Disease Proof

In 2004, researchers took 10 people with plaque buildup in their carotid arteries. The nice thing about the carotid arteries (other than that they help your brain to get blood so you can think) is that they are located in the neck. This makes it easy to measure how much plaque they have using a simple sound-wave probe.


These 10 people drank pomegranate juice for one year, and the thickness of the plaque dropped by up to 30 percent, and one of their blood pressure numbers (the systolic blood pressure) dropped by 21 percent. By comparison, the people in the study who did not drink the juice had an increase in plaque thickness of 9 percent.

Again, the downside here is that this is a small study. However, it seems to correlate with the results found above, and I think it is worth pursuing further — especially since pomegranate juice costs about $5 at the store. Who knows, it may even save our financially strained health-care system a few dollars if it turns out to work as well as it seems to in these studies.

• Pomegranates, Exciting!
• More On Pomegranates and Your Prostate
• Pomegranates, Atherosclerosis, and Diabetics
• Pomegranate Power