate) into my life. She recommends supplements as one of the steps, but I am not truly sold on multiple supplements at this time. My goal is to focus more on food as an integrative part of improving my health. I like the pocket charts for minerals along with the sample meal plans. The recipes don’t interest me at this time either. I have selected what I want to use from this book to support my decision to take control to lower my blood pressure. I am not of the opinion that one book (or system) will solve my blood pressure issues. This will be a work in progress. I have chosen not to follow all of the steps at this time, but I am flexible and willing to consider incorporating alternative suggestions, from this author or others, if needed. All in all, this book works for me so far.

I gave Dr. Brill’s program the full four weeks, starting on Feb 3rd and ending on Mar 3rd. Cutting to the chase, my blood pressure on day 1 was 154/84, and on Mar 3rd it’s 120/65. It’s been consistently in the 120s over 60s or 70s for the past ten days. I never had high blood pressure before, but genealogy can be unforgiving, and, admittedly, I was carrying some “holiday weight.” About a month ago, I had an unrelated doctor visit, and, as usual, the nurse checked my blood pressure before the doc came in. 152/80 (“What?! No way! Are you sure you measured it correctly?”) I didn’t want to go on blood pressure meds, but I was concerned about living with hypertension. After a long conversation with my doctor, we agreed I would try to lower my BP by dropping some weight - not an easy task, because I was in fairly decent shape to start with. Anyway, that’s what led me to Dr. Brill’s book. I adjusted my lifestyle to follow the first five steps, and I did so with vigorous intent. On the second five steps, I’ve bypassed Step 6 (My wife won’t tolerate soybeans) and Step 8 (I only drink 2 or 3 glasses of wine a year, and that’s it for my alcohol consumption). But I keep to Steps 7, 9, and 10 with the same focus as the first five steps. I’ve eliminated desserts from my diet, and I’ve cut sodium to as low as I can get it. At the same time, I’ve increased my potassium and magnesium at every opportunity, and I’ve kept up my calcium consumption (no problem for Wisconsinites). Finally, consistent with Dr. Brill’s plan, I track my daily numbers. Adhering to Step 1, my weight has dropped from 199 to 184. At 6’0” and at age 72, my BMI is just under 25, so I’ve still got a bit to go to reach my goal of 175 by June 1st. Now, that the first four weeks are behind me, I’ll be using Dr. Brill’s Ten Step Plan (okay, 8 out of 10) as my newly adopted lifestyle

Like a previous reviewer noted, this book does not provide any new or innovative information concerning lowering my blood pressure. The ten steps are: (1) lose 5 lbs, (2) cut salt, (3) eat bananas, (4) eat spinach, (5) eat yogurt, (6) eat soy, (7) eat dark chocolate, (8) drink red wine, (9) take 4 supplements, and (10) exercise. Overall, the book has a lot of guidelines and "scientific" information but lacks a specific daily regimen to lower the blood pressure. For example, the author provided only a 2 week meal plan, which is contrary to the book's title which emphasizes lowering your blood pressure in 4 weeks. Its as if the author got lazy and stopped after creating the 2 week meal plan. Also, I was expecting a comprehensive plan that included specifics on both meal and excersises. There was no daily exercise regimen or specific daily supplements. Also, the book does not cover concerns regarding food allergies (I.e., nuts, soy, etc) and related substitutes.

I'm 70 and was beginning to have high blood pressure issues. When my doctor increased my meds a second time, I decided to take things seriously. With a heart attack, I would either die, or not. But a stroke would be a whole different story I wanted to avoid. It was my good fortune I selected Blood Pressure Down from Amazon. The book is a quick read and gives very simple explanations for what is needed to drop your BP. I am amazed at how easy it was to do the program and how quickly I got results. In just two weeks I got my BP to slightly below normal and even lost a few pounds. In a follow-up visit my doctor reduced my meds and when I report the latest data, she will probably reduce my meds even further. Written by a nutritionist, Blood Pressure Down gives common sense details I needed to know and it turns out I actually like what I'm supposed to eat. I don't feel as if I made major changes as much as fine tuning my diet, but the results are remarkable. I won't start preaching about this book, but just to say it provides basic information that's worth knowing. Even if you don't have high BP, read it and find out what you've been eating.

This is a book that I will use over and over again as I combat high blood pressure in my life. The book is very detailed, providing you with all the scientific information regarding blood pressure, exercise, and diet. She doesn’t give you a quick method, but a suggestion to change your lifestyle and eating. I now eat potassium rich foods as a way of life and it is making me eat more vegetables. I recommend the paperback version if you are going to start so that you can make notes and refer back easily.

"Fig. 2.1. Every day, 2,000 gallons of blood circulate many times through about 60,000 miles of blood vessels..." So. Here we have an opportunity in basic order-of-magnitude critical fact checking. Picture a gallon of milk in your mind. How large is it? Got a feel for that? OK, now stack up 10 gallons of milk. How large is that? Make that 10 deep so it's 100 gallons. Is that smaller or larger than a person? If you took a person like a sponge, and completely squeezed them out, how many gallons of blood would you get? Closer to 2, 20, 200, or 2,000? Red Cross says around 1.2 gallons, maybe one and a half for large people. So let's think now about how long the capillary system is, and how long 60,000 miles is. It's about 300 miles to drive from Philly to Pittsburgh. The continental United States is 2,800 miles wide. Diameter of the Earth is less than 8,000 miles. Circumference of the Earth is less than 25,000 miles. So we're talking twice around the Earth at the equator, plus 10,000 miles extra. Does that sound like it's in the right ballpark to you? Further research shows the 60,000 miles myth has entered the American zeitgeist as a ubiquitous legend, even citing the National Institute on Aging. I give up. You try stretching the meat in a 6' de-boned man around the block, let alone across the country, and see how far you get. Critical reasoning is truly dead. Apart from that, the book is well-organized, easy to read, and useful. Buy this one and glean its good parts.

This book gives a simple method of getting your blood pressure down by getting enough calcium, magnesium and potassium in your daily diet. It sounds easy enough but not once in 4 months have I been able to get enough potassium in my diet. For magnesium I sometimes get enough but often have to supplement. Its not as easy as it seems. But I think the advice is sound - I just haven't figured out how to get all those nutrients daily.

Very good

Excellent and practical with lot of background information

High blood pressure is the silent , invisible , slow killer. You can't feel it , and won't know you have it until a health practitioner slaps a blood pressure cuff on you , or you do it yourself at a drug store or similar establishment. High blood pressure causes deterioration of various organs and systems ranging from cardiovascular to kidney. This book is an invaluable resource on how to prevent it , as well as how to deal with it , with or without the intervention of drug therapy. Here , in one source , is all the stuff your doctor would tell you if he or she could spend hours with you when you are diagnosed with this condition , rather than the 10 minute window that an appointment provides for. Your Doctor will almost certainly tell you to severely limit salt , but the book goes way beyond that to also explain the relationship and interaction of salt / magnesium / and potassium . In North America , where salt is extremely over used , and sneaks into food under a vast number of disguises because it is a dirt cheap way to enhance flavour without investing in quality ingredients , this book is a must read for every eater.

practical, scientific guide for lowering bp