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mmpetunia wrote:i began this wanting to come at it somewhat scientifically and given that i work on a hospital unit i decided i would begin with taking my blood pressure each day i worked 3-4 times a week and keep track of the results. they ranged from 110's over 60-70's with a heart rate in the 60's each time. once while taking my blood pressure a doctor saw me and asked what i was up to. i explained that i was going to try drinking hibiscus tea to regulate my blood pressure. i told him about my often borderline high readings and my family history of high blood pressure. his response was that my pressures were fine. they were healthy and nothing to worry about and that parameters for healthy blood pressures had changed again to say that anything under 140/80 was totally fine (this is a doc who rounds on a brain injury unit with a large percentage of the patients being hypertensive stroke victims so i guess he knows what he's talking about)...eh what?! haha they have changed again?!

NHE wrote:As my blood pressure has been on the high side, e.g., 138/90, I have decided to give the hibiscus tea a trial. The docs have been wanting to put me on meds, but I don't like what I've read about them in the prescribing information (especially for the beta blocker). I just received a pound of the bulk hibiscus tea. It's been three days now drinking about 14 oz of tea with approx. two tea bags worth of hibiscus. My blood pressure was 125/79 this afternoon so I'm happy about that. It will be interesting to see if it stays low. Note that I'm also taking 50 mg/day of pterostilbene which has been found to be helpful for blood pressure, but at 3x the dose I'm using. My blood pressure monitoring has been ambiguous as to whether or not the pterostilbene has been helping, e.g., some days it's up, some days it's down.

NHE wrote:

NHE wrote:As my blood pressure has been on the high side, e.g., 138/90, I have decided to give the hibiscus tea a trial. The docs have been wanting to put me on meds, but I don't like what I've read about them in the prescribing information (especially for the beta blocker). I just received a pound of the bulk hibiscus tea. It's been three days now drinking about 14 oz of tea with approx. two tea bags worth of hibiscus. My blood pressure was 125/79 this afternoon so I'm happy about that. It will be interesting to see if it stays low. Note that I'm also taking 50 mg/day of pterostilbene which has been found to be helpful for blood pressure, but at 3x the dose I'm using. My blood pressure monitoring has been ambiguous as to whether or not the pterostilbene has been helping, e.g., some days it's up, some days it's down.

I drank the hibiscus tea for about 4 or 5 weeks. My blood pressure got down to 113/79. However, I had to stop since the diuretic effect of hibiscus was becoming a problem. I was losing more fluid than I was consuming and sometimes I had to pee within 5 minutes or so of just having gone. It seems that now I get a strong diuretic effect from just one cup so I have to be conservative about when I drink it. However, my blood pressure continues to stay low. I attribute this to the pterostilbene that I'm taking. Eating 10-15 dark red cherries every couple of days or so also seems to help. Is there anybody else experimenting with hibiscus?