Three breakfast foods could help slash your risk of a “silent killer” condition affecting millions of Brits. In the UK it is thought around one in four people are living with high blood pressure, which is also known as hypertension. It can lead to potentially deadly medical emergencies such as heart attacks and stroke, but it rarely displays symptoms, making it particularly dangerous. Therefore, many people are living with the condition without even realising.
One of the biggest causes of high blood pressure is diet, with foods high in salt among the worst culprits. But while some foods can raise your blood pressure, others can have the opposite effect. According to research there are three foods typically consumed at breakfast that can do just this: oats, avocados and berries.
Oats are rich in a type of fibre called beta-glucan, which is known to improve blood pressure levels. A study, published in the Journal of Food Biochemistry in 2020, found that beta-glucan was partly responsible for reducing malondialdehyde, a marker of oxidative stress in rats with high blood pressure.
Medical News Today reported: “These results suggest that ingredients present in oats can help prevent high blood pressure and protect heart health in other ways. However, further research on human subjects is necessary.”. A popular breakfast food in recent years, avocados are full of healthy monounsaturated oils, essential fatty acids, cholesterol-lowering plant sterols and vitamin E that all help lower blood pressure. A 2022 study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, found that eating five or more servings of avocado a week resulted in a 17 percent reduction in blood pressure.
