Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Could a little Grana Padano drop your BP? cheese

First 4 paragraphs here, rest at link. I have no idea if you can get it.
http://www.theheart.org/article/1394517.do?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=20120507_EN_Heartwire
Integrating a particular type of Italian cheese, Grana Padano, into the usual diet of mildly hypertensive patients not taking any ACE inhibitors or angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) resulted in a significant drop in mean blood pressure of 7 to 8 mm Hg compared with control patients, preliminary research shows [1].
Dr Giuseppe Crippa
Dr Giuseppe Crippa
This type of antihypertensive effect is similar to that seen in trials of blood-pressure-lowering drugs, Dr Giuseppe Crippa (Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital, Piacenza, Italy) told heartwire.
Crippa reported his findings in a poster here at the recent European Society of Hypertension (ESH) European Meeting on Hypertension 2012. "Grana Padano is a semihard fat cheese that has a high concentration of two particular tripeptides—produced during the fermentation process by proteinases from Lactobacillus helveticus—which have an ACE-inhibitor effect that has been demonstrated both in humans and in animals [2,3]," he said.
He suggests that people with slightly elevated blood pressure could substitute this cheese in preference to other cheeses or other products in their diet for an antihypertensive effect. But in people already taking ACE inhibitors or ARBs, the cheese likely wouldn't have much additional BP-lowering effect, he noted.

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