* Fruits: apple, banana, blueberry, cranberry, fig, grape, orange, pomegranate.

* Vegetables: beets, broccoli, celery, dandelion greens, garlic, mushrooms, parsley, potatoes, seaweed, spinach

* Drinking eight ounces (a cup) of beetroot juice (best cooked, but raw will do) a day, every day, decreases blood pressure about as quickly and about as much as most drugs. It is loaded with nitrate, which turns into nitric oxide in the body, widens blood vessels and increases blood flow.

* Two half-cup servings of purple potatoes daily can decrease blood pressure without putting on pounds. Plant compounds found in potatoes act like ACE inhibitors. To increase the heart health effects: Soak potatoes in water for an hour before cooking them. This increases the amount of available vitamin C, an antioxidant that heals and relaxes the blood vessels.

* Fats: avocados and avocado oil, olive oil, salmon, herring, sardines, anchovies, mackerel.

* Changing your cooking fat to sesame oil can causes a drop in blood pressure comparable with the decrease caused by drugs. Sesamin, sesamol, and sesamolin are special fatty acids and antioxidants found in sesame.

* Grains/seeds/beans: oats, buckwheat (kasha), flaxseed, sesame seed, lentils.

Eating two tablespoons of flaxseed cooked in muffins or bread can cause significant lowering of blood pressure within six months. The effect is strong enough to lower risk of heart attack by 30 percent and risk of stroke by 50 percent.

excerpt from Abundantly Well: Seven Medicines.