You can't feel high blood pressure. That's the problem.
16 million people in the UK have it. Nearly 5 million don't know. Most of the rest were told to keep an eye on it and sent home.
Five questions. At the end you'll see where you stand.
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Where are you with your blood pressure right now?
No wrong answer. Most people land somewhere in the middle.
“It's just your age.”
You've probably heard that one. It's true, and it explains nothing, so here is what is actually going on.
Your body makes a gas called nitric oxide. Its job is to tell the muscle in your artery walls to relax, which widens the artery and lets blood through more easily. By 40 you make roughly half what you made at 20.
(Nitric oxide, not nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is the laughing gas at the dentist. Different gas, different job, easily confused.)
Narrower arteries, the same heart, the same amount of blood to move. More pressure against the walls. That is the number going up, and it is what "it's just your age" is describing without ever saying.
When you raised your blood pressure with your GP, what did they say?
This is the part most people find familiar.
You are very much not on your own.
The salt advice is good advice and it is worth doing. It is also slow, and it only addresses what you put in. The last number is the interesting one, because it points at something you can add rather than something you have to give up.
Which of these apply to you?
High blood pressure has no symptoms of its own. Changes in your circulation sometimes do, and those are easier to notice.
So how do you raise nitric oxide?
Through what you eat, mostly. Your body does not absorb nitric oxide directly. It builds it, and certain plants carry the raw materials.
Dietary nitrate
Beetroot, rocket and spinach are the richest sources. Your body converts nitrate through to nitric oxide. This is the pathway the Kapil trial looked at.
Hibiscus
A flower, drunk as a tea across West Africa and Central America for generations. The next screen is about this one, because the research on it surprises people.
Polyphenols
Found in grape seed, berries and cocoa. Studied for their part in how the lining of your blood vessels behaves.
The catch with all three is dose. Getting a meaningful amount from food alone means quantities most people will not eat daily, which is the entire reason the supplement shelf exists.
What have you already tried?
Tick everything that applies. Be honest, it changes what we would tell you.
Most people guess beetroot. The answer is a flower.
Ask anyone which natural ingredient has the strongest research behind it for blood pressure and they will say beetroot. Beetroot is genuinely useful. But the ingredient researchers have been bold enough to test head to head against actual blood pressure medication is hibiscus.
Hibiscus vs captopril
A randomised controlled trial put a daily hibiscus infusion against captopril, 25mg twice a day, over four weeks. The two produced comparable reductions in blood pressure.
Hibiscus vs lisinopril
A randomised, double blind trial of 171 patients compared a standardised hibiscus extract with lisinopril, 10mg. Again the hibiscus arm produced a meaningful reduction.
Herrera-Arellano et al., 2004 and 2007. Captopril and lisinopril are ACE inhibitors, two of the most commonly prescribed blood pressure medicines in the UK.
Which brings us to the important bit. If hibiscus can do that, it can also add to what your medication is already doing. That is a real interaction, not a theoretical one, and it is the single most common question we get. If you take an ACE inhibitor or an ARB, ramipril, lisinopril, losartan or similar, speak to your GP or pharmacist before you start. Do not stop your medication. Nobody should be swapping a prescription for a flower.
Do you track your blood pressure at home?
No judgement in this one. Most people do not.
One reading tells you almost nothing.
Blood pressure moves all day. It is higher when you have rushed, when you are cold, when you have had a coffee, when you are being watched by a nurse. A single number is a snapshot of one moment, and treating it as a verdict is how people end up anxious rather than informed.
The thing that actually matters is the direction of travel over weeks and months. That is what a clinician looks at, and it is the one thing a single reading can never show you.
“In clinical practice, we never assess blood pressure from a single reading. We look at trends over weeks and months. The fact that Matter provides a free blood pressure tracker and encourages patients to monitor their trend rather than panic over individual numbers tells me they understand how cardiovascular health actually works.”
The tracker is free, and it is free whether you buy anything or not. Log a reading whenever you take one, and it shows you the trend line instead of the noise. If you are going to change anything about your routine, take a reading before you start. Otherwise you will have no way of knowing.
You are a reasonable fit for Daily Beets.
Based on what you told us
Daily Beets is a food supplement built around the three ingredients from the earlier screens: hibiscus at 700mg, grape seed at 200mg and beetroot at 150mg of a 50:1 extract, plus a B vitamin complex. Two capsules a day.
The one claim we can make flatly. Thiamine, vitamin B1, contributes to the normal function of the heart. That is an authorised health claim held to a regulatory standard. The hibiscus, beetroot and grape seed positions are research on those ingredients, which is a weaker and more honest thing to say. We would rather tell you which is which than blur the two together.
Reviewed by a cardiologist who sees BP patients every day.
“I wouldn't put my name behind something I hadn't scrutinised, and I wouldn't recommend it to my own patients if I had any doubts about the science.”
Dr Syed Nouman Kazmi · MBBS, FCPS · Consultant Cardiologist (PMDC Verified)
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Daily Beets is a food supplement, not a medicine, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This check is not a medical assessment and does not provide a diagnosis. If you have been prescribed medication for your blood pressure, keep taking it. Speak to your GP or pharmacist before starting any supplement, particularly if you take an ACE inhibitor or an ARB.