This Everyday Ingredient Skyrockets High Blood Pressure by 77%

Not-so-fun fact: close to 1 out of 3 Americans suffer from high blood pressure.

But if you strapped yourself into a time machine and traveled 100 years into the past, things would be different. Oh, aside from the Model T Fords roaming the streets.

You see, nearly a century ago, only 5% of the population had blood pressure higher than 140/90.

But now, close to 40% of us have high blood pressure.

Not good.

So, what caused this unfortunate situation? Good question.

Maybe it was air pollution or more stress.

Actually, it turns out that there’s a pretty common ingredient that shoots your blood pressure up much more than salt.

And today this ingredient is just about everywhere. Definitely not good.

Stay away from sodium, they say (“they” being just about anyone who’s shared health advice with you), if you want to keep your blood pressure down. And that’s (probably) what you’ve been doing.

This bad guy goes by the name high fructose corn syrup or HFCS and dramatically increases the risk of developing high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. How do we know this?

Well, researchers at Colorado University carefully studied 4,528 healthy adults aged 18 years or older. To be included in this research, the participants had to have no prior history of high blood pressure.

Next, the participants filled out a questionnaire related to their eating and drinking habits.

The results were interesting, to say the least. Here’s what went down at Colorado University:

• Individuals, who consumed 74 grams or more of high fructose corn syrup, every day, had a whopping 77% greater risk of having blood pressure levels of extremely high readings – over 160/100 mmHg. The bad news? HFCS is found in soda drinks, which many consume on a regular basis.

• And there’s more: consuming more than 74 grams of HFCS on a daily basis increases the risk of pre-hypertensive (135.85) blood pressure by 26% and mildly hypertensive (140/90) by 30%.

What’s particularly disturbing is that the average American consumes 70 grams of high fructose corn syrup every day! A scary phenomenon, indeed – especially when you compare that to 100 years ago, when the average fructose intake was only around 15 grams a day, and mostly from fruits and vegetables.

A little math reveals that nowadays we consume 500% more fructose than a century ago.

Why did this end up happening? The drastic change in American diets occurred right about the time when big food and beverage companies switched from regular table sugar (known as sucrose) to corn syrup in the late 1900s, after discovering that high fructose corn syrup was cheaper. Unfortunately, today HFCS is found in most processed and pre-packaged foods.

Researchers also explain that consumption of HFCS drastically increases the levels of uric acid. Within minutes of ingestion of HFCS, the levels of uric acid spike up, greatly affecting the elasticity of blood vessels, causing the sudden blood pressure rise. It’s been known that increased levels of uric acid are often associated with arthritis inflammation, type 2 diabetes, obesity, kidney and cardiovascular diseases.

If you believe that you are at risk of developing one of these dangerous conditions it is possible to check your uric acid levels to find out if you are sensitive to HFCS. However, a much better and more effective way is to switch to healthier eating habits. Try to stay away from processed, pre-made, pre-packed food that is loaded with HFCS and other unhealthy substances. Have at least 2 to 4 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day. Even though diet changes might help you a great deal to improve your cardiovascular health it might not drop those dangerously high blood pressure levels.

What would life be like if you could send your blood pressure running south? Well, one step toward finding out would be to follow this link and learn about simple, easy-to-do exercises that you can do, right now, to take that blood pressure down…