How beetroot juice can help lower your blood pressure?

Beetroot and its product are a very good source of the chemical compound nitrate which can dramatically bring down high blood pressure. In fact, when the person consume the juice, the blood pressure drop instantly and stay lowered for up to twenty-four hours.

A study published by American Heart Association Journal shows that is the ingestion of the dietary nitrate in the beetroot juice is ultimately responsible for the lowered blood pressure. The researchers found that blood pressure levels were lowered within only one hour after dirking the beetroot juice.

It was believed by the researchers that nitrates are converted into nitric oxide by the body, and this chemical that eases up the blood vessel. In one study, researchers found that drinking just one glass of beetroot juice lowered systolic pressure by 4 to 5 points.

Research also shown that a daily intake of 300 to 500 (equal to cups of beetroot juice) milligrams of dietary nitrate can improve exercise performance and lower blood pressure.
How beetroot juice can help lower your blood pressure?

Yanomami and hypertension

Statistical connections between elevated blood pressure and stress have been made for a number of human populations.

Yanomami are the tribes of roughly twenty thousand Amazonian Indians living in 200 to 250 villages along the border between Venezuela and Brazil. The yanomami diet consists of locally grown crops, nuts, insects, fish and game. It contains less than a gram of salt a day, the lowest salt intake recorded for any population.

Cultivation of crops accounts for about 80% of Yanomami food grown in a series of ‘garden’ usually about 5 hectares in size which are cleared from the forest not far from the Yano.

The Yanomami have very low average blood pressure and no hypertension. Studying the salt intake and blood pressure of the Yanomami and 51 other populations around the globe helped to establish a relationship between salt intake and hypertension; diets that are high in salt are associated with an increased incidence of hypertension.

The findings in the Yanomami population were as follows: a very low urinary sodium excretion (0.9 mmol/24h); mean systolic and diastolic BP levels of 95.4 mmHg and 61.4 mmHg, respectively; no cases of hypertension or obesity; and they have no knowledge of alcoholic beverages. Their BP levels do not elevate with age. The urinary sodium excretion relates positively and the urinary potassium excretion relates negatively to systolic BP (Arq Bras Cardiol, volume 80 (nº 3), 295-300, 2003).
Yanomami and hypertension

Exercise lowering Hypertension

Lack of exercise is a major cause of high blood pressure. In rural agrarian societies, one reason hypertension is so rare is due to the great amount of physical work required just to survive and eat.

One session of exercise at just 40 percent of maximal capacity, the equivalent of moderate walking, can lower blood pressure significantly for up to twenty-four hours.

Regular exercise often reduces body-fat weight and improves other metabolic processes such as insulin sensitivity and sympathetic activity which are causally linked to hypertension.

When exercise is combined with diet, weight loss and blood pressure reduction increase significantly. 

Weight loss reduces basal norepinephrine levels and lowering of plasma insulin attenuates sympathetic nerves activity and decreases sodium retention in the kidney. These combined adaptations all contribute to lower blood pressure.

Exercise lowers both systolic and diastolic pressures very dramatically. In one study involving a total of 2419 men and women by the University of New Orleans, doctor examined that aerobic exercise was associated with what those researchers called ‘impressive’ reduction of nearly 4 points in systolic blood pressure and 3 points in diastolic on average.

Published by Preventive Medicine volume 37, 2003, doctors at the University of Tennessee simply had the patients walk every day with no other changes in their life styles. For eight weeks they simply walk a lot every day. Their blood pressure fell dramatically.

The effect on blood pressure is proportional to the intensity and duration of exercise; light exercise such as calisthenics lowers pressure but the higher the exercise intensity and the longer the duration of exercise the greater the blood pressure reduction will be.
Exercise lowering Hypertension

Hypertension and Calcium linked

Hypertension and Calcium linked
The high incidence of osteoporosis among the elderly, particularly women, has implicated a need for generous calcium intakes throughout life. Now another disease, hypertension, which affects as many as 58 million Americans and is particularly prevalent among the elderly, is being linked by some researchers to an inadequate intake of calcium.

Hypertension is an increase in vascular resistance most often due to a decreased luminal diameter of the arteries or arterioles. This decrease in luminal diameters is caused by excessive shortening of the vascular smooth muscle actomyosin; the initiator for the contraction (or shortening) is intracellular calcium. At first glance it seems quite incongruous that a deficiency of dietary calcium could be a cause of hypertension.

Many researches attempt to link hypertension to dietary factors and to treat the disorder by dietary manipulations. Dietary factors which have been investigated in relation to hypertension include, in addition to sodium and protein, total calories, fats, alcohol, chloride, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. Intensive research concerning the role of sodium in the development or treatment of hypertension has been particularly fruitful because through establishing the fact that certain populations of hypertensives (approximately 30% to 50%) are much more sensitive to an excess of sodium than others, it has strongly suggested that hypertension is a heterogeneous disease, having a variety precipitating factors.
Hypertension and Calcium linked