5 Proven Ways to Lower Blood Pressure Without Medication
Simple lifestyle steps that can cut heart attack and stroke risk better than a pill
UPDATED: June 23rd, 2025
Welcome to the Healthy Aging Newsletter, a free publication that turns trustworthy medical research into simple habits so adults in their 30s and 40s can stay healthy and avoid common chronic conditions.
When it comes to blood pressure medications, few are safer than hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ), yet not everyone responds well to it and not everyone wants to take a prescription medication. Why do we resist this notion so much in Western Medicine? It’s not like there are studies that show that such a thiazide diuretic works better than lifestyle interventions.
Lifestyle Changes vs. Medications
We know that the first recommended interventions for high blood pressure are lifestyle changes. Each categories lowers the systolic and diastolic by a small amount, adding up to a significant drop, together.
Assuming that each choice could lower systolic blood pressure by 2-3 mmHg, in total you’d lower your systolic blood pressure from 151 down to 133 - not bad.
Unfortunately, we don’t have many studies where we compared lifestyle changes head to head with medications to lower blood pressure. The few that we have show that lifestyle beats medication alone.
A drug can only have an impact on a single process in the body such as salt excretion or dilation of arteries. Exercise, nutrition, and stress management, however, will have a much more complex and overall beneficial impact on overall health, not just blood pressure.
Why Lower Blood Pressure?
Let’s not forget, the reason we want to lower blood pressure isn’t to just see better numbers on a blood pressure cuff. The goal is to decrease the risk of organ damage such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and dementia. These are the medical conditions we want to prevent by improving someone’s blood pressure.
Now that we know what our mission is, let’s look at the most effective ways to achieve a lower overall disease risk in these domains.
1. Regular Activity
Exercise creates a calorie deficit, decreases inflammatory markers, and increases blood supply to the heart, kidney, and brain. Whether you walk, bike, or stretch every day, any kind of movement will do. Whatever your baseline movement is now, add something to it, anything.
2. More Whole Foods
Salt hides in ultraprocessed, especially bread and canned foods. Baking your own beans, preparing your own veggies, and having more fruits is the way to get more potassium and less salt. Healthy fats and healthy lean proteins will give you the calories you need minus all the salt, preservatives, and additives.
3. Stress Management
Decisions lead to stress and the more advanced a society the greater the consequences of our actions. Learning to cope with stress will improve the chemicals in the brain, it will increase parasympathetic done and lower systolic blood pressure, slow down the heart, and improve blood flow to the kidneys.
4. Better Sleep
Sleep should be restful. It doesn’t matter if you work overnight, get up super early, have late nights out with friends, or take naps in the middle of the day. It’s not difficult assessing your overall restfulness. Good rest is critical for brain function, tissue circulation, inflammation, and tissue regeneration.
5. Improved Body Composition
More fat around the organs and neck will lead to insulin problems and sleep apnea. Having too little muscle makes it hard for the body to fight inflammation and clear excess blood glucose.
‘But My Blood Pressure is Still High!’
I have patients in my medical practice on 5-6 different blood pressure medications and they still have high blood pressure. I also have patients who follow rather ideal lifestyles and they are walking around with blood pressures in the 140s range.
The former group is relying on meds alone but the latter is doing all the right stuff. Who do you think has the higher overall risk of heart disease, stroke, or kidney failure? I’ve done the research, I’ve done the math, I’ve ran the risk scores - it’s the former group who is relying on meds.
Your body is agnostic to what measurement you catch on your digital blood pressure cuff. It cares about excess pressures in the vessels for which it can’t compensate. The goal is to prevent that excess pressure which is different for each of us.
In Summary:
Many of my patients who’ve diligently taken their blood pressure medications are suffering heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, arthritis, dementia, fatty liver, and kidney disease, all with relatively normal blood pressure numbers.
The goal of overall health isn’t to titrate for the perfect blood pressure number on a BP monitor, but do the things we know lead to the best overall health which is a constellation of lifestyle interventions listed above.
Want help with your health?
Book a 1:1 session with me, Dr. Ashori MD.