I Love Pomegranate Juice

I Love Pomegranate Juice
I love the pomegranate tree.
Every year we wait patiently for the large red fruits to ripen.

What a fantastic taste delight.

We have been tending out pom trees for years and spend the early winter months drinking the pomegranate juice and making pomegranate ice cream.

The pomegranate, my favorite fruit, has recently made research news, and I suspect folks will become more aware in its remarkable health giving benefits.

I Love My Arteries: Carotid Care

I HAVE READ THE Research DONE AT the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel WHO treated patients with carotid artery stenosis using FRESH pomegranate Juice for three years and the results were nothing short of remarkable.

The carotid arteries are the two large vessels that run along either side of your neck and supply the brain with blood.

Blockage if these arteries is called Stenosis, of these which is simply a narrowing of the blood flow due to a buildup of deposits along the arterial wall.

Carotid artery narrowing often goes