NaturalSociety November 6 2013
If you have never experienced the deliciousness of pomegranates, make it a goal to taste one this fall. These beautiful and tricky-to-eat fruits are loaded with benefits. Perhaps one of the most researched of these benefits is the ability of pomegranates to keep your blood vessels free from plaque, the fatty accumulations that can eventually lead to atherosclerosis and heart attacks.
In one of the more recent studies of its kind, mice predisposed to coronary artery blockages were given pomegranate extract in their drinking water for two weeks. Oddly, the pomegranate extract resulted in increased cholesterol levels (which, if you read some of our previous articles on the cholesterol myth, isn’t necessarily a bad thing). But even with the cholesterol increase, the treatment reduced the size of arterial accumulations, essentially scrubbing it from the arterial walls.
Published in the journal Atherosclerosis, the researchers said:
“Pomegranate extract reduced aortic sinus and coronary artery atherosclerosis in SR-BI/apoE dKO mice. The atheroprotective effects of pomegranate extract appear to involve reduced oxidative stress and inflammation in the vessel wall despite unaltered systemic markers of inflammation and increased lipoprotein cholesterol in these mice.”