 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | This is the user-friendly guide to the DASH diet. Proven to lower blood pressure and cholesterol without medication, it was developed in research sponsored by US National Institutes of Health, entitled, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH). Each new research study continues to prove the benefits of the DASH Diet. The DASH diet is recommended by the U.S. treatment guidelines for hypertension. The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans advocate this eating plan for everyone. And the DASH diet forms the basis for the USDA MyPyramid. It is an eating plan that is rich in fruits, vegetables, low fat or nonfat dairy, is low in sodium, and includes lean meats, fish and poultry, grains, nuts and beans. The DASH diet helps lower cholesterol and supports healthy weight loss. It is flexible enough to meet the lifestyle and food preferences of most people. However, many people have found it difficult to follow the DASH diet. This is the user-friendly book, designed to make it easy to DASH. It was written by a dietitian who is experienced in helping people make sustainable changes in how they eat. Learn how to follow the DASH diet in your real life. Accommodate DASH even when eating on-the-run. Add more vegetables into your diet, even if you think you hate vegetables. Learn how to manage salt intake. Makeover your kitchen to simplify following DASH. Lose weight with the DASH diet. The book has 28 days of meal plans (with adjustments for 1200, 1600, and 2000 calorie plans), and DASH-friendly recipes. And this is the complete healthy lifestyle plan for hypertension. It includes the healthy weight loss and exercise that will lower blood pressure. Make your own personal DASH Diet Action Plan, with the specific steps to fit the DASH diet into your daily routine. Reach your goal to lower blood pressure or just having a healthier lifestyle. Purchasing this book is your first step in improving your health for the long run. |
Average Customer Rating:   Saved my Life! My cardiologist recommended the DASH diet after I had two heart attacks in one week. This book literally saved my life. I love the meal plans, which I followed until I felt confident to substitute some of my own revised dishes. I think the recipes in the back of the book for the dishes in the meal plan is a blessing for beginners.
I have recommended this book to several people and they, too, love it. Dash Diet Action Plan Is Excellent This is an excellent book with great recipe suggestions and useful insight into how you can make dietary changes to decrease high blood pressure and control it by eating properly. It is well worth the investment in one's health to buy this book and read how proper dietary choices can improve blood pressure without taking medication. Back to basics A dietician recommended this diet, and specifically mentioned this book. At first glance, the DASH diet was difficult to understand until I flipped through and found that the 28 day menus all stressed portion control of foods from the food groups, and listed the portions per day of each one. Portion sizes are better descibed in Appendix C. Yes - dieting is difficult, but this diet follows what has been known for a long time - eat smart, eat correct sized portions, eat plenty of veggies and fruit and cut out high-calorie "empty calorie" foods and beverages. You can write down what you eat, or keep a running tab of the portions of the groups in your head. Eating out is also not that hard - there's information on how to eat smart when you are not at home.
I personally don't like many of the items in the 28 day menus, but following their lead and eating stuff you do like you in proper portions can make the diet work. That said, several of the recipes are quite good, in fact!
One last thought: measure or weigh everything - it makes a big difference and is better than just guessing. A good food scale (digital) is highly recommended. Clear common sense. This is a book for the masses, a comprehensive "primer" that, while bound to sound repetitious and obvious to many who have read several heart books, could be of benefit to those new to the subject. The problem is that a book such as this--a collection of conventional wisdom, much of it expressed as do this, don't do that ("exercise more," "reduce saturated fats"), is unlikely to "shake up" the healthy reader into a sudden awakening to his or her mortality and may be disappointing to those seeking more radical, salient advice.
Having read Esselstyn, Ornish, The China Study, and several others, it wasn't until nearly half way into DASH diet that I found some warnings worthy of the attention they haven't received from other sources. Most recent books on CVD tend to focus so relentlessly on diet and cholesterol--those HDL and LDL levels--that they say little to nothing about triglycerides and blood sugar count. If "Dash Diet Action Plan"'s explanation is to be believed, one reason for the omission could be that "Metabolic Syndrome" flies in the face of some of the pro-carb, anti-animal fat recommendations of other, currently popular and best-selling plans. According to the "Dash Diet" author, insulin resistance can actually be worsened by a hi-carb, low fat diet, leading to the conversion of blood sugar to high triglyceride counts.
It's small wonder that the major action (and profit) is to be found with the surgeons who essentially are expert "body plumbers," able to open arteries and keep blood flowing--for a certain amount of time. But the cardiologist, general physician, or layman faced with trying to decide how to make unnecessary the surgeon's services has, in some respects, the greater challenge, given the variables of diet, emotional-mental factors, genetics, environment (who can measure precisely the role of toxins in water, food and air?).
It's understandable that to sell books no author-expert can afford to sound overly tentative, uncertain, or complex. But those authors who tend to trumpet loudest and longest about the miraculous curative powers of some pill or vitamin are probably the ones to be regarded with the greatest suspicion and caution. Excellent Diet Plan I highly recommend this book. My blood pressure is normal and I've lost 13 lbs. |  |
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