Reply #49: watermelon helps to lower blood pressure [View All]

Who doesn’t love a cold, juicy slice of watermelon on a hot summer day?Watermelon has always been a healthy choice for a sweet treat – packed with fiber, electrolytes, nutrients including vitamins A, B6, C, potassium, and lycopene, a powerful antioxidant.

Now there may be even more of a reason to love it – a small pilot study by food scientists at Florida State University suggests that eating watermelon may ward off high blood pressure.

The researchers, led by FSU Assistant Professor Arturo Figueroa and Professor Bahram H. Arjmandi, gave a group of nine middle-aged men and women all suffering from pre-hypertension (meaning they had elevated blood pressure but not yet full blown hypertension) six grams of watermelon extract a day for six weeks. As the researchers described in the American Journal of Hypertension, the watermelon extract not only lowered each one of their subjects’ blood pressure, but it improved the function of their arteries.


http://www.care2.com/causes/eating-watermelon-may-lower-your-blood-pressure.html