High blood pressure? Try eating tuna and bananas, says the Gut Health Guru DR MEGAN ROSSI - Daily Mail

Yet many people don’t seem to regard high blood pressure — the most common long-term health condition in this country — as a big deal, even though it is very much a silent killer.

Those figures rise for all sorts of reasons, but alongside smoking and excess weight, a major risk is age, as your arteries lose their elasticity and have to exert more pressure to push the blood along.

But if you thought high blood pressure was something affecting only older people, research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that, on average, once you hit 40, the systolic figure rises by around 7mmHg per decade.

A study in the Journal of Hypertension in 2018 found that people who ate yoghurt more than five times a week had a 19 per cent lower risk of high blood pressure than those who didn’t eat it.

Try splitting your white wine with sparkling water — a review in The Lancet in 2017 found that those who drank six or more units and who halved their intake reduced their systolic blood pressure by around 5mmHg.

Analysis by the respected Cochrane Collaboration of 20 randomised control trials found that eating 500-750mg flavanols a day (25-40g of at least 85 per cent cocoa solids chocolate) resulted in a 2-3mmHg drop in blood pressure after two to 18 weeks.