Beyond reducing blood pressure, the DASH diet offers a number of potential benefits, including weight loss and reduced cancer risk.

However, you shouldn’t expect DASH to help you shed weight on its own — as it was designed fundamentally to lower blood pressure. Weight loss may simply be an added perk.

The diet impacts your body in several ways.

Lowers Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is a measure of the force put on your blood vessels and organs as your blood passes through them. It’s counted in two numbers:

• Systolic pressure: The pressure in your blood vessels when your heart beats.
• Diastolic pressure: The pressure in your blood vessels between heartbeats, when your heart is at rest.

Normal blood pressure for adults is a systolic pressure below 120 mmHg and a diastolic pressure below 80 mmHg. This is normally written with the systolic blood pressure above the diastolic pressure, like this: 120/80.

People with a blood pressure reading of 140/90 are considered to have high blood pressure.

Interestingly, the DASH diet demonstrably lowers blood pressure in both healthy people and those with high blood pressure.

In studies, people on the DASH diet still experienced lower blood pressure even if they didn’t lose weight or restrict salt intake (7, 8).

However, when sodium intake was restricted, the DASH diet lowered blood pressure even further. In fact, the greatest reductions in blood pressure were seen in people with the lowest salt consumption (9).

These low-salt DASH diet results were most impressive in people who already had high blood pressure, reducing systolic blood pressure by an average of 12 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 5 mmHg (5).

In people with normal blood pressure, it reduced systolic blood pressure by 4 mmHg and diastolic by 2 mmHg (5).

This is in line with other studies which reveal that restricting salt intake can reduce blood pressure — especially in those who have high blood pressure (10).

Keep in mind that a decrease in blood pressure does not always translate to a decreased risk of heart disease (11).

May Aid Weight Loss

You will likely experience lower blood pressure on the DASH diet whether or not you lose weight.

However, if you already have high blood pressure, chances are you have been advised to lose weight.

This is because the more you weigh, the higher your blood pressure is likely to be (12, 13, 14).

Additionally, losing weight has been shown to lower blood pressure (15, 16).

Some studies suggest that people can lose weight on the DASH diet (17, 18, 19).

However, those who have lost weight on the DASH diet have been in a controlled calorie deficit — meaning they were told to eat fewer calories than they were expending.

Given that the DASH diet cuts out a lot of high-fat, sugary foods, people may find that they automatically reduce their calorie intake and lose weight. Other people may have to consciously restrict their intake (20).

Either way, if you want to lose weight on the DASH diet, you’ll still need to go on a calorie-reduced diet.

Other Potential Health Benefits

DASH may also affect other areas of health. The diet:

• Decreases cancer risk: A recent review indicated that people following the DASH diet had a lower risk of some cancers, including colorectal and breast cancer (21).
• Lowers metabolic syndrome risk: Some studies note that the DASH diet reduces your risk of metabolic syndrome by up to 81% (22, 23).
• Lowers diabetes risk: The diet has been linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Some studies demonstrate that it can improve insulin resistance as well (24, 25).
• Decreases heart disease risk: In one recent review in women, following a DASH-like diet was associated with a 20% lower risk of heart disease and a 29% lower risk of stroke (26).

Many of these protective effects are attributed to the diet’s high fruit and vegetable content. In general, eating more fruits and vegetables can help reduce risk of disease (27, 28, 29, 30).

Summary

DASH lowers blood pressure — particularly if you have elevated levels — and may aid weight loss. It could reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and some cancers.