The DASH diet is one of the healthiest ways to eat – INSIDER

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and was developed in the early 1990s when the National Institute of Health (NIH) was researching ways to lower blood pressure.

Since then, studies have shown that the DASH diet can help lower blood pressure and prevent heart disease in people over time.

Here's what you need to know about the DASH diet.

The DASH diet focuses on nutrient-rich foods that are low in sodium, like many fruits and vegetables.

"For too long we focused just on cutting down on sodium," says Lisa Sasson, a registered dietitian and Clinical Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU. "We now know that including more of the other minerals that are in plant-based foods is very helpful and beneficial."

The NIH offers a helpful guide for following the DASH eating plan, with recommended serving sizes based on your daily value of calories, and examples of the best foods to eat. It mainly recommends:

So, if you're following a 2,000 daily calorie diet, a day on DASH might look like this:

Specifically, you'll want to eat foods that are high in potassium, magnesium, calcium, and fiber. Some examples of DASH-approved foods are oatmeal, leafy greens, potatoes, apples, bananas, oranges, fish, and mixed nuts.

A 2017 study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, examined 412 participants with pre- or stage 1 hypertension. The participants who followed the DASH diet, and reduced their sodium intake to 1,150 milligrams per day, for 30 days straight saw a greater reduction in their systolic blood pressure compared to participants who ate a standard American diet.

Moreover, the higher a person's systolic blood pressure was at the start of the study, the greater the improvement they saw from following a low-sodium, DASH diet. For example, systolic blood pressure decreased by 15.54 mm Hg for people with original systolic blood pressure greater than 150 mm Hg. Whereas people with original systolic blood pressure less than 130 mm Hg saw an average drop of 2.07 mm Hg.

Another 2014 review, in Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Disease, found that the DASH diet can also lower diastolic blood pressure as well as systolic blood pressure.

And while these two studies didn't examine the diet's effect on blood pressure long-term, another 2014 study published in the American Journal of Hypertension found that a 16-week structured DASH diet led to lower systolic blood pressure for the next eight months.

Moreover, a2018 study, published in The British Journal of Nutrition, of 1,409 participants over a 24- to 28-year period, found that living by a DASH diet may also improve a person's cardiovascular health as it was associated with higher levels of HDL cholesterol and lower pulse wave velocity a measure of a person's arterial health. Though, cardiovascular health was even better in those who paired the DASH diet with regular exercise.

However, the benefits of this diet may extend beyond hypertension and heart-health.

"Although the original research was about the benefits of the DASH diet on hypertension, it would be a diet I recommend for everyone," says Sasson.

She notes that it's a diet that's easy to follow, since it isn't very specific and there aren't many restrictions, aside from cutting out excessive sweets. More specifically, the official diet outline from the NIH recommends three to five servings of sweets a week, or less.

"The diet is very safe and sustainable for anybody who's looking to eat healthier," Sasson says. "It's exactly how we would advise all people to eat."

While the main focus of this diet is not weight loss, Sasson says many people do end up losing some weight on the diet, since many of them are eating healthier, less processed foods, and cutting back on snacking. A 2016 study showed that the DASH diet was more effective for weight loss than other low-energy diets, especially in overweight or obese participants.

According to Sasson, the DASH diet is also a good way to educate people on what healthy meals look like, especially when so many of us eat on the go and opt for processed foods.

"We should look at it as one of the healthiest ways to eat," she says.

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The DASH diet is one of the healthiest ways to eat - INSIDER