Help control your blood pressure with cherries
Q: I am interested in using cherries or cherry juice for blood pressure control, but I have a few questions about dosing.
There are three different vendors of concentrated tart cherry juice at my local store. Each advises a different dosing of juice, from 2 tablespoons to 8 ounces of concentrated juice. (All advise mixing with something.) This is a large difference in dose.
What is the actual dose recommended? Is one dose in the morning enough, or should I be taking it twice a day?
I’d like to take dried tart cherries in my morning oatmeal (rather than juice), but I can’t find anything about an appropriate dose. For years, I’ve been adding a few dried cranberries to my oatmeal each morning to make it less boring.
Do dried cranberries contain the same active ingredient as dried cherries? If so, what would be the effective dose of cranberries? My BP increases yearly, so I must not be taking enough.
A: Both tart cherries and cranberries appear to inhibit angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE). This means they work on the same pathway as several popular blood pressure pills, such as lisinopril.
Trying to determine the most effective dose of dried fruit or juice is challenging. One randomized controlled trial found that 480 milliliters (about 2 cups) of tart cherry juice daily lowered systolic blood pressure and LDL cholesterol (Food & Function, June 20, 2018).
The only way to tell if such approaches are helpful for you would be to monitor your BP periodically throughout the day.
Q: In the past, when I would get the hiccups, they would last all day, off and on, no matter what I did. One day I was having a really persistent bout and thought, “I wonder what would happen if I took some Rolaids?” I popped a few flavored Rolaids into my mouth, crunched them down and shazam — within seconds, the pesky, annoying hiccups were gone. It’s worked for me several times since, and it’s a real relief.
A: We have been writing about hiccup remedies for decades. Most are based on personal experiences like yours, but occasionally we’ll spot something in the medical literature.
The first we found was in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 23, 1971. A doctor tested a spoonful of white sugar on 20 patients with persistent hiccups and reported that 19 got quick relief from their hiccups.
We suspect that sugar, like your Rolaids, work by stimulating the phrenic nerve in the palate. This in turn triggers the vagus nerve and apparently reverses the involuntary contraction of the diaphragm. Strong flavors may also play a role.
Q: Mosquitoes love me. I used to go to a lake in Ontario for a couple of weeks each summer. The fishing was awesome, but the mosquitoes were big and plentiful and would bite me, leaving lots of raised welts that itched like crazy.
Then my aunt (an operating room nurse) told all of us to start taking vitamin B1 (100 mg once a day) for two weeks before we leave for Canada. It worked like a charm.
Mosquitoes would descend upon our boat and land on my bare skin, then take off without biting! I was able to enjoy fishing without being bitten once. I swear by the vitamin B1.
A: Vitamin B1 (thiamine) has been controversial as a mosquito repellent. Many people, like you, report benefit from oral doses. However, a study found no effectiveness (Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, June 2005).
On the other hand, a tiny pilot study recently demonstrated that thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B1) can be effective as a topical mosquito repellent (Biological and Pharmaceutical Bulletin, February 2020).