Lower Blood Pressure with Peas?

Certain proteins found in the yellow garden pea appear to help lower blood pressure and delay, control or even prevent the onset of chronic kidney disease, at least in rats.

Yellow peas? Really? Yellow peas, as in … plain old yellow peas?

The answer is yes, and it reinforces an interesting principle, that the healthiest foods tend to be the pedestrian foods (those that are common, everyday, and cheap by the way).

This article‘s author, Dr. Aluko at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, has a great take on this as well.

“What we seem to have here is sort of a natural approach to treating this disease, as opposed to the normal pharmacological approach. We’re talking about an edible product, not a drug, which can help to reduce blood pressure and, at the same time, reduce the severely negative impact of kidney disease.”

After purifying a mix of yellow garden pea proteins, the researchers spent eight weeks feeding it to rats that had kidney disease. They found that blood pressure dropped 20 percent, compared with the blood pressure of untreated rats. They also found that kidney function improved by upwards of 30 percent.