You’ve heard of Keto and Atkins before, but what’s this DASH diet that everyone’s been talking about lately? If you've never heard of it before, DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and it’s not necessarily a weight-loss diet. But studies have found that the diet may go beyond just lowering your blood pressure and may bring about some great health improvements in those taking it up.

The approach is very simple. To be on the diet, one has to cut down on salt (obviously) and load up on nutritious food by increasing intake of fresh vegetables, fruit, low-fat dairy products, nuts, seeds, legumes, lean meats, fish and healthy fats. If you plan on going on the DASH diet, here are some neat benefits you can expect.

Lowered blood pressure

The whole point of the DASH diet is to help you lower your blood pressure. The approach focuses on dietary modifications with an emphasis on eating fresh. Studies conducted to test the efficiency of DASH diet reveal that blood pressure reduces within two weeks of starting the diet.

Improved mental health and depression

It has long been speculated whether diet has a role to play in mental health and a recent study vindicated those beliefs. Researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found that people on a DASH diet had 11 percent lower risk of being depressed. The anti-inflammatory nature of the diet could have a role to play in reduced depression risk.

Reduction in weight

One of the unintentional (yet perfectly welcome) benefits of the DASH diet is weight loss. Although the diet doesn’t necessarily gun for weight loss, it has been found that sticking to the DASH diet indeed helps in weight reduction. Since the diet bans consumption of unhealthy fats, sodium and processed foods, weight loss is an inevitable outcome of the DASH diet.

Reduction in gout symptoms

Known as the rich man’s diseases during the Depression era in the US, hyperuricemia or gout is a result of excessive uric acid in the blood. People suffering from the condition experience nerve-wracking, inflammatory pain in the foot and joints. Diet has a large role to play in triggering gout attacks, that’s where DASH helps. A 2017 study has revealed that the diet helps in lowering serum uric acid in the blood. Although there is no solid evidence that DASH diet helps lower uric acid, it is hypothesised that it can help patients who want to reduce gout-causing purines through food.

In case you are wondering, here's what you can eat on the DASH diet.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 28, 2018 12:23 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).