High blood pressure and bacon connection

(Karla Sykes) #1

I’ve been eating bacon and eggs for my breakfast and I notice my blood pressure is a lot higher. I guess I got to cut down on the bacon. But I thought it was okay to eat bacon and eggs daily for breakfast. I naturally have high blood pressure so I’m trying to work this in my diet but I don’t know. Have anybody had similar results

#2

Hi Karla,
It’s my understanding that some people are salt sensitive but there might be something else going on, too.
How long have you been keto? Can you find some bacon that’s not cured with sugar? There shouldn’t be enough in bacon to cause an issue but it’s one more thing you can try.
If you do decide to pass up the morning bacon maybe try to find some uncured sliced pork belly, it’s really good and I like it better than bacon.
Good luck with this, sorry if I wasn’t much help but these are the first thoughts I had on it.

I’ve got Dr. DiNicolantonio’s book so I’ll see if I can dig up some wisdom in there for you later today.

#3

When my blood pressure went up on Keto I checked my intake of magnesium and potassium and found those had been very deficient in my diet. Once I started supplementing with Magnesium Glycinate (or any magnesium that ends in -ate) and Potassium (Lite Salt) my blood pressure became very normal. So, the first thing I would do is check into that.

I’ve read that a very few people are salt sensitive, supposedly, but I can’t help wonder if it is just due to a need for more electrolytes. It could be, of course, due to something else. I AM NOT A DOCTOR NOR AM I IN ANY MEDICAL FIELD.

Personally, I make sure I get around 600 mg of Magnesium a day, spread out throughout the day via supplements and from my meals. I avoid Magnesium Oxide as it just travel through the gut and doesn’t absorb. I do occasionally take Potassium tablets (99 mg) in the morning and throughout the day, and use Lite Salt on my food.

Ever since the time when my BP shot up I have been monitoring how much of these I get daily and my BP stays around 120/70. This is the main reason I track everything I eat. That, and I like to be able to look back to see what types of things in my diet have changed over time. :wink:

#4

Just be careful with citrate…it can have a laxative effect. :open_mouth:

(hottie turned hag) #5

Correlation in not always causation (nor even necessarily, contribution) :grinning:
#redherrings

Easy enough to assess if it’s the bacon or other factors as yet unidentified:
eat bacon daily for a week, take BP daily
eliminate bacon for a week, take BP daily and compare

Of course this ignores the myriad of other factors that may be in play but it’s a place to start! :smile:

(I have 27+ years in medicine)

(Bob M) #6

Another thing to do is to measure blood pressure, eat bacon, measure again periodically to see what happens. Of course, you’d have to have similar data without eating bacon too. Otherwise, you could have blood pressure variances you never knew about.

For instance, I thought coffee or the drug I have to take every morning caused higher blood sugar. So, I delayed them until as late as I could (10am or so), and determined my blood sugar went up anyway. In fact, after getting a CGM, I saw that my blood sugar goes up from about midnight to about noon, no matter what I’m doing (even fasting).