Which foods lower blood pressure almost as effectively as medication, demonstrated by our old friend—data from the Framingham Heart Study of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institutes and NIH?

If you can slurp at least one 6-ounce cup of yogurt every three days, you have, according to this study, a 31% decreased risk of developing high blood pressure. They used low-fat yogurt so as to be careful to not add calories, though I am more a fan of whole foods, including yogurt, and then lowering calories elsewhere, or burning off more calories through exercise.

This was a 15-year study on 2,000 folks and, once again, it highlights the value of healthy guts. Guts protect our blood vessels by protecting our blood pressure.
(Research presented at the American Heart Association’s High Blood Pressure Research 2012 Scientific Sessions)

At this same scientific session, they found other kitchen tricks to lower blood pressure, such as cooking with a combination of sesame and rice bran oil. In fact, cooking with these oils worked almost as well as commonly prescribed high blood pressure medication, and combining the oil blend along with the medication yielded even more impressive results.

I have been saying over and over in my books and to patients, FOOD IS POWERFUL.
We are what we eat. The reason fish are so heart healthy is that they eat heart healthy food (sea veggies). Fish, cows, and us—we are all what we eat. And oils are very influential on health, especially cell membrane fluidity. The more Teflonized, or fluid and not sticky our blood flows in and out of the lining of cells, the healthier we are. And cell membrane fluidity depends on food, especially oils (as well as thoughts, since anger shuts down flow, too. Remember the body-mind-spirit connection).