Sweets & Blood Pressure

You might think about cutting out the sweets to drop a pound or two but how about cutting them out to improve your blood pressure?

We all take in plenty of sweets and these days more people are battling with high blood pressure—well now the two might actually be connected.

Over the last one hundred years or so the number of people with high blood pressure has tripled. The number of products with fructose sweeteners has also gone up dramatically during the same time. So researchers decided to see if the two were connected. After interviewing over 4,000 adults, here's what they found. On the average, adults consumed 74 grams of fructose per day, or the equivalent of 2 and ½ soft drinks every single day. About one third of those surveyed also had borderline blood pressure and eight percent had high blood pressure with values above 140 over 90.

The connection comes from the fact those consuming the most fructose were also more likely to have high blood pressure. And this might account for part of the reason blood pressures have risen dramatically over the last century.

Of course, it's hard to make a direct connection between the two and the Corn Refiners Association, a US trade group representing sweetener refiners, says this is a flawed study to begin with. But cutting out sweets is something most of us need to do anyway and that might also help keep your blood pressure under control.