Does Garlic and Fiber Help Reduce High Blood Pressure?

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is one of the most common health problems in many countries all around the world. Fortunately it is treatable condition – though most cases of hypertension (primary hypertension) come with unknown clearly cause. Furthermore, it is also often successfully managed and treated with diet and other appropriate lifestyle approaches. And when you are looking for dietary approaches for your treatment, getting plenty of dietary fiber and some garlic can help.

It’s clear that your fiber intake is important to improve the performance of your digestive system. In general, fiber is divided into two major groups – soluble and insoluble fiber.

Getting plenty of dietary insoluble fiber is linked with lower risk of developing digestive problems such as constipation and diverticulitis problem. And for soluble fiber, it can help improve the body’s immune function and enhance beneficial bacterial in the gut. Overall, there are lots of health benefits you can get from fiber.

How about with its impact on your blood pressure? Some studies found that diet high in fiber is linked with the lower risk of hypertension. Most participants involved in these studies had a lower level of systolic and diastolic pressure after the study.

Unfortunately, there is still no clearly explanation on how fiber can help lower and reduce high blood pressure level.

The answer may be due to the ability of fiber in helping to eliminate some risk factors of hypertension. The following are some common factors and condition that can increase your risk of getting hypertension:

These include age (your risk of hypertension increases naturally as you age), race (hypertension is more common in blacks than in whites), and having a family history of hypertension.

These include:

1. Being overweight.
2. Poor in physical activity (becoming a sedentary individual).
3. Smoking /even second hand smoke can increase your risk.
4. Poor diet (lack of vitamin D and potassium – but high in salt /sodium).
5. Uncontrolled stress. More episodes of stress you experience can be bad for your BP. Stress can rapidly raise your BP. Though the effect of raised BP due to stress is temporary, but if you get it too often – this can be very harmful for the health of your heart and cardiovascular system in long term.

Some chronic health problems also can have an effect on your BP. These include sleep apnea, kidneys problem, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

Fiber may not directly affect your BP. But as mentioned before, it can help eliminate some risk factors of hypertension.

It can help maintain your weight, if you are at your healthy weight, it can be very helpful to control your BP. Furthermore, fiber (especially soluble fiber) can help control and lower bad cholesterol (LDL /low density lipoprotein).

You may know garlic as one of popular flavoring for foods. But did you know that it also can be used for herb? There are some studies that explore the effectiveness of garlic to help treat certain health condition, including for hypertension.

According to an article published on the official site of the U.S National Library of Medicine, garlic is possible effective to help reduce high blood pressure.

A chemical from garlic medically called as allicin may be the key answer of why garlic is helpful to treat certain conditions such as hypertension, stomach cancer, diabetes, etc – however this issue is still debatable and more studies are required!

This chemical is also the answer of what make garlic smell.  Therefore, if you are looking for garlic supplement in the form of capsule /tablet – make sure you choose one that is not made ‘odorless’, because garlic without its odor means it doesn’t contain allicin which then can make it work less effective in helping to treat certain health condition.

While most studies about garlic are more focused on how far it can help lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, there are also some scientific evidence showed that garlic is probably effective to improve hypertension in hypertensive people.

Like in soluble fiber, the ability of garlic in helping to lower LDL may be the answer.