Beetroot Lowers Blood Pressure
by Ann-Marie Waters, Associate Editor.
High blood pressure is on the increase, worldwide, and now affects more than a quarter of the world’s mature population. This has been projected to rise to almost one third in fifteen years time. It is responsible for over one hundred thousand deaths in the United Kingdom each year from coronary heart disease and stroke.
Beetroot Juice has key ingredient to lower blood pressure
Now scientists have identified a key natural ally in the battle against hypertension and coronary heart disease causes – beetroot juice.
Drinking 500ml of Beetroot juice each day appears to greatly lower blood pressure, and help to maintain a healthy circulatory system, according to research carried out in the United kingdom by the London School of medicine, by Professor Amrita Ahluwalia. This is due to it’s high concentration of an important beneficial ingredient – Nitrate.
Nitrate can also be found in other foods such as fresh green vegetables, so a smaller quantity of beetroot juice can be supplemented by other qualifying natural healthy foods if desired. The Nitrate is converted by the body into Nitric Acid, and it is the peaking of this compound that has been observed to coincide with the maximum reduction in blood pressure.
Potential for very fast blood pressure reduction
The reason that we’re excited about the potential heart health benfits of beetroot is that this amazing food has the unique ability to lower blood pressure very quickly. In tests conducted on volunteers, blood pressure reduction occurred within just one hour of consuming the beetroot juice, peaked within four hours, and continued to have an effect on blood pressure lowering for up to 24 hours.
So, if you want to help to keep your heart healthy, why not try some of this delicious home made juice? The onion and garlic will thin your blood and help to lower your cholesterol, whilst the watercress will oxygenate your blood. The beetroot will lower your blood pressure and also build up your red blood cell count. It’s a win – win formula!
Heart Beet Juice recipe
Whizz up the following ingredients in a juicer and chill before serving:
- 125 g (4oz) Beetroot
- 125 g (4oz) Watercress
- 125 g (4oz) Red Onion
- 250 g (8oz) Carrot
The above recipe will make 200ml (7fl oz), and contains 167 calories.
Nutritional benefits of beetroot juice recipe:
The key nutritional benefits of the beetroot juice recipe are summarised by the super food compounds listed below, that are found in the recipe:
- Viamin A
- Vitamin C
- Magnesium
- Niacin
- Vitamin B6
- Vitamin E
Enjoy, relax and soak up the heart health giving benefits!
Overweight people may still be heart healthy
What’s going on?
We are continuously bombarded about our weight, with messages about healthy meal plans, healthy eating food, healthy food recipes, low cholesterol foods and how to lose weight. However a recent US study into nutrition, health and obesity indicates that if you are overweight, it does not necessarily mean that you are not healthy.
This is a surprising conclusion, and seems to contradict the many years of advice we have received from the medical profession, that the risk factors for heart disease, heart attack and stroke all increase when we start to climb up the obesity chart.
Half of people classed as overweight have normal blood pressure
In the first national study on this subject, a research Professor from the University of Michican at Chicago, MaryFran Sowers has discovered that approximately half of people classed as being overweight seem to have blood pressure and cholesterol levels within the healthy normal range.
This may force us to rethink our approach to weight and heart health, as part of Sowers’ findings were that, amazingly, half of the people who weighed in under the obesity threshold were found to have problems with their risk factors for heart health that are normally associated with obesity.
So it would appear that you can look like a million dollars, but be a ticking heart attack time bomb or you can bust the scales but still be relatively healthy, or healthier than has previously been thought. The results show that the traditional stereotypical associations about body size and health can be misleading.
Obesity statistics
Here are the obesity statistics, facts and figures resulting from the research :-
- 51 percent of overweight American adults (approximately 36 million people) tested normal for blood pressure, and levels of blood cholesterol, triglycerides (blood fats) and blood sugar
- Over 30 percent of adults classed as not just overweight, but obese (approx. 20 million people) also showed healthy readings for the above tests
- Nearly 25 percent of adults who were not obsese or overweight (about 16 million) had unhealthy levels of at least two of the four health factors.
Sowers’ conclusion makes for interesting reading, as she points out that although it has been previously acknowledged that some thin people can develop heart disease and other cardiovascular problems, whilst some obese people don’t – it’s just the scale of the numbers that is very surprising, and also indicates that up to 16 million Americans who think that they are not at risk of developing heart disease actually are.
Obesity definition – is the system for calculating obesity flawed?
Now, this leads us to the question whether the existing definition of being overweight is still valid or not. The current way of determining if someone is overweight or not is to look at their body mass index (BMI) reading. Unfortunately, this method does not differentiate between bad body fat and healthy muscle tissue. It has recently been pointed out that technically this means that half of the pro Basketball Players in the United States fall into the clinically obese category!
Eggs cleared of causing high cholesterol
Historical Suspicion of Eggs
Poultry eggs have long been regarded with suspicion and labelled as high cholesterol foods due to their association with raising levels of blood cholesterol, leading to heart disease and heart attacks. This dates back many years, due in part to decades old advice from the British Heart Foundation (revised in 2005) that egg consumption should be limited to two or three eggs per person per week because they increase cholesterol. Now experts have proven that very little of the cholesterol in eggs actually finds it way into the bloodstream.
Previous egg cholesterol research was mis-interpreted
A new report from the British Nutrition Foundation seems to indicate that conclusions drawn from this earlier research on eggs and diet may have been incorrect, due to it’s inability to differentiate between dietary cholesterol and dietary saturated fat. So, in other words poultry eggs may have been the fall guy for the real bad guy – saturated fat, which is found in great quantities in so many of the foods that we often eat every day without necessarily checking what we are eating contains.
