The National Institutes of Health advises people with high blood pressure to consume foods with at least twice the potassium to sodium. A tomato has 292 milligrams of potassium but only 6.15 milligrams of sodium. Tomatoes will also help keep your fluids in balance because they’re 94% water.
A 2023 study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that among more than 7,000 people aged 55 to 80 years old, people with high blood pressure who ate more tomatoes had lower diastolic blood pressure. Also, people who already had mild high blood pressure had lower high blood pressure if they ate a moderate amount of tomatoes. Those eating more than 110 grams of tomatoes a day (about a large tomato) had a 36% lower risk of high blood pressure than those eating fewer than 44 grams a day.
The lycopene in tomatoes is a powerful carotenoid that has 10 times the antioxidant power of vitamin E. It might be the lycopene that is key to lowering blood pressure without medication. According to a 2022 systematic review in the Journal of Herbal Medicine, lycopene supplements can reduce systolic blood pressure by an average of 2.63 points. Lycopene works best in people who already have high blood pressure, especially if they take 15 milligrams of lycopene for at least 8 weeks.
