High blood pressure means a person’s blood pressure is consistently too high which in turn means the heat needs to work harder in order to pump blood around the body. While the condition doesn’t pose any serious health risks in the beginning, overtime, a consistently high blood pressure reading could lead to potentially life-threatening conditions including heart and circulatory diseases like heart attack or stroke.
Drinking as little as a half-cup of green tea per day may lower the risk of high blood pressure by nearly 50 percent, according to a new study of Chinese tea drinkers.
Researchers found that men and women who drank tea on a daily basis for at least a year were much less likely to develop hypertension than those who didn’t and the more tea they drank, the bigger the benefits.
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What makes green tea so healthy
Green teas contain organic compounds known as polyphenols, which are a type of antioxidant.
Polyphenols can be broken down into many subcategories, including a group called flavonoids, which contain catechins.
Catechins are tiny powerhouse antioxidants found in green tea that destroy free radicals and improve the vascular system.
Catechins help to improve endothelium-dependent vasodilation, which means it helps to increase the size of the arteries, lowering a person’s blood pressure. Arteries narrow with age when the endothelium lining of arteries cease to function properly.
Because of this, different medical conditions such as plaque build-up can occur, which in turn raises blood pressure.
Tea is thought to offer endothelial protection by helping blood vessels relax, allowing blood to flow more freely.
It’s a high source of antioxidants that have been linked to better cardiovascular health. Leading health experts said that after 12 weeks of drinking tea, blood pressure was lowered by 2.6 mmHg systolic and 2.2 mmHg diastolic.
Green tea had the most significant results, while black tea performed the next best.