Using Vitamin D to Lower Blood Pressure

In my continuing journey to lower my blood pressure naturally, I tried the Ketogenic diet, Magnesium, L-Arginine, and adding different nuts to my diet. Each of these had different small effects which was fine. I was looking for several small interventions that were easy to implement and would each make a small improvement in my overall blood pressure.

Continuing my research, I found another paper that promised every thing I was looking for.The Effect of vitamin D on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis was printed in the Journal of Hypertension in 2009 and took a look at 11 different studies that studied the effect of Vitamin D supplementation on Blood Pressure.

What the study found was Vitamin D supplementation produced a very small improvement in blood pressure, mostly in the diastolic pressure. (-3.6 mm/Hg in Systolic and -3.1 mm/Hg in Diastolic) While it was unclear how much Vitamin D was supplemented, those results were enough to convince me start a regimen of Vitamin D supplementation.

At first, all I did was take a Vitamin D pill but that didn’t affect my BP at all. The next thing I did was, weather permitting, I started doing all my exercises outside in the sun with my shirt off. One of the nice things about living in Texas is we have all the sun you can handle, provided you can actually handle it.

One nice thing about the ketogenic diet is once you get all the PUFA’s out of your diet, your skin doesn’t burn as easily or in my case, at all. This meant I could be in 80+ degree heat for an hour or more and not see anything more than some light redness to my skin. This is when I started seeing a little bit of actual reduction in my BP. Again, it wasn’t much but it was as much as I expected, around 5 points.

I believe getting more Vitamin D in your system, whether that be through supplementation or spending more time out in the sun, can be a tool for lowering your blood pressure. It’s not much but when stacked with the other methods mentioned above, it can be another tool in an ever expanding toolbox of natural methods you can use to see improvements in your blood pressure.

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