The Unexpected Beverage That Could Help Lower Your High Blood Pressure Fast
When you're stressed out, a quick check of your blood pressure might signal a warning. If you try to calm yourself down by having a cigarette or a few drinks, you could make things worse. Love potato chips? The sodium in many snack foods will also pull too much water into your bloodstream and stress your blood vessels.
While some of these habits will temporarily raise your blood pressure, consistently high blood pressure causes damage to the tissues of your arteries. Combined with high cholesterol, high blood pressure can lead to conditions such as heart attack, stroke, or heart failure.
You might not even notice if you have high blood pressure, but it can sneak up on you without symptoms. Elevated blood pressure has a systolic reading of 120 to 129 and a diastolic reading of less than 80. If this elevated blood pressure is consistent, you'll likely develop high blood pressure unless you take some measures to reduce it. This might mean simple lifestyle changes, such as reducing sodium in your diet. You might want to consider drinking tomato juice every day because it can lower your blood pressure.
Nutrients in tomato juice that reduce blood pressure
A cup of tomato juice has just 45 calories, with almost a full day's supply of iron. Even though tomato juice is a good source of potassium and vitamin C, it's also high in sodium, with 560 milligrams. You'll want to eat tomatoes or tomato juice every day because they are rich in lycopene, carotenes, lutein, phytoene, and flavonoids that can reduce oxidative stress and enhance nitric oxide, which can reduce blood pressure.
Tomato juice without salt has just 24 milligrams of sodium but has 527 milligrams of potassium to keep your fluid levels in balance and lower your blood pressure. In a 2019 study in Food Science and Nutrition, more than 400 people were told to drink as much unsalted tomato juice as they liked, though most drank a 200-milliliter bottle each day. People who had hypertension or untreated prehypertension significantly lowered their systolic and diastolic blood pressure after drinking tomato juice. People who weren't taking medicine for high cholesterol also saw decreases in their LDL cholesterol.
Pregnant women might want to turn to tomato juice to reduce their blood pressure, according to a 2017 study in Belitung Nursing Journal. Fifteen pregnant women with high blood pressure saw their blood pressure drop after drinking tomato juice.
Another tomato option if you don't like tomato juice
People with Stage 1 hypertension have a systolic blood pressure of 130 to 139 or have a diastolic reading between 80 and 89. Your doctor will more than likely suggest a blood pressure medication or lifestyle changes to lower your blood pressure without medication. If you don't like tomato juice, you can turn to tomato extract, according to a 2006 study in the American Heart Journal. People with Stage 1 hypertension took 250 milligrams of tomato extract for eight weeks and took a placebo for 4 weeks before and after taking the extract. While taking the tomato extract, their systolic blood pressure decreased from an average of 144 to 134, and their diastolic blood pressure dropped to 83.4 from 87.4.
When a 2021 meta-analysis in Phytomedicine pulled the results of several studies looking at tomato products and hypertension, only standardized tomato extract lowered systolic blood pressure in healthy people and those with hypertension. However, people with hypertension saw both their systolic and diastolic blood pressure drop after taking standardized tomato extract.