Does Banana Help Lower Blood Pressure?
… Continuing …
This study involved 14 participants (adults) with about 151 /93 mm Hg of average BP before the clinical trial. In this study, the participants were randomly placed into two major groups.
Potassium chloride was given daily for a week to the first group, while potassium citrates were given to second group with the same way.
The result of the study showed that participants who received potassium chloride had the average BP of 140 /88 mm Hg, and 138 /88 m Hg for those who received potassium citrate.
What else you should know?
Some experts think that hypertensive people who still don’t get used with diet low in salt can take the most benefit of diet high in potassium in helping to lower their systolic and diastolic pressures.
But if you have hypertension and already get used with diet low in salt, diet high in potassium may not provide a significant improvement on your BP.
Furthermore, if you have kidneys problem, the consumption of too much potassium may become counterproductive. Healthy kidneys are needed to regulate the balance of potassium in the blood.
When your kidneys fail to work due to certain condition, excessive consumption of potassium can lead to too high potassium in the blood which then can be potential to cause arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) and even a heart attack.
In addition, many statistics show that kidneys problem is the most common cause of secondary hypertension (a kind of hypertension when the problem is more closely associated with certain health conditions).
If you have kidneys disease and develop secondary hypertension, make sure to discuss first with your healthcare provider /doctor before using dietary supplement that contains potassium (potassium chloride) or banana /other foods high in potassium to treat your hypertension.
