Certain foods may keep blood pressure healthy, study says

A new study suggests than eating an apple and a pear a day may help keep blood pressure under control -- a benefit partly explained by gut bacteria.

According to the researchers adults who regularly ate certain foods -- apples, pears, berries and red wine -- tended to have lower blood pressure than their peers.

This is because those foods  have high amount of antioxidant plant compounds called flavonoids.

Flavonoids can be a boon to heart health, by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, and improving blood vessel function, among other things.

Flavonoid-rich foods were linked to greater diversity in the gut microbiome -- the vast collection of bacteria that naturally dwell in the digestive system. And microbiome diversity seemed to partly explain the foods' benefits on blood pressure.

Gut bacteria play an important role in processing flavonoids so they can do their job, explained senior researcher Aedin Cassidy, a professor at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In the new study, Cassidy's team found that people who ate the most flavonoid-rich foods had, on average, more gut bacteria diversity. Greater diversity in certain bacteria was, in turn, tied to lower systolic blood pressure -- the "top" number in a blood pressure reading.

Equal benefits were seen among people who drank just under three glasses of red wine per week.