Did you know that women who have gone through menopause have a greater risk of high blood pressure and stroke? There are several reasons for this.
• One is weight gain. Women don’t tend to get skinnier as they age; they tend to go the other way.
• Another is hormones. Estrogen is protective of the arteries.
• And another is lifestyle. Younger women tend to be much more fit, as exercise seems to magically go away as we age.
So just a few months ago, some researchers published a study showing a very interesting way for women to keep their arteries healthy even if they’re overweight and do nothing else.
To do the study, the authors looked at 41 obese postmenopausal women. They checked their blood pressure, their aortic blood pressure, their nitric oxide levels, and their arterial stiffness. All of which are indicators of hardening of the arteries leading to high blood pressure and strokes. Once they took the measurements, they divided the women into three groups.
They gave one group the amino acid l-citrulline. L-citrulline is an amino acid that can boost nitric oxide production. They gave the second group l-citrulline and had them work out regularly on a Power Plate. The Power Plate is a device that you can exercise on that vibrates your body during the exercise. This increases the intensity and optimizes the exercise effect. I’ve told my readers for years about all of the many health effects of exercising on a Power Plate. The third group used the Power Plate but did not get the l-citrulline. The researchers let the experiment go on for two months. Here’s what happened.
The women in all three groups had a similar decrease in their blood pressure and an increase in their nitric oxide levels. But the arterial stiffness reading decreased only in the Power Plate groups. According to the authors: “This study supports the effectiveness of WBVT [Power Plate] plus l-citrulline as a potential intervention for prevention of hypertension-related cardiac diseases in obese postmenopausal women.”
The Power Plate is probably the single most effective exercise tool out there. I don’t know of any other way to get such a powerful workout in only about 10 minutes, two to three times a week. If you’d like to order a Power Plate or get more information, click here.
L-citrulline is an amino acid that stimulates the production of nitric oxide. You can get citrulline online. But citrulline increases nitric oxide even more effectively when you combine it with nitrite, nitrate, and hawthorne extract.
Sources:
Wong, A., S. Alvarez-Alvarado, et al. “Combined whole-body vibration training and l-citrulline supplementation improves pressure wave reflection in obese postmenopausal women.” Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2015 November 17:1-6.