It’s estimated that 73.6 million adults in the United States have hypertension (the medical term for high blood pressure). Hypertension itself has no symptoms, but ignoring it can lead to lots of other health problems, including heart attacks, heart failure, kidney failure and strokes. There are, of course, drugs that can be used to control high blood pressure, but like all medicines, the side effects can be nearly as bad as the condition they’re supposed to be helping with. So doctors always recommend trying natural remedies for high blood pressure before resorting to drugs. Along with regular exercise and a low-sodium, low-saturated-fat diet, flaxseed is one of the best of the natural cures for high blood pressure.

To understand how flaxseed can help, here are a few facts about hypertension:

Hypertension

* In up to 95% of cases, hypertension stems from a complex mix of genetics and lifestyle, so there’s no single, specific cause of high blood pressure.

* The term “blood pressure” itself refers to the force of blood pushing against the walls of your arteries, and anything that interferes with the flow of blood causes the pressure to build up.

* Eating too much salt makes blood cells larger, while saturated fats cause cholesterol to build-up in deposits along the walls of arteries, making the vascular opening smaller.

* Some drugs or diseases (including the relatively-common rheumatoid arthritis) cause arteries to become inflamed, making it harder for blood to pass through.

Any one of these problems forces the heart and kidneys to work much harder to keep clean, oxygen-rich blood flowing through the body.

Okay. So where does flax seed come in?

More than 60 double-blind scientific studies – including the well-publicized INTERMAP study of more than 4600 adults in the US, UK, China and Japan – have shown that flaxseed can be highly effective in lowering blood pressure. The alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) in flax is a key source of omega-3 fatty acids, which medical experts resoundingly agree are vital to a healthy body. Here are a few reasons why:

* Omega-3s act as a natural anti-inflammatory, including in veins and arteries where inflammation would restrict blood flow and increase blood pressure.

* Flax is an ideal cholesterol natural remedy that lowers “bad” cholesterol and triglycerides, both of which cause plaque to build up in the arteries. A recent report from the medical journal Atherosclerosis claimed that flaxseed could reduce cholesterol-related artery disease by 46%, while another study involving 40 patients with high cholesterol showed that taking ground flaxseed over a 60-day period lowered cholesterol by the same amount as medically-prescribed statin drugs.

* The ALA in flax also helps stop blood platelets from creating too much thromboxane and fibrinogen, chemicals which constrict blood vessels and promote clotting. Both are helpful in proper amounts, but when the body synthesizes too much, dangerous clots can form in the bloodstream. These clots increase blood pressure, and if they travel through the bloodstream to the heart or brain, they can cause a heart attack or stroke (respectively).

The research shows that every one percent increase in the concentration of ALA in the body can decrease blood pressure significantly; just one tablespoon per day of flaxseed oil can lower both systolic and diastolic blood pressure by up to 9mm of mercury. Curing hypertension naturally is clearly part of the recipe for a long and healthy life. Take control of your health and buy flax seed from Flaxmatters.