Raena Morgan: Hello, I'm Raena Morgan with iHealthTube. I am visiting with Robert Kowalski, who is the author of The Blood Pressure Cure. Bob, you have a chapter that's devoted to secret weapons in the fight against hypertension, tomatoes?
Robert Kowalski: Well, as a matter of fact, if you were to eat 3 to 5 cooked tomatoes a day, you would lower your blood pressure.
Raena Morgan: Really?
Robert Kowalski: Do you want to do that? Do you want to eat 3 to 5 tomatoes a day?"
Raena Morgan: I don't usually.
Robert Kowalski: You don't usually. Well, I think you might it once or maybe 2 days in a row, or maybe, you know, in a week. But I don't think you want to eat 3 to 5 a day for the rest of your life and that's what it would take. Good news, however. They developed, a company developed an extract, it's literally a tomato extract that concentrates the antioxidants, the polyphenols, the flavonoids that are in the tomato. You get rid of the water, get rid of the skins, get rid of everything but this concentration. We've heard a lot about one of those called lycopene. Lycopene is one of the polyphenols, potent antioxidant found in tomatoes.
Raena Morgan: Right.
Robert Kowalski: The problem is that lycopene has no effect on blood pressure whatsoever. What they found was it takes the whole tomato extract in order to do it; or the 3 to 5 tomatoes a day which is, again, impractical. 2 studies done this one was actually done in Israel, where they raise acres and acres and acres of tomatoes and they've got the climate to do it 365 days a year, bumper crops of tomatoes, and they produce the tomato extract from that, containing all of these. Research 2 studies done in Israel, with, again, 2 different groups of people. One had a mild to moderate elevation in blood pressure just bordering on frank hypertension, which is 140/90.
Raena Morgan: All right.
Robert Kowalski: The other group of people had been identified sometime back as having hypertension and were already on a blood pressure lowering drug, but they weren't at target yet. In other words, the blood pressure drug brought their numbers down, but not enough. So at that point, doctors would normally either add a second drug to the regimen or increase the dosage of the first drug. Well, instead, they took that group and half of the group got an increase in dosage, half of the group got one little gel cap of the tomato extract called Lycomato that's what it's trademarked as. Low and behold, each of them had equal amounts of blood pressure lowering meaning that it was as effective as the prescription drug. Similarly, in the group that had just recently identified as having hypertension, taking again, the one gel cap, brought the blood pressure down, on average, by ten points.
Raena Morgan: Just the gel.
Robert Kowalski: Just the soft gel alone, that one little capsule, and it is little. That's important for a lot of people because it's really easy to swallow
Raena Morgan: Okay.
Robert Kowalski: It doesn't get stuck in the throat; it's not hard to get down.
Raena Morgan: Yes, because you would think, if you're consuming that many tomatoes and a capsule.
Robert Kowalski: Yeah, right. Exactly so, just one little-bitty, little-bitty capsule does the deed. Here's one of the, one of the reasons I include this in my secret weapons chapter is that when you use it in conjunction with the sustained released arginine, it works synergistically. The arginine acts as the building block of the nitric oxide, which relaxes the artery and allows for blood pressure lowering. The lycomato tomato extract will signal will sort of spark plug and start the process of the conversion of the amino acid into the nitric oxide. The two of them working together, again, working synergistically will give a very significant lowering of blood pressure.
Raena Morgan: And I'm guessing there are no side effects.
Robert Kowalski: This is the beauty of it. I'll tell you, the side effects of the prescription drugs used for blood pressure are really nasty. Anywhere between fatigue, dizziness, chronic cough, morning headache, sexual dysfunction definitely not something that most guys are looking forward to.
Raena Morgan: Right.
Robert Kowalski: And it's one category of drugs that doctors have the toughest time keeping their patients on with good reason with all those side effects.
Raena Morgan: I see.
Robert Kowalski: A lot of people if not most of the people with elevations in blood pressure, by using these natural means that I describe in The Blood Pressure Cure, we can do so without the use of those prescription drugs.
Raena Morgan: Well, that's very encouraging, Bob. Thank you for that.
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