Pomegranate: Medicinal Properties

A customer called me on Wednesday to ask me if I had heard that Pomegranate would lower cholesterol. Telling this customer that I had not, as soon as I hung up I googled to see what I could find on the medicinal properties of Pomegranate.

Pomegranate was first reintroduced to the west about 3 years ago as an anti-oxidant. Pomegranate was initially promoted as an alternative to green tea. Several studies showed that Pomegranate has 3 times more anti-oxidants than green tea. After the initial hoopla died down Pomegranate seemed to lose its initial luster. This is to be expected because there were no studies on Pomegranate other than the one mentioned above. Since then new studies have found that Pomegranate may have other beneficial properties.

Below is a thumb-nail report of the studies on Pomegranate.

1) An Israeli study show that drinking pomegranate juice for one year showed that atherosclerosis progression was reduce by 30%.

2) Another Israeli study show that systolic blood pressure was reduced by 21% after drinking Pomegranate juice for one year.

3) A study in the same facility as number 2 showed that drinking 50ml of pomegranate juice for two weeks lower systolic blood pressure 5%. Interestingly this study also showed a 36% decrease in angiotensin converting enzyme activity. This is important because the ACE enzyme is a factor in atherosclerosis. Pomegranate is in fact a natural ACE inhibitor and could in theory be used in place of the drug Lisinopril.

4) An Iranian study using patients with type II diabetes and elevated cholesterol showed a reduction is total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and the cholesterol to HDL ratio. No studies have been done to determine if Pomegranate works the same in healthy patients.

If you would like to try pomegranate to see if this would work for you I suggest the Pomegranate extract capsules. The extract is many times stronger than the juice and has none of the sugars or the taste of Pomegranate.

Thanks for spending a part of your day here with me,

James