We know for sure that it is a healthy kind of food, but, could soy help lower your blood pressure? Amazingly, yes. Studies that are conducted recently have proven that this legume have a very big benefit. Scientists discovered that a substance called isoflavones, which have the ability to make the body produce nitric oxide which helps dilate the blood vessels and reduce high blood pressure or hypertension, is very much present not only in green tea and peanuts but also in products like tofu and soy milk which is made from soy.
Now isn’t this a good news or what? Knowing that something can help improve a condition without having to take any medicine is a very good thing indeed.
The study was conducted among numbers of African-American participants in the United Sates, who have higher incidence of high blood pressure, where every individual was given a specific amount of isoflavones-rich food along with a healthy diet. Improvement was definitely seen as they have discovered that those people who consumed more amounts of isoflavones shown a big reduce in blood pressure than those who took less.
The diet does not include soy food products alone, though. The study specified that having a healthy eating practice is still vital in reducing high blood pressure. A person, in general, should always keep it a habit to eat food that is mainly composed of fruits and vegetables, whole grain cereals and dairy foods that are low in fat. And in order to have the “high blood pressure lowering effect” from isoflavones, as seen in the study, consumption of more than 2.5 mg/day soy food products can definitely help make an improvement.
Scientists have proven that the introduction of soy to a hypertensive person’s diet can even help reverse an early onset or even severe organ damage which is an end-result when hypertension is not given the proper treatment and attention.
If you are not so much into drinking soy milk which gives about 22mg of isoflavones, you can just use tofu or roasted soybeans instead.