Vegetable Remedys
The world has smart bombs. Tanks. Giant-size guns. But a lowly spear may be all you need to knock down high blood pressure. A spear of asparagus, that is, Mother Nature ingeniously tipped that spear with folate, a nutrient that may turn out to puncture overinflated blood-pressure levels. Folate is believed to lower a blood factor called homocysteine (a factor, by the way, that’s been linked to high risk of heart disease and stroke), In a recent study, researchers saw high homocysteine levels in 179 people with a high-blood-pressure condition called isolated systolic hypertension. Homocysteine was significantly lower in 171 people with normal blood pressures. Researchers theorize that homocysteine may do to your arteries what sunshine, chlorine and time do to spandex swimsuits: It makes the stretchy parts lose their stretchability. When arteries are too stiff to help move blood around effectively, the heart has to pick up the slack and work even harder, This can push pressure ever upward, explains study leader Kim SuttonTyrrell, DrPH, an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, She suspects that in this way, homocysteine could have a role in other forms of hypertension, as well.
Researchers’ next hope is to show that B vitamins like folate might be able to stop this stretchability breakdown enough to help prevent high blood pressure, In fact, Dr. Sutton- Tyrrell’s group has already proposed such a study. Until the results are in, “people should be paying a lot of attention to what they’re eating and should be making sure they’re getting enough foods with these types of vitamins in them;’ she says, “But exactly how much folate could help blood pressure is the next question, and I really don’t think that is known yet.” For general health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting 400 micrograms daily. So it’s wise to start filling up on the most chock-filled folate finds: asparagus (250 micrograms per cup), brussels sprouts (125 micrograms per cup), beans (100 to 300 micrograms per cup) and fortified breads and cereals .