CASE STUDY: High Blood Pressure

TYRONE: working professional in his mid 50s

Tyrone’s situation: 

Tyrone was a keen cyclist and not overweight but had recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure (his readings were 153/96).  He was startled to hear this as he thought of himself as reasonably fit, and he wanted to avoid starting a life-long course of medication.

He had two sons at university and one living at home, but both sons would often be home on weekends.

Tyrone and his family often relied on ready meals and takeaways, as time was short and they tended to eat at different times. There was also a constant supply of snacks in the house, and it was difficult to track how many portions of snacks he had eaten.

Despite this, Tyrone did make an effort to choose low-fat and low-sugar products, but he admitted he didn’t really understand all the labelling claims on products.

Nutritional Support

I asked Tyrone to keep a Salt Diary for three days to track his salt intake. We found that his average salt intake was very high, at more than 7.6 g per day—the maximum recommended is 6g per day for a healthy person, and I would recommend less than that for someone with high blood pressure.

Tyrone was shocked to see how much salt was in his processed food, especially the ready meals and snacks. I explained to him the relationship between salt and blood pressure and reviewed some other dietary causes of high blood pressure.

Tyrone also learned how to read food labels better and started replacing some of the high-salt foods with lower-salt options that would also fit in with the family’s needs. Education regarding salt, processed foods, and hypertension filtered through his family, and they understood the need to change habits.

How support helped

At the start of the programme, Tyrone had mild to moderate hypertension; after 10 weeks working with me, his blood pressure was almost back to normal (122/78).

We aimed to reduce his average daily salt intake to 4.5 g/day and by the 8th week, he had achieved this.

A welcome side effect of reducing the amount of processed food he consumed was to lose weight. Although he was only slightly overweight at the beginning (his BMI was 25.5), after 10 weeks, he had lost just over 6 kg, and his BMI was now 23.5. 

What the client said

“I can’t believe this has actually worked; I thought I would have to go on some horrible diet for the rest of my life, but just by changing what I eat, I don’t have to take blood pressure pills now and I just feel so much better.”

“I lost one stone in 10 weeks just by eating healthily”

“I thought cycling would keep me fit, but I now realise what I put in my body also makes a difference.”