High blood pressure is one of the biggest health problems around the world. It is a leading cause of early death that could often be prevented with the right care.
In the United States alone, nearly half of all adults are living with high blood pressure or trying to manage it.
A new study from Emory University has found a surprisingly simple way that might help—adding two common minerals, calcium and magnesium, to drinking water.
This discovery could be a game-changer. The study was led by Abu Mohammed Naser, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory, and it started in a coastal region of Bangladesh.
In this area, people mostly drink either pond water or water from underground sources (called groundwater). The team wanted to find out how these different types of water affected people’s health, especially their blood pressure.
The results were unexpected. People who drank salty water actually had lower blood pressure than those who drank fresh water. That’s surprising because salty water contains sodium, which is usually known for raising blood pressure. This strange result led the researchers to dig deeper.
When they tested the urine of people who drank salty water, they found higher levels of calcium and magnesium. This led to an important idea: maybe it wasn’t the sodium helping with blood pressure, but the extra calcium and magnesium in the salty water.
This made sense because past research has shown that these two minerals are important for keeping blood pressure under control.
The Emory researchers now suggest that putting calcium and magnesium into drinking water could be a simple and powerful way to help manage high blood pressure. This could be especially helpful for people at high risk or for those living in places where it’s hard to get regular healthcare or blood pressure medicine.
Of course, more research is needed to make sure this method really works and to find out the best way to add these minerals to drinking water safely. But this idea shows how simple steps could make a big difference in fighting health problems that affect millions of people.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. It highlights how something as basic as water—when enriched with the right minerals—could help save lives.
By adding calcium and magnesium to drinking water, we may be one step closer to better blood pressure control. For many people around the world, this could make staying healthy a little easier and a lot more affordable.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies that new research challenges conventional blood pressure guidelines and scientists make a big breakthrough in high blood pressure treatment.
For more about blood pressure, please read studies that widely used blood pressure drug may increase eye disease risk and common blood pressure drugs linked to cognitive decline.
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