Yoghurt is good for your blood pressure, study finds

WOMEN who eat five or more servings of yoghurt a week are less likely to develop high blood pressure, research has found.

The risk was reduced by a fifth, compared with people who ate just one portion of yoghurt a month, it suggests.

The effect was most noticeable in women because men eat much less yoghurt, the researchers said.

The benefits of eating yoghurt this often was more pronounced in those who also ate lots of fruit, vegetables, nuts and beans – a 31% reduction in risk for high blood pres- sure, compared with those who rarely ate them and ate yoghurt just once a month.

Justin Buendia, a PhD candidate at Boston University School of Medicine in the US, said: ‘No one food is a magic bullet, but adding yoghurt to an otherwise healthy diet seems to help reduce the long-term risk of high blood pressure in women.

‘I believe that this is the largest study of its kind to date to evaluate the specific effects of yogurt on blood pressure.’ The researcher presented the study – the largest of its kind, involving data from hundreds of thousands of people – at a conference of the American Heart Association.

He said: ‘Our study shows that daily intake of dairy products, particularly yoghurt, lowers the risk of developing high blood pressure.’

Ms Buendia had no information on the types of yoghurt participants had eaten, adding: ‘It would be interesting to see if popular yoghurt types, such as Greek yoghurt, had different effects than regular yoghurt.’

The research was funded by the National Dairy Council in the US. It used data taken from studies of nurses’ health involving more than 240,000 people, mainly women between the ages of 25 and 55, and a second study of 51,000 health professionals, mostly men between 40 and 75.

How yoghurt reduces blood pressure was not explained, although theories suggest yoghurt bacteria may help to lower cholesterol, which can cause the restricted blood vessels that led to higher blood pressure.