How to Dilate Blood Vessels

When your blood vessels dilate, the walls of your arteries impede the muscles from constricting and the walls from thinning. This allows blood to flow more easily throughout your arteries, reducing how hard your heart has to work to pump, which in turn lowers your blood pressure. Blood vessel dilation is helpful in treating various medical conditions, including hypertension, preeclampsia and heart failure.

Instructions

• 1

  Your doctor can recommend angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, which are proved to reduce the advancement of heart failure, according to the American Heart Association. ACE inhibitors disrupt your body from making angiostensin, a substance found in the blood that causes blood vessels to constrict.

• 2

  If you are not able to stomach ACE inhibitors, your doctor will often recommend vasodilators. When you take this medication, the walls of your blood vessels increase or loosen. Commonly recommended vasodilators include isorbide dinitrate, nesiritide, hydralazine, nitrates and minoxidil.

• 3

  You can dilate your blood vessels through other means besides medicine.Try stretching. The February 15, 2008, edition of "Circulation Research" reports that flexing skeletal muscles was shown to alter the shape of the matrix protein fibronectin, which produces a signal for the relaxation of the muscles around the blood vessels, allowing the vessels to dilate.

• 4

  Eat hot food. "The Doctors Book of Home Remedies" states that hot foods and drinks produce a signal that alerts your body's thermostat. Your body reacts by dilating your blood vessels.

• 5

  Consume foods and beverages that contain caffeine. The Every Diet website reports that theobromine and theophylline, which are mostly found in cocoa beans and tea, behave as a stimulant for the heart and widen your blood vessels.

• 6

  Consume alcohol. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that low quantities of alcohol create blood vessel dilation.This dilation also makes your face red and causes heat loss in the body.