Amla Powder for Blood Pressure?
Indian gooseberry (Phyllanthus Emblica) is a medicinal fruit native to India and Southeast Asia. Sometimes referred to as amla or amla fruit, this berry features heavily in Ayurvedic medicine, where it is used as a cure-all for health problems ranging from heart disease and high blood glucose to hair growth.
However, what separates this folk remedy from many others is the fact that it actually works. Research has shown a rapidly growing list of evidence-based benefits of amla, which may make it the most powerful plant-based medicine on the planet. It can even improve thyroid health.
In this article, we’ll explore one of these benefits — amla’s ability to help your blood pressure — in detail.
Table of Contents
What Science Says About Amla Powder and Blood Pressure
Multiple studies have shown that amla berries help lower your blood pressure, alongside a wide variety of other cardiovascular benefits.
One study tested amla against Simvastatin, a commonly prescribed statin medication, comparing a 500mg capsule of amla per day to a common 20 mg dose of the artificial medication.
The amla treatment significantly lowered blood pressure in almost 75% of subjects with high pressure, an effect that was more prevalent in amla treatment than the traditional medication.
In addition, amla was found to:
- Lower total cholesterol levels
- Lower LDL cholesterol
- Lower VLDL cholesterol
- Lower triglycerides
- Significantly increase HDL (“good”) cholesterol
All at rates comparable to the widely prescribed statin medication Simvastatin.
A Repeatable Study
Researchers around the world have continued to document the positive blood pressure effects of amla, as well as its comprehensive cardiovascular effects through clinical trials.
The result is a strong, and growing body of evidence of amla’s potential as a natural hypertensive medication, one that could potentially provide an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs.
In the next section, we’ll touch on some of the other ways that amla can improve your overall cardiovascular health.
Other Ways Amla Can Help Heart Disease
There are many risk factors that can negatively affect your cardiovascular health. These include high cholesterol, high blood glucose, obesity, and inflammation, all of which can increase oxidative stress and increase your risk for heart disease.
Amla is incredibly potent for heart health because it improves these risk factors and lowers your risk for cardiovascular disease.
Amla vs. High Cholesterol
As we mentioned above, amla can lower high cholesterol. One multicenter clinical trial published in 2019 demonstrated that amla taken daily for 12 weeks significantly reduced:
- Total cholesterol levels
- Triglycerides
- LDL (bad) cholesterol
- And VLDL cholesterol
Amla’s ability to lower cholesterol has been widely repeated, reinforcing amla’s potential as a natural shield against heart disease.
Amla vs High Blood Glucose
High blood glucose (commonly a side effect of diabetes) is a direct risk factor for heart disease. However, amla can help here too.
Research has shown that amla taken daily can lower your blood glucose as much as leading diabetes medication. After 21 days with either 1, 2, or 3 grams of amla powder, subjects decreased fasting and postprandial blood glucose.
This wasn’t an isolated study either, as multiple other studies have explored the antidiabetic effects of amla and repeatedly shown amla’s powerful glucose-lowering properties.
Amla for Weight Loss
Obesity is another powerful risk factor for heart disease, and another investigation found that amla helped stimulate weight loss.
In the study, 30 obese subjects drank a 20 ml of fresh amla juice and 20 ml of water on an empty stomach in the morning and evening for 45 days. Over the course of the study, subjects lost an average of 6.8 kg and reduced their BMI by 3.73 kg/m2.
These effects are still being studied, but as a whole, they show promise for amla as an effective treatment for weight loss in overweight or obese adults.
Amla’s Anti-Inflammatory and Immune Effects
Inflammation and oxidative stress are both risk factors for heart disease and stroke, an area where amla has a positive benefit as well.
In addition to its medicinal effects, amla also happens to be the most powerful natural antioxidant on the planet, along with a Vitamin C value 20x more per weight than common citrus.
Together, these nutrients help ensure that the body is able to more effectively fight inflammation, and scavenge free radicals (the cause of oxidative stress).
These nutrients also have the added effect of boosting your immune system, which helps reduce risk of many other infections and diseases (which can often increase your risk for heart disease).
Are There Any Side Effects of Taking Amla Powder for Blood Pressure?
Allergic reactions to amla fruit are rare, and there are no major clinical side effects associated with amla.
However, there are two factors to be aware when considering integrating amla into your diet:
- Amla lowers your blood pressure and helps reduce inflammation. However, this may increase the risk for bleeding or bruising in people with bleeding disorders, or during surgery. If you’re planning a surgery, discuss any new medicine or supplement with your doctor, including amla.
- Amla lowers your blood glucose when taken consistently, and as a result, it may increase your risk of hypoglycemia. Fortunately, if needed you can simply stop eating amla, and your blood glucose will likely rebound relatively quickly.
Other Health Benefits of Amla Powder
At the beginning of this article, we mentioned how amla was used as a cure-all in Ayurvedic medicine, and continued research has begun to support even more health benefits of amla.
For example, data from the European Journal of Cancer Prevention show that the benefits of amla may include:
- Antibacterial
- Antifungal
- Antiviral
- Antidiabetic
- Antioxidant
- Anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory
- Gastroprotective
- Wound healing
- Antidiarrheal
- Hepatoprotective
- Nephroprotective, and
- Neuroprotective effects
If you’d like to read more, we go into much more detail in our comprehensive guide to amla’s benefits.
How to Try Amla Powder
All of these potent health benefits lead to a key question: why hasn’t Amla Powder caught on more widely?
The answer is for two reasons. The first is that it’s very difficult to source organic, high-quality amla berries, even inside India and southeast Asia. Second, even though there are many ways to add amla to your diet, amla powder has a bitter and sour taste that can be off putting.
Fortunately, we’ve solved both issues with Amla Green. With organically sourced, wild-grown amla, we formulate a 20x concentrated powder mixed with green tea or hibiscus tea.
The result is a powerful, tasty powder with all the benefits of amla and none of the negative taste.
We’re thrilled to be able to share amla with more people around the world, so as a result we’re offering a risk-free trial for your first batch. Try it, and if you don’t like it, we offer a money-back guarantee.
Amla Green has strict guidelines for scientific references in our articles, and we rely on peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, governmental organizations, and reputable medical organizations. We do our best to avoid using non evidence-based references in all articles. The references in this article are listed below.
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