While BP Dove may be relatively new to the market, the Neuliven Health team has been writing about health and wellness for years over on our blogs for Glucocil and BergaOne. Neuliven Health has been a company for over a decade, and our blog team is almost three years old. We write daily content about being healthy through lifestyle changes. It’s important to us to take charge of our health. We listen to our doctors and take every step to have full lives through our diet, habits and exercise.
That’s why we love it when we hear about tips we can pass on to our customers that are easy to follow and can have real-world results. We know there is no such thing as easy fixes. It’s all about finding healthy routines and making great choices to reach our health goals. New research has us very excited because it shows that better health can start in your kitchen and might be as easy as reaching for your spice rack more often.
A study from Penn State Univ. and Texas Tech Univ. found that adding 1.5 teaspoons of herbs and spices to a daily diet improved blood pressure. It was a randomized controlled trial that was considered “gold standard” for how well managed it was. The participants followed three different diets with a two-week rest period between each diet. They always ate the same number of calories, but they varied the amount of herbs and spices. They ate 0.5 grams, 3.3 grams or 6.6 grams of herbs and spices each day.
The diet the people were eating was 2,100 calories a day. And it wasn’t a healthy diet. Instead, they followed a standard “Suboptimal U.S. style diet,” according to the researchers. But, the people eating the high spice diet saw their blood pressure decrease.
In the past, specific spices, like garlic, have been shown to help blood pressure. But, this study didn’t use any spices or herbs in particular. This makes us wonder if it’s just that when you use a lot of seasoning in the kitchen, you eat less salt. We’re not sure what factors were at play in this situation. People who continued to follow the diet for 12 weeks saw continued, improving results. While it’s clear that the herbs and spices had some role in improving blood pressure, the mechanism isn’t clear.
We love research like this that shows us that we can take simple steps in our daily lives to aid our health at home! While you should always speak to your doctor before making significant changes in your routine, you don’t have to make an appointment to discuss making your meals more flavorful! Using more herbs and spices to cut back on salt is an excellent way to boost heart health. While we do need salt for overall health, most of us eat far too much of it, so it’s best to cut it out where you can!
