12/11/2023
The DASH Keto Diet Family
Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or DASH, is an eating plan designed to help treat or prevent high blood pressure, which is clinically known as hypertension.
It emphasizes eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats. It is low in salt, red meat, added sugars, and fat.
While the DASH diet is not a weight loss diet, many people report losing weight on it.
How it works
The DASH diet recommends specific servings of different food groups. The number of servings you are encouraged to eat depends on your daily calorie intake.
For example, each day an average person on the DASH diet would eat about:
five servings of vegetables
five servings of fruit
seven servings of healthy carbs like whole grains
two servings of low fat dairy products
two servings or fewer of lean meats
In addition, it’s recommended to consume nuts and seeds two to three times per week (7Trusted Source).
Health benefits
The DASH diet has been shown to reduce blood pressure levels and several heart disease risk factors. Also, it may help lower your risk of breast and colorectal cancers (7Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source, 9Trusted Source, 10Trusted Source, 11Trusted Source).
Studies show that the DASH diet can also help you lose weight. For example, an analysis of 13 studies found that people on the DASH diet lost more weight over 8–24 weeks than people on a control diet (12Trusted Source).
Another study in adults with obesity over 12 weeks found that the DASH diet helped decrease total body weight, body fat percentage, and absolute fat mass in study participants while preserving muscle strength (13Trusted Source).
Other benefits
In addition to weight loss, the DASH diet may help combat depression symptoms (14Trusted Source).
A comparative study over 8 years found that even moderate adherence to the DASH diet was related to lower depression risk (15Trusted Source).
Downsides
While the DASH diet may aid with weight loss and lower blood pressure in individuals with hypertension, there is mixed evidence on salt intake and blood pressure.
Eating too little salt has been linked to increased insulin resistance, and a low sodium diet isn’t the right choice for everyone.
A low sodium diet like the DASH diet is more appropriate for individuals with hypertension or other health conditions that benefit from or require sodium restriction (16Trusted Source).
More research is needed in this area to understand how a low sodium diet can affect insulin resistance in individuals without hypertension.
SUMMARY
The DASH diet is a low salt diet that has been shown to aid with weight loss.
Studies have also linked it to additional benefits for your heart and reduced risks of other chronic diseases.
