The Use of Natural Products as an Adjunct in the Treatment of Hypertension: A Case Study with Mango-Ginger Tea

Abstract

A mango leaf-ginger combination was added to the pharmacologic regimen to improve the clinical management of chronic mid-grade hypertension (HTN) in an NIDDM patient with effective glycemic control. Measures of systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP respectively) were obtained for the 4 weeks of control monitoring when taking a multidrug pharmacologic treatment consisting of metoprolol succinate, losartan potassium, and amlodipine (MLA regimen) for 6 months or more, followed by 4 weeks of a mango leaf+ginger tea (MGT) combination. Measures of systolic (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) were obtained 6-12 hours after the multidrug regimen and resulted in a 13% decrease in both SBP and DBP after one week, a 17% reduction in both parameters after two weeks, and a 30% reduction at weeks 3 and 4 of the MGT trial. These results indicate that the addition of the MGT natural product regimen when added to the MLA treatment was contributing to a normalization of BP and an amelioration of HTN when the MLA regimen alone was incompletely effective due to multi-drug resistance or other factors.