Plant-Based Diets and Hypertension

Hypertension is one of the world’s greatest risk factors for heart disease, kidney disease, and death. As time passes, hypertension will continue to become more prevalent and impact greater proportions of our population. Hypertension develops because of multiple factors, including lifestyle. Lifestyle can either contribute to the development of high blood pressure (BP) or conversely, it can contribute to the prevention and treatment of high blood pressure such as with the adoption of a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) diet. In this chapter, we review how a plant-based diet is hypothesized to lower blood pressure including lower caloric content leading to weight loss, reduced sodium intake, increased potassium intake, avoiding animal protein, redox signaling, gut microbiome changes, and epigenetics. We then present some of the scientific evidence supporting the use of plant-based diets in the prevention and treatment of hypertension with a comparison of this modality to other lifestyle changes.