Garlic Cloves
One of the nation's most common chronic ailments, high blood pressure, or hypertension, affects about one in every five of us. Having high blood pressure means that your heart is working harder than usual to keep blood pumping through your system. What's more, the additional pressure also places your blood vessels under extra stress. High blood pressure can cause a wide variety of serious diseases, including atherosclerosis, heart failure and stroke. The good news is that you can control high blood pressure with lifestyle and dietary changes. And eating garlic, researchers have discovered, can make a difference.
One study looked at 47 people suffering from mild cases of hypertension. All had diastolic blood pressure (the pressure between heartbeats, different from systolic blood pressure, which is the maximum pressure of blood flow) between 95 and 104mm Hg (millimeters of mercury). Diastolic pressure over 90 is considered high.
Half of these hypertension subjects were given a daily preparation of garlic powder, while the other half received a placebo. Where everyone's blood pressure was measured after eight and then 12 weeks, significant differences were found between the two groups.
Among the garlic powder-takers, whose average blood pressure had started at 102, it had dropped to 91 after eight weeks and the 89 after 12-down to normal levels, in fact. The non-garlic groups, however, showed no significant change.
Another study at the Clinical Research Center in New Orleans looked at patients who sufferers from severe high blood pressure. Researchers gave 2,400 mg of garlic to nine such patients. Positive effects were noticed almost immediately. Approximately blood pressure fell by nearly 50 percent.
Lowering Blood Pressure
Three or four garlic capsules a day with your meals or 10 to 15 drops of garlic extract at various times throughout the day should help lower high blood pressure, say herbalists. Eating several fresh garlic cloves daily should help, too - the Chinese have use it as a hypertension prescription for centuries.
You might also try a few daily drops of 'tincture of garlic' an old-fashioned homemade remedy. To prepare such a portion, soak 1/2 pound of peeled cloves in 1 quart of breandy in a jar with a top. Shake the jar a few times each day. The tincture should ready in just a few days and will keep to about a year. Take up to 25 drops a day as needed.
Half of these hypertension subjects were given a daily preparation of garlic powder, while the other half received a placebo. Where everyone's blood pressure was measured after eight and then 12 weeks, significant differences were found between the two groups.
Among the garlic powder-takers, whose average blood pressure had started at 102, it had dropped to 91 after eight weeks and the 89 after 12-down to normal levels, in fact. The non-garlic groups, however, showed no significant change.
Another study at the Clinical Research Center in New Orleans looked at patients who sufferers from severe high blood pressure. Researchers gave 2,400 mg of garlic to nine such patients. Positive effects were noticed almost immediately. Approximately blood pressure fell by nearly 50 percent.
Lowering Blood Pressure
Three or four garlic capsules a day with your meals or 10 to 15 drops of garlic extract at various times throughout the day should help lower high blood pressure, say herbalists. Eating several fresh garlic cloves daily should help, too - the Chinese have use it as a hypertension prescription for centuries.
You might also try a few daily drops of 'tincture of garlic' an old-fashioned homemade remedy. To prepare such a portion, soak 1/2 pound of peeled cloves in 1 quart of breandy in a jar with a top. Shake the jar a few times each day. The tincture should ready in just a few days and will keep to about a year. Take up to 25 drops a day as needed.
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