Having Breakfast at McDonald’s Can Precipitate Elevated Blood Pressure

Apr 25, 2011 by Emilia

If you get up in the morning feeling a little lazy and you consider stopping at McDonald’s on your way to work to grab breakfast, check the list below before taking that step. Why? Because McDonald’s breakfasts are dangerously high in sodium, and they can put you at great risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. 

If you have high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, or you just want to prevent it, you may want to think it twice before stopping at MacDonald’s for breakfast. Your body can have a hard time getting rid of so much salt, and you may end up retaining fluid in the lungs, which can lead to severe consequences.

The DASH-Sodium Study

 The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension study (DASH) is a study conducted on 2001 and supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). It involved 412 participants, aged 22 and older, with systolic blood pressures (the high number) ranging from 120 to 160 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressures (the low number) from 80 to 95 mm Hg. the social fabric of the participants was as it follows:

• 52% of the participants were women
• 48% men
• 54 % were African American
• 42% white
• 10% other races
• 41% had hypertension
• and 59% did not.

For 3 months, the volunteers ate either the DASH diet or a typical American diet. Weight was kept stable. During the study period, each group followed three different intakes of dietary sodium for 1 month each in random order. The sodium levels were:

• 3,300 milligrams a day (the average level consumed by Americans)
• 2,400 milligrams a day (the upper limit currently recommended by the National High Blood Pressure Education Program)
• And 1,500 milligrams a day.

The largest blood pressure differences occurred for those on the DASH diet with a daily sodium intake of 1,500-milligrams compared with those with a sodium intake of 2,400 and 3,300 milligrams. I cannot avoid mentioning here that based on the results of the DASH study, and the recommendations that the National High Blood Pressure Education Program has made for years about the limits of sodium intake, we could conclude that not all recommendations made by health organizations are on target.

The results of the DASH study

• Compared with the typical American diet, the DASH diet alone reduced blood pressure by about 6/3 mm Hg for African Americans, and 6/2 mm Hg for other races.
• For those with hypertension, reductions from the DASH diet alone were 7/3 mm Hg; and for those without hypertension, the reductions were 5/3 mm Hg.

“Following the DASH diet and reducing the intake of dietary sodium are two non-drug approaches that work to control blood pressure,” said Dr. Denise Simons-Morton, Leader of the NHLBI Prevention Scientific Research Group and a DASH coauthor.

“The blood pressure reductions achieved from this combination came in only 4 weeks and persisted through the duration of the study. Ideally, Americans should use both the DASH diet and reduced sodium approaches but, even if they do only one, they’ll still reap significant health benefits.

“If the U.S. food supply were lower in sodium,” added Simons-Morton, “it would help lower levels of blood pressure in the general population.”

The sodium content of McDonald’s Breakfasts

If you look carefully at the amount of sodium in some of the breakfast choices listed below, you will notice that some of these items have more sodium than the daily amount of 1,500 mg recommended by the DASH study. And this is just breakfast!

Final words

50 years ago, nutrition was very simple because everybody ate organic. We didn’t call it that way, because there was no need to make a distinction. We didn’t ate from cans; a tomato sauce was made from fresh tomatoes. And we were fortunately enough not to have a McDonald’s around the corner.

Nowadays, however, nutrition has become quite complicated because many of us eat soups from cans and have breakfast at MacDonald’s among other dangerous dietary practices. A recipe for health disaster and definitely, a recipe for elevated blood pressure because we are not balancing sodium and potassium.

To your health!

Emilia Klapp, R.D., B.S.
www.TheDiabetesClub.com

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Tags

• elevated blood pressure
• hypertension

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