High blood pressure is a killer. And more than one-third of the American people suffer from high blood pressure (hypertension). But one “superfood” can help to prevent hypertension.
A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, concludes that eating just one cup of blueberries a week may lower your chances of developing hypertension. The study showed that eating foods that are higher in anthocyanins is key to decreasing this risk.
Anthocyanins are typically more darker-colored foods and are primarily found in foods like fruits and vegetables, and especially in blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, cranberries, black currants, eggplants and blood oranges.
British and American researchers studied 157,000 people over a period of 14 years, examining their diets. None of the subjects had been diagnosed with hypertension at the beginning of the study.
The researchers found that those study subjects who ate foods with higher levels of anthocyanins were 8 percent less likely to be diagnosed with hypertension over those who consumed the least. The study subjects who ate at least one serving of blueberries per week, it was found, were 10 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure than those who did not.
“Anthocyanins are present in many of the foods we already like to eat and so they are easily incorporated into the diet,” said the study’s lead author, Aedin Cassidy, a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
We would be hard-pressed to find something easier and more enjoyable to do to ward off high blood pressure than to eat foods like blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries! It’s akin to having dessert as health food!
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