Whole Grains May Lower Blood Pressure

While health experts and food producers battle over how much salt should be dumped into processed foods, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are looking into other ways that people can keep blood pressure down to healthy levels. The Scientific American reports on their discovery that whole grain diets may help. Experiments there put seven men, nine premenopausal women, and nine postmenopausal women, all with mildly high cholesterol, on the controlled Step I American Heart Association diet for 2 weeks. After that, refined carbohydrates in the Step I diet were replaced with whole-grain foods. Two types of whole-grain diets -- whole wheat/brown rice, barley, or half wheat-rice/half barley) were each consumed for 5 weeks. Sciam reports that blood pressure decreased significantly during the all whole-grain diets. Systolic blood pressure, the top reading, declined by 2.2 mm Hg when the subjects consumed the Step I diet and declined by an additional 1.4 to 6.7 mm Hg while subjects consumed the whole-grain diets. Diastolic blood pressure, the lower reading, declined by 2 mm Hg on the Step I diet and was reduced an additional 2.9 to 3.7 mm Hg when whole-grains were added.  Among the men, the article reports, the greatest reduction in arterial pressure was observed during the half-and-half diet, while the greatest reduction in arterial pressure for women occurred during the diet with barley. Postmenopausal women were the least responsive.
Read more in the Scientific American.