BP Defense is a new nutritional supplement that promises to support heart health using ingredients like hawthorn and Pycnogenol. Find out whether or not BP Defense is legit today in our review.
What is BP Defense?
BP Defense, also known as Blood Pressure Defense, is a nutritional supplement available online from its official website and through Amazon.com. It’s priced at around $25 for one container (30 servings).
Why take BP Defense? As the name suggests, BP Defense “defends” your “BP”, or blood pressure. The manufacturer recommends that you take two tablets per day to improve your cardiovascular health.
The key active ingredients in BP Defense include Hawthorn, L-Arginine, and L-Carnitine. These ingredients all work in pretty much the same way: they widen and relax your blood vessels, making it easier for blood to flow through and easing the pressure in your vessels. This can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease while also reducing your chance of heart attack or stroke.
Let’s take a closer look at how BP Defense works.
How Does BP Defense Work?
BP Defense uses a mixture of herbal extracts, plant compounds, and amino acids to lower your blood pressure. Some reviews online indicate that BP Defense is so effective that once you start taking it, you can stop taking your blood pressure medication (the manufacturer obviously does not recommend this).
Can plant and herbal extracts really have that much of an effect on your cardiovascular health?
The makers of BP Defense, Clinical Lifestyles, claim that the formulas were based on the observations and research performed by real health practitioners and scientists. It uses a combination of herbs, antioxidants, and amino acids to improve your cardiovascular health.
We’ll break down those key ingredients in further detail below. Based on the dosages listed, BP Defense seems to rely mainly on amino acids to widen your blood vessels. Amino acids like L-Arginine and L-Carnitine are popular among people of all fitness levels. Many bodybuilders take these amino acids before a workout, for example, to widen their blood vessels and increase their endurance.
Amino acids are backed by a significant amount of scientific evidence showing they work as advertised to improve cardiovascular health. Amino acids are widely recognized as a crucial part of your diet, and most of us get sufficient amino acids from the foods we eat.
Aside from the amino acids, BP Defense contains 500mg of hawthorn extract. Does this ingredient have proven effects on your health?
Dr. Christopher Hobbs recently answered this question at his website. He described hawthorn as a small tree or shrub that grows naturally throughout the Norther Hemisphere. For centuries, the flowers, fruits, and leaves of the tree have been used in tinctures and medicines. In fact, hawthorn is recognized as an official drug in the pharmacopeias of Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Switzerland. It can also be found as an ingredient in 213 European herbal formulas.
Dr. Hobbs goes on to explain that, “The extract of hawthorn can increase blood flow to the heart muscle itself, helping to counteract one of the most common modern causes of death in industrial countries – heart attack due to lack of blood flow to the heart.”
Dr. Hobbs cites studies on both animals and humans that show hawthorn worked by improving the contractility of the heart muscle, which means your heart pumps more efficiently.
Dr. Hobbs doesn’t mention the recommended dosage at his site. However, another doctor named Dr. Weil reports that most studies used dosages ranging from 500 to 1500mg per day.
Even WebMD.com – which is very careful about recommending herbal and natural treatments – claims that hawthorn is “possibly effective for heart failure”. However, they say that there’s insufficient evidence showing that it’s an effective treatment for low blood pressure.
BP Defense Ingredients
You take two capsules of BP Defense per day to support your cardiovascular health. Here’s the ingredients and dosages in each two capsule serving:
-99mg of Potassium
-500mg of Hawthorn (Crataegus Laevigata) (Extract of top branches with flowers) (Supplying 9mg [1.8%] vitexin-2 rhamnoside)
-300mg of L-Arginine (HCl)
-200mg of N-Acetyl L-Carnitine (HCl)
-100mg of Alpha-Lipoic Acid
-50mg of Hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa) (Flower extract)
-25mg of Celery (Apium graveloens) (seed extract) (Supplying 21mg [85%] Phthalides)
-20mg of Pycnogenol (Pine Bark Extract) (Supplying 12mg [60%] Proanthocyanins)
Overall, this is the type of transparent ingredient information we like to see from nutritional supplement manufacturers. We’ve reviewed too many nutritional supplements that hide their active ingredients behind proprietary formulas, or use ridiculously low dosages. BP Defense takes a different approach, and is open and honest about its full list of ingredients.
Overall, these dosages are well within the safe limits. As mentioned above, scientific studies on hawthorn have used up to 1500mg in each daily dose.
BP Defense Pricing
BP Defense is available from a number of different places online. Amazon has a listing for BP Defense, although it’s only through one reseller, who’s charging $59.99 for the supplement.
Another retailer, VitaCost, is selling BP Defense (60 tablets) at a price of $23.79. Most other sources we could find online have a price between $20 and $25.
Who Makes BP Defense?
BP Defense is made by a company named KAL. The company’s name came from its first product – a calcium phosphorous powder, which they launched all the way back in 1932. In the 1940s, KAL became one of the first nutritional supplement makers to launch multivitamin supplements – which was a crazy new concept at the time.
Today, the company sells dozens of nutritional supplements across a number of major brands, including AllOne, Perfect 7, LifeTime, Nature’s Life, VitaLogic, Allvia, NaturalCare, Natural Balance, and much more. They’ve also branched into the beauty products industry with products like Aubrey Organics, Living Flower Essences, and Life-flo.
KAL is based in Park City, Utah. You can contact them using the contact information found at this page.
Should You Take BP Defense?
BP Defense is a nutritional supplement that promises to improve your cardiovascular health by relieving pressure on your blood vessels.
In order to do that, BP Defense uses a surprisingly science-backed list of ingredients, including a 500mg dose of hawthorn combined with amino acids like L-Arginine. Hawthorn is used throughout Europe (even as a prescription drug) as a natural cardiovascular health supplement. In scientific studies, researchers have shown that daily doses between 500mg and 1000mg are effective for improving cardiovascular health.
If you’re looking for an alternative way to improve your cardiovascular health, or if you want to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, then BP Defense may be able to help. As with any supplement, talk to your doctor before you start using BP Defense.
