Dr Chris Steele shares diet tips on reducing blood pressure
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If a person’s blood pressure is too high it means their heart is having to work harder than usual to pump blood around the body. Over time this puts extra strain on vital organs such as the heart, brain and kidneys. This can have devastating consequences, with increased risk of heart disease, strokes and dementia among the dangers of hypertension.
Like many medical conditions, diet often plays a role in whether your blood pressure is high or low.
Health bodies often advise to eat a healthy balanced diet as a way to reduce blood pressure.
More specifically, they will recommend lowering your salt intake.
This is because salt makes the body hold onto water. Having extra water puts added pressure on blood vessel walls.
Eating foods high in potassium have been shown to counter this, as it helps the body get rid of sodium and works to relax blood vessels.
One vegetable rich in potassium is the carrot, which contains 320mg of potassium per 100g.
Research has shown consuming carrots can lower blood pressure, with one study also suggesting drinking them in juice form is beneficial for lowering heart disease risk.
A paper, published in Nutrients journal in 2021, found mice that ate the vegetables experienced lowered blood pressure levels and weight loss.
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Researchers fed the animals, who had been eating a high-fat diet, two types of carrot – either a bolero (Bo) carrot grown under standard conditions or a bolero grown under biotic stress conditions (BoBS).
The study said: “BoBS supplementation decreased body weight gain, secretion of very-low-density lipoprotein, and increased cecal propionate content.
“Interestingly, Bo and BoBS supplementation improved hemodynamic parameters by decreasing systolic, diastolic, and mean blood pressure.
“Moreover, Bo improved cardiac output.”
Systolic blood pressure is the higher number on the machine when you get tested and is the force at which your heart pumps blood around your body.
Diastolic pressure (the lower number) is the resistance to the blood flow in the blood vessels.
Healthy blood pressure is considered to be between 90/60 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) and 120/80mmHg – or below 150/90mmHg for over 80s.
The study concluded: “These results showed that Bo and BoBS enriched diets corrected most of the metabolic and cardiovascular disorders in an atherosclerosis-prone genetic mouse model and may therefore represent an interesting nutritional approach for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.”
Separate research, published in Nutrition journal in 2011, examined the effects of carrot juice specifically.
A group of 17 participants drank around half a litre of carrot juice daily for three months.
The study noted: “Drinking carrot juice decreased systolic pressure, but did not influence diastolic pressure.
“Drinking carrot juice significantly increased the plasma total antioxidant capacity and decreased the plasma malondialdehyde production.
“Drinking carrot juice may protect the cardiovascular system by increasing total antioxidant status and by decreasing lipid peroxidation independent of any of the cardiovascular risk markers measured in the study.”
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