Poor diet, little sleep, and lack of exercise don’t just take a toll on your waistline, they also take a toll on your cardiovascular health.
One of the most silent and deadly threats of a poor lifestyle is high cholesterol, which can present very few obvious symptoms.
Thankfully, it’s very easily reversed through simple dietary interventions. Most notably, eating more celery and grapefruit can help lower your blood pressure and blood lipid levels dramatically.
Here’s an easy way to get more of these superfoods in your daily diet.
Cholesterol-Busting Juice Recipe
Drink this every day to improve the health of your heart and arteries.
Ingredients:
- 1 grapefruit
- 2 stalks of celery
- ¼ lemon
- ½-inch ginger (optional)
Instructions:
- Place all the ingredients in a juicer or blender.
- If necessary, strain the juice before consuming.
- Enjoy immediately
Warning: If you’re on any medication, do not eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice as it can amplify their desired bioavailability and lead to overdose (1).
Grapefruit is known to affect:
- Certain cholesterol medications (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Vytorin)
- Antihistamines
- Blood pressure medications (Adalat, Procardia, Plendil, Nitrendipine)
- Some psychiatric drugs: (Halcion, Zoloft, Versed, Valium, Tegretol, Buspar)
- Immune suppressants
- Methadone and some other pain medications
- Viagra and erectile dysfunction drugs
Before drinking this juice or consuming ANY grapefruit, talk to your doctor.
How It Works
Celery contains 3-n-butyl phthalide (3nB), a compound which gives the vegetable its distinctive odor and taste. The compound also lowers blood pressure. The father of a researcher who studied the phenomena inspired his research after lowering this blood pressure from 158/96 to 118/82 after eating a quarter-pound of celery daily for 1 week.
The vegetable works by acting as a diuretic to filter toxins out of the blood and as a vasodilator to increase the elasticity of the blood vessels to lower blood pressure (2).
Additionally, celery phthalides act as smooth muscle relaxants by impacting the flow of calcium and potassium inside cells and related nervous system activity. As muscles around blood vessels relax, the vessels expand and blood pressure drops.
Researchers from the University of Chicago found that 4 stalks of celery a day could potentially lower blood pressure by 12 to 14 percent and reduce cholesterol by about 7 percent (3).
Lastly, the vegetable has the ability to lower inflammation, improve the integrity of the stomach lining, decrease the risk of stomach ulcer, regulate stomach secretions, fight cancer, combat obesity, prevent diabetes, and fight insomnia (4).
Grapefruit contains a flavonoid called naringenin, which has the ability to treat diabetes, keep cholesterol in check, and prevent other metabolic disorders (5).
It increases fatty acid oxidation and lowers cholesterol and bile acid production in the liver. The fruit also has a positive effect on cholesterol metabolism, kidney function, blood sugar levels, and insulin response (6).
One study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry questioned whether red grapefruit or white grapefruit worked best by examining 57 people with high cholesterol who had had coronary bypass surgery at least a year before the experiment. All participants had unsuccessfully undergone cholesterol drug treatment (7).
After 30 days of low-calorie, low-fat diet with either added a daily red grapefruit, a white grapefruit, or no fruit, all patients experienced lower cholesterol levels. The red grapefruit group saw the best improvement and were the only group to also improve their triglycerides levels.