High blood pressure needs to be tamed as this condition can lead to life-threatening emergencies, including heart attacks and strokes. Fortunately, making small dietary tweaks could be a potent way of getting your levels to drop. Dr Mosley shares that one food in particular can lower your blood pressure and boost other aspects of your health.
Speaking on his podcast Just One Thing, Dr Mosley said: “It’s early afternoon and I’m a bit peckish.
“I’m about to grab a delicious snack that could improve my blood flow, boost my brain and trim my waistline. It’s not some exotic superfood. In fact, it’s an apple.”
While this food might be very small, it’s packed with various goodies that make it potent at cutting high blood pressure.
From fibre to flavonoids, apples and mainly their skins have been found to be great at taming high blood pressure, high cholesterol as well as inflammation.
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Dr Mosley said: “Apples contain prebiotics, a type of fibre that feeds the good bacteria in your gut, helping reduce inflammation and improve blood pressure.”
Another reason why this cheap snack is “so good” is the high content of flavonoids in its skin.
What’s more, having just a singular apple daily has been shown to “reduce blood pressure”.
“A recent trial of Western Australia showed that eating apples with the skin on helped reduce blood pressure and improve heart health,” added the podcaster.
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“We saw reduction in blood pressure and we saw an improvement in blood vessel function with the apple with the skin, compared to the apple without the skin.”
However, the doctor’s research didn’t end here as she and her team further discovered that blood pressure reduction can occur within weeks.
Dr Bondonno added: “We then did another clinical trial in people with at least one risk factor for heart disease.
“So they either had high blood pressure, high cholesterol or were overweight.”
The participants had to eat two apples this time for the period of four weeks.
Those who enjoyed the snack with its skin on saw “changes” in their blood pressure and blood vessel function after this time.
Furthermore, the research was based on Pink Lady apples which can be bought in the UK.
So, if you want to see your blood pressure levels fall, giving apples a go could be “just one thing” to try, concluded Dr Mosley.