Researchers from the London School of Medicine and Dentistry and Barts recently reported their findings demonstrating that beetroot can lower blood pressure at just 8oz of juice a day. The BBC News Service reported that:
“Drinking 250ml (8oz) cut high blood pressure readings by 10mm of mercury (mmHg) in a study of 15 patients, bringing some into the normal range, the journal Hypertension reports. Most marked after three to six hours, the effect was detectable a day later. Scientists say the nitrate in beetroot widens blood vessels to aid flow. And many people with angina use a nitrate drug to ease their symptoms.”
This is another indication that foods high in nitric oxide can ease high blood pressure and might also help with other issues like erectile dysfunction in men and fatigue.
Acupuncture can also help with high blood pressure. Here is what WebMD had to say about one doctor’s research showing that acupuncture increased oxygen to the heart in animals:
“John C. Longhurst, MD, PhD, first became interested in acupuncture on a research trip to China. “I met an investigator who’d been doing work in acupuncture for years. I saw that he was a very good scientist,” he says. “I, like most scientists, thought acupuncture was a lot of hocus pocus. But when I saw his work, I knew there was something to it.”
Once home, Longhurst, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine, began the first of four investigations into the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture.
In it, his team tested cats with heart disease. “We showed that acupuncture helped the animals by reducing ischemia — the lack of oxygen to the heart” caused when blood vessels are blocked, he says. That was hard evidence that the therapy worked.”
At the our Asheville Acupuncture clinic, we help people create a nutritional strategy and specific food therapy program for their health condition. For more info call us 828-254-4405.