Garlic is natural medicine for treating high blood pressure

Garlic is one of the most amazing medicinal herbs on the planet. It has been among my top-recommended healing foods and medicines for years. Most people know garlic as being anti-cancer. Others recognize its ability to naturally lower high cholesterol. But did you know that garlic also helps normalize high blood pressure?

Here, we present a collection of powerful quotes about garlic and high blood pressure, documented in some of the best health books ever written. Enjoy this collection of knowledge!

Garlic vs. high blood pressure

Onions have similar characteristics and are often used in combination with garlic. To preserve the beneficial effects of garlic it should not be boiled. The fresh juice is the most effective preparation. For nervous spasms, cramps and seizures, crush one clove of garlic in a glass of hot milk. For high blood pressure, take one clove of garlic each morning. Prepare oil of garlic by placing eight ounces of peeled minced garlic in a wide-mouthed jar with enough olive oil to cover. Close tightly and shake a few times each day; allow to stand in a warm place for three days.

Garlic has achieved a legendary reputation as an antihypertensive medication. It's been used in China for centuries for that purpose, and the Japanese government officially recognizes garlic as a blood-pressure depressor. American scientists first tried garlic against high blood pressure in 1921. Garlic consistently lowers blood pressure in laboratory animals.

Eat more garlic. It is another legendary folk remedy for high blood pressure, and it is effective, according to recent studies. Long used in China and widely used today in Germany as a blood pressure medication, garlic can have a striking impact. In a recent double blind German test of Kwai, an over-the-counter garlic preparation, doses comparable to a couple of daily garlic cloves pushed diastolic blood pressure down in patients with mild high blood pressure.

I heard a lot about garlic being a good remedy for colds, but I was hesitant to try it because I also heard it lowers high blood pressure. Since my blood pressure is normal, I thought the garlic might cause it to drop. Fortunately, I read where a medical doctor said that garlic normalizes high or low blood pressure, but does not disturb normal blood pressure. With this assurance, I tried Kyolic garlic tablets the next time I felt I was starting to come down with a cold.

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Normal blood pressure

What is normal blood pressure

For a long time, normal blood pressure was defined as 120/80 (systolic / diastolic). Recently, the American Heart Association changed the definition of normal blood pressure to “Less than 120 / Less than 80.”

This redefinition was enacted because of ongoing research examining the long term health effects of different blood pressures. Along with redefining the normal value, the new American Heart Association guidelines changed the cutoff values for the different stages of high blood pressure. Again, these changes were also based on new research which more clearly shows the increasing risk of heart attack and other illness as the blood pressure rises.

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Low vitamin D levels raises blood pressure

Vitamin D deficiency may triple a person's risk of high blood pressure, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago.


"Our results indicate that early vitamin D deficiency may increase the long-term risk of high blood pressure in women at mid-life," researcher Flojaune Griffin said.


Vitamin D is known to play a crucial role in producing strong bones and teeth. New research increasingly suggests that it also helps regulate the immune system and protect against cancer, autoimmune disorders and heart disease.












The body naturally produces vitamin D upon exposure to sunlight. A number of factors have led to widespread deficiency, however, especially at latitudes far from the equator. These factors include less time spent outside and overuse of sunscreen.
Dark-skinned people living at extreme latitudes are also especially vulnerable, as their bodies produce less vitamin D from the same amount of sun than those of lighter-skinned people.

At the beginning of the study, 5.5 percent of the women who were deficient in vitamin D suffered from high blood pressure, compared with only 2.8 percent of the women who had sufficient levels of the vitamin. At the end of the study in 2007, 10 percent of the women in the deficiency group had high blood pressure, compared with only 3.7 percent in the "sufficient" group.

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High blood pressure and headaches

High blood pressure is commonly referred to as a “silent disease,” because it typically doesn’t announce itself with any hallmark signs and has no universal symptoms. In spite of this, there are a very few symptoms that, together with warning signs in the medical history, usually make a doctor suspect high blood pressure. Among these, recurrent or worsening headache had been the closest thing to a “real” high blood pressure symptom.

It has been noted for decades that people with high blood pressure seem to suffer more frequent and severe headaches. The science and physiology behind headaches offers support to this observation, as well – increased blood pressure causes a phenomenon called autoregulation in the blood vessels that run through the tissue underneath the skull (where most headaches start). In other words, the autoregulation leads to constriction of these blood vessels, a very well known cause of headache symptoms.

Emerging research from Norway, though, hints that people with high blood pressure may actually have fewer headaches than those with normal blood pressure. The studies, conducted in Norwegian patients and published in a large medical journal in the United States, were designed as a follow up to earlier research and found that people with elevated, untreated high blood pressure were as much as 50% less likely to suffer a headache than were patients with similar health profiles but normal blood pressure.

Researchers don’t yet know why elevated blood pressure protects against headaches. Theories range from altered levels of certain hormones and blood chemicals to differences in artery stiffness – arteries tend to become more stiff as blood pressure rises, one of the main reasons that high blood pressure can lead to blood vessel damage.

While this may be a small piece of good news for those suffering from high blood pressure, the risks of elevated blood pressure still far outweigh any associated headache reduction benefits. If you are being treated for high blood pressure and are suffering from frequent or severe headaches, you should not stop taking your medicines. Rather, you might require a different medicine and should speak with your doctor.

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