Foods that Can Lower Your High Blood Pressure - Slideshow

Banana

Scientists from Manipal, India and Johns Hopkins University have found that eating bananas may reduce blood pressure by 10 percent as it acts like an ACE-inhibitor medication taken for blood pressure. Eat a whole banana as a snack or add it in your morning cereal or make a fruit salad with banana as one of the ingredients. Whatever way you eat it, a medium-sized banana will provide 422mg of potassium and 17 percent of the daily recommended value for vitamin C.

Beets

Drinking 500ml of beetroot juice a day can significantly reduce blood pressure, according to scientists. They found that the dietary nitrate in the beet juice was converted to nitrite by the bacteria present on the tongue.

The nitrite is converted to nitric oxide and this is important in the regulation and control of blood pressure

Skinless Poultry

Eating chicken legs or chicken breast or chicken soup may help lower your high blood pressure. A protein found in chicken breast and chicken legs, are broken up in the stomach into peptides (smaller proteins). These peptides had blood pressure lowering activity similar to blood pressure medication - ACE inhibitors. The blood pressure lowering effect continued for at least 4 hours after administration of chicken breast and up to 24 hours in case of chicken legs.

Cocoa

Consuming cocoa in the form of dark chocolate or as a hot drink may reduce blood pressure in overweight people. Chocolate / cocoa is a significant source of polyphenols that is converted to nitric oxide which helps reduce blood pressure. For example, 2 cups of cocoa improves blood vessel function and reduces blood pressure. However, when the drink contains sugar (polyphenols are very bitter by the way!) blood pressure doesn't improve as much. In any case too much of sweetened cocoa isn't a great idea for the waist line. Is it?

Garlic

There are conflicting reports about short term usefulness of garlic in lowering high blood pressure. However it may work over a period of time by cutting down on the blood lipid levels. So, it is actually up to you to use or not to use garlic to reduce high blood pressure. Fresh crushed garlic has the best effect but if you can't stand the pungent smell of garlic, you can use supplements that come in the form of capsules.

Onion

Rutin, a flavonoid, is a non-nutritive dietary anti-oxidant of many foods such as onions, apples, tea and red wine, and has shown health-improving effects in different animal studies. A study indicates that diabetic patients given a supplementation of Rutin tablets for 60 days showed significant reduction in systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Rutin has no side effects.

Potato

This popular but controversial comfort food can actually be very healthy if NOT eaten in the form of greasy fries or chips or even baked and loaded with butter, sour cream or melted cheese. Potato is a very good source of vitamin C and potassium and known for its blood pressure qualities. It also contains blood pressure lowering phenolic amides called kukoamine.Researchers are not sure regarding the quantity of potatoes you will need to eat to lower your blood pressure , but they think that a few good servings of potato (especially with skins) can serve the purpose.

DASH Diet

'Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension' diet indicates that higher dietary potassium intake was associated with significantly lower blood pressures. Consumption of a diet including 8.5 servings/day of fruits and vegetables and 4,100 mg/day of potassium lowered blood pressure by an average of 2.8 /1.1 mm Hg (systolic BP/diastolic BP) in people with normal blood pressure and by an average of 7.2 /2.8 mm Hg in people with hypertension. Increasing dietary calcium intake by 800 mg/day in the DASH trial lowered systolic and diastolic blood pressure still further.