Research shows that the trillions of microbes living in your digestive system could play an important role in managing high blood pressure (hypertension). Read on for more about your gut microbiome and how it may affect your blood pressure management efforts.
What’s the Gut Got to Do With Blood Pressure Management?
You likely know that lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, sleep, and stress influence your blood pressure. But scientists now recognize your microbiome — the collection of microorganisms dwelling in your intestines — as another contributor.
Research demonstrates that gut microbes and their byproducts interact with and alter physiological processes that can raise or reduce blood pressure. An imbalanced microbiome (dysbiosis) is common in those with hypertension.
Multiple human and animal studies have even shown that transplanting gut microbes from those with high blood pressure causes it in previously healthy recipients.
Clearly, a symbiotic relationship with your resident microbes supports ideal blood pressure. When this harmony goes awry, your risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and dementia also rises.
However, research indicates that tending to your microbiome could be a promising intervention for combatting hypertension in cases where lifestyle and pharmaceutical options on their own just aren’t cutting it.
How Gut Microbes Influence Blood Pressure
Scientists are still working to determine precisely how intestinal flora affects blood pressure. However, research points to three primary pathways of communication between your gut inhabitants and your cardiovascular system.
Short-Chain Fatty Acid Production
The fiber you eat gets fermented by gut microbes such as Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus into short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) such as butyrate, acetate, and propionate.
These SCFAs get rapidly absorbed into circulation and bind to immune receptors present in blood vessels, kidney tissue, and blood pressure-regulating endocrine glands.
SCFA receptor signaling prompts the widening of blood vessels, increased kidney sodium and fluid excretion, and other anti-hypertensive effects. Having an abundance of SCFA-generating bacteria is associated with lower cardiovascular disease and hypertension risk. Depletions link to higher blood pressure.
Immune System Interactions
Your gut holds around 70% – 80% of the body’s total immune cells. Intestinal microbes constantly communicate with them, influencing inflammatory pathways tied to blood pressure elevations when overactivated.
Certain pathogenic bacteria can stimulate pro-inflammatory immune messengers called cytokines. Research shows transplanting these bacteria may raise blood pressure. SCFAs and other microbial byproducts conversely curb inflammation.
Losing regulatory species that keep inflammation in check allows it to spiral, which makes it difficult for your vessels to relax normally. Therefore, slowing runaway inflammation by improving the state of your microbiome may reverse its hypertensive effects.
Nervous System Signaling
Your gut microbes interface closely with the enteric nervous system lining your digestive tract. This is an extensive neural network dubbed your “second brain” that directly talks with the central nervous system in your brain and spinal cord.
Substances produced by gut microbes can activate blood pressure-regulating pathways in the nerves of both systems. They may also degrade the intestinal lining, enabling bacteria to infiltrate this nerve highway.
Research shows a leaky, irritated gut barrier common in hypertension, allowing rampant inflammation from endotoxin release. Strengthening the gut lining curtails inflammation and neuroendocrine dysfunction. Probiotic treatments enhance barrier integrity to support healthy nervous system signaling.
Diet, Stress, and Microbiome Imbalance
Each person’s gut microbiome is as unique as a fingerprint. However, the general hallmarks of a “healthy” gut flora include high microbial diversity and a balance of symbiotic species that keep inflammatory bacteria in check.
Multiple influences easily push your microbiome into an unstable state prone to pro-inflammatory immune signaling that boosts blood pressure. Major disrupters include:
High-Salt Diets
Heavy sodium intake not only directly impacts blood pressure through fluid retention. Human and animal studies reveal it also lowers anti-inflammatory Lactobacilli species while increasing other bacteria.
This salt-induced dysbiosis creates an inflammatory-leaning profile that compels vessels to constrict and prompts pressure increases through neuroendocrine activation.
Western High-Fat/Low-Fiber Diets
Following the Standard American Diet, which is high in fat, salt, and sugar while scant on produce, depletes SCFA-producing fiber fermenters such as Bifidobacteria and Faecalibacterium.
Rat studies show that when gut bacteria become imbalanced, it can lead to high blood pressure. When the imbalanced gut bacteria from a rat with high blood pressure are transferred to a normal rat, it can cause high blood pressure in the normal rat, too.
Chronic Stress
Stress pathways involving nervous, endocrine, and immune communication run right through your intestinal microenvironment. Chronic stressors such as anxiety, work strain, and social isolation reshape your microbiome into a pro-inflammatory state that favors hypertension development.
Antibiotics and Medications
Antibiotics, though sometimes necessary to fight infection, decimate microbial populations in varying degrees and alter future redevelopment. Wiping out regulatory species permits pathological strains to take over and inflammation to dominate.
Other common medications such as antacids, certain pain relievers, and diabetes drugs also influence gut microbe composition in ways that encourage dysbiosis.
Caring for Your Microbiome May Improve Blood Pressure Management
Human studies show that compared to those with ideal blood pressure, hypertensive adults have less microbial diversity, fewer SCFA-producing bacteria (Roseburia, Faecalibacterium), and a dominance of blood pressure-elevating microbes such as Klebsiella.
Though much research remains necessary, these preliminary findings reveal that tending to your microbiome as therapy holds promise for stubborn high blood pressure.
Diet: Fiber and Fermented Food Nourishment
Focus your diet on incorporating more high-fiber plant foods and fermented items naturally abundant in microbe-derived SCFAs. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes feed SCFA producers. Enjoy yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and kombucha to directly increase SCFA intake.
Probiotics: Supplemental Microbes
Probiotic supplements deliver concentrations of potentially beneficial bacterial species that have been shown in studies to increase microbial diversity, shift gut flora ratio away from pathological strains, and improve various markers of cardiovascular health. Multi-species blends lasting at least 8 weeks may offer an adjunct for lowering blood pressure. Discuss appropriateness with your doctor.
Prebiotics: Microbe Fertilizers
Prebiotics are non-digestible compounds in certain plant foods that selectively nourish existing commensal species. Focus on getting ample complex carbohydrates such as pectin and inulin found in artichokes, garlic, onions, apples, and various supplements to preferentially fertilize SCFA-producing bacteria.
Imperial Center Family Medicine Provides Integrative Medicine for Microbiome and Blood Pressure Management
Achieving ideal blood pressure is foundational for preserving heart, brain, and kidney health into older age. Integrative therapies such as probiotics alongside primary doctor visits expand traditional care to target the gut-blood pressure connection from all angles.
Imperial Center Family Medicine in Durham, NC is here to help with integrative cardiology programs personalized around your needs. Contact us at 919-873-4437 or through our website to schedule an appointment.
Our compassionate practitioners help patients implement lifestyle and supplemental therapies while skillfully managing medications for lasting blood pressure wellness.