Home > Garlic and High Blood Pressure Garlic and High Blood Pressure
By Kristi Patrice Carter
If you are like thousands of Americans, you have high blood pressure. If so, you may be on a medication prescribed by your physician. However, did you know that many people look to natural remedies to help them lower their high blood pressure?
One of the most popular and effective natural ways to lower high blood pressure is to increase the amount of garlic you ingest. In several recent studies, it has been shown that increased garlic consumption is linked to a significant reduction in both systolic and diastolic blood pressures, the two components that determine your blood pressure.
Garlic can be easily added to any diet. In fact, if you love Italian food, this change in diet will be a boon to you. You can even use garlic powder as a delicious salt replacement in order to change over to a lower sodium diet. This is a very easy way to increase the amount of garlic in your diet.
However, this may not be practical for everyone, especially if you do not enjoy Italian food or like the taste of garlic. If this is the case, you can take garlic supplements. These garlic supplements are widely available at grocery stores, pharmacies, and health food stores. The supplements are easy to ingest and you will not have to eat loads of garlic. An added benefit of taking a garlic supplement is that you will not smell of garlic as you would if you ate several cloves of garlic a day.
Garlic supplements are not for everyone, however. Garlic is a natural blood thinner, just like aspirin is a blood thinner. If you are taking other prescribed medications that also act as a blood thinner, this can be a potentially dangerous situation. If you are taking other medications, you should consult your doctor before taking garlic supplements in order to avoid this reaction.
Because garlic thins the blood, it is advised that you stop taking garlic supplements several weeks before and after a scheduled surgery or certain medical procedures. Again, you can avoid dangerous complications by temporarily stopping your daily intake of garlic supplements. This is another reason why you should talk to your doctor when you are taking garlic supplements.
Garlic and garlic supplements can be a natural and healthy way for people with high blood pressure to help normalize and control their blood pressure.
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