Some plants may help us reduce high blood pressure, and celery may be one of them.

But celery also contains relatively high levels of sodium, for a vegetable, about 100 milligrams of sodium in one cup of chopped celery.

Even though it's relatively high in

sodium, it also contains other compounds like NVP, the compound primarily responsible for celery's

taste and aroma, which can relax the smooth muscles that line blood vessels, potentially resulting

in lower blood pressure. And there are other compounds in celery that

likely have anti-hypertensive effects. But those are all based on rodent studies. And indeed,

celery seed appears to lower blood pressure in hypertensive rats, but what about humans?

You don't know until you put celery seed to the test, or in this case, celery seed extract,

in a randomized triple-blind, placebo-controlled crossover clinical trial.

After four weeks of taking the celery seed extract, systolic blood pressure dropped by at least

10 points and diastolic blood pressure by about 8 points.

But the whole celery seed

equivalent would be way more than people could eat. Is there anything a more modest sprinkle

of celery seed a day might help with? Look at this. Treatment of women's sexual dysfunction

using celery seed in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial. And this study used a culinary-friendly dose of celery seed, about 500 milligrams.

That's about a quarter teaspoon per capsule, three times per day.

At the end of six weeks, there was a significant improvement in the self-reported sexual functioning

among those eating celery seeds, with significant improvements across

multiple measures within just three weeks. What about celery juice? There was a case report of a

man who juiced a bunch of celery every day and had a drop in blood pressure, and what appeared

to be a non-randomized controlled trial in which an undisclosed amount of celery juice seemed to help. Our review concluded that celery can be considered an anti-hypertensive

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