It is still correct that high levels of blood cholesterol can increase the risk of coronary heart disease, but it has now been discovered due to improved testing science that most of the blood cholesterol in our blood actually comes from non-dietary sources – typically obesity, lack of exercise and smoking cigarettes, and dietary staurated fat. The new research concludes that this is the primary cause, not eggs, of more than two thirds of the cholesterol in our blood.
Saturated fat mainly to blame, not poultry eggs
Almost half of the people polled in a recent United Kingdom survey still thought they should eat a maximum of three eggs a week, due to the information which has been propagated by health organisations over the years. But the evidence now indicates that there is no reason to limit the weekly consumption of eggs for most people, as there is no evidence to suggest that they cause an increased risk of coronary heart disease.
A respected UK Doctor – Dr Hilary Jones, MD, has highlighted the confusion surrounding dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol. He said that many people think by reducing dietary cholesterol – for example avoiding food like eggs will reduce their risk of heart disease. But he points out that the most important dietary risk factor comes from consumption of saturated fat.
New advice about egg consumption from health organisations
The British Heart Foundation as well as other health organisations have responded to this new research by issuing their own statements. A BHF spokesperson, Victoria Taylor, Senior Dietician, responded by stating :-
“We recommend that eggs can be eaten as part of a balanced diet. There is cholesterol present in eggs but this does not usually make a great contribution to your level of blood cholesterol. She continues ”If you need to reduce your cholesterol level it is more important that you cut down on the amount of saturated fat in your diet from foods like fatty meat, full fat dairy products and cakes, biscuits [cookies] and pastries.”
The American Heart Association has also removed their previous recommendations regarding eggs and heart health.
special advice for people who suffer from familial hypercholesterolaemia
The exception to the above advice is that people suffering from the genetic disorder that causes high cholesterol levels – familial hypercholesterolaemia. If you are one of the one in five hundred of the population who suffer from this condition, then the advice to restrict your dietary intake of cholesterol still applies.
Two eggs a day can reduce cholesterol and help you lose weight!
The most amazing aspect of this latest research is that a study published by in 2008 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition has shown that eating two eggs per day, as part of a calorie controlled diet, can actually reduce your blood cholesterol level, and help you to lose weight. So if youe have a favourite recipe with eggs, you may be able to enjoy it once again without worrying about your heart health. It just goes to show you that the old expression that you probably heard from your parents is probably good advice – ‘everything in moderation’.
Heart Risk from Lack of Sleep
If you regularly sleep for less than seven and a half hours per night, you may be putting your heart health at risk, especially if you already suffer from high blood pressure, according to a Japanese sleep study published in the jounal ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’ by Doctor Kazuo Eguchi from Jichi Medical University in Tochigi, Japan.
20 Million People in the UK get less sleep than they need
Sleep enables the physiological and psycholigical restoration and repair of the body. Increasingly stressful modern living, longer commuting and working hours, and all-night shopping and entertainment have all contributed to a worldwide trend towards shorter nights sleep than ever before. Although the average for the United Kingdom is around seven hours, a third of the population – 20 million people – regularly only manage to grab 5 hours sleep or less.
Lack of sleep increases risk of heart disease
However, this lack of sleep may be putting us at increased risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke as the scientists have discovered that having less than seven and a half hours sleep per night increases the risk factor for heart attack and stroke by up to four times.
The sleep study involved a total of 1255 Japanese patients who were suffering from hypertension, over a period of four years. The patients were aged between 33 and 97 years old, with an average ago of 70. It was discovered that those who had insufficient sleep had a 68 percent increased risk of heart attack, stroke or death from cardiac arrest, with 99 incidents occurring during the study period.
High Blood Pressure and Sleep Deprivation increases risk of cardiovascular problems by 400 percent
The researchers also carried out extensive monitoring of the patients’ blood pressure changes as part of the reseach, and discovered that a relatively small number – twenty of the sleep deprived participants, failed to experience the normal overnight reduction in blood pressure whilst asleep. This smaller subset of the study group were found to be at four times greater risk of cardiovascular problems.
Doctor Eguchi’s team looking for a reason for the sleep study’s findings, believe that a lack of sleep results in greater activity of the nervous system, which also occurs when a persons blood pressure does not fall during the night. This combination in hypertensive patients may cause increased stress of the cardiovascular system, and account for the increased heart disease statistics. It recommends that doctors caring for patients with high blood pressure should investigate and monitor their sleeping patterns more carefully.
It should be noted however, that this study involved patients whose average age was 70 years old, and the results may not necessarily apply to younger people, or those who do not already suffer from high blood pressure.
Chronic deprivation of sleep can also be linked to a number of different health problems, including diabetes and obesity, and there is a link betweeen childhood sleep deprivation and future obesity in adulthood.
What about getting too much sleep ?
Another sleep study carried out at Warwick University in the United Kingdom in 2007 has shown that not only is too little sleep bad for your health, but sleeping for too long can also have harmful effects on your health. This study, carried out by Professor Francesco Cappuccio from the Warwick University Medical School involved over 10,000 government workers in the United Kingdom over a period of 11 – 17 years, and concluded that the optimum amount of sleep is 7 hours per night. However it also uncovered the startling fact that those whose sleep is excessive – more than 8 hours per night, doubled their risk of dying. In these cases however, the cause of death was not primariliy due to heart diseases.