Some Information About Blood Pressure
An alarming amount of American adults suffer from high blood pressure. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 67 million adults or 1 in 3 adults have high blood pressure.
Of those people, only 47% or close to half have their blood pressure condition in check.
Almost 1 in 3 adults in the United States has prehypertension – meaning their blood pressure reading is higher than normal but not quite high enough to be considered high blood pressure.
Why You Should Care About Your Blood Pressure
In excess of 348,000 deaths in America in the year 2009 were caused by high blood pressure. That comes out to approximately 1,000 deaths every single day.
Having a high blood pressure can increase the chances of you suffering from numerous health risks:
- Heart attack: Out of 10 people who suffer heart attacks, 7 of them suffer as a result of their high blood pressure.
- Stroke: Approximately 8 out of 10 people who suffer from strokes do so as a result of high blood pressure.
- Chronic heart failure: Around 7 out of 10 people who suffer from chronic heart failure do so due to their high blood pressure.
- Unhealthy kidneys are also a high risk factor which can lead to high blood pressure.
Though it is impossible to control all potential risks that lead to high blood pressure, you can take preventive steps that decrease the chances of this happening.
How GABA Can Help With High Blood Pressure
According to a double blind study, two groups were given oral pills – one enriched with GABA, the other simply a placebo – and found that the group who had taken the GABA pills had significantly reduced blood pressure levels.
The test was scheduled to last 12 weeks, where the participants were taking the pills twice daily. During this period of time, no adverse events or unusual findings occurred that could have negatively impacted the study.
How Does GABA Reduce Blood Pressure?
Some reasons why the GABA pills were so effective might be due to their relaxing effect on the users. The role of GABA in the brain is as an inhibitory neurotransmitter – it inhibits the nerve cells in the brain from receiving too much stimulatory effects.
This in turn causes patients to maintain a relatively calm and relaxed state. High stress can lead to high blood pressure, so being less prone to stress can likely lead to many beneficial effects as evidenced by the study.
As such, GABA appears to be beneficial for decreasing high-normal blood pressure and borderline hypertension, and can be used to help those suffering from high blood pressure.
Photo Credit: jennyjo71
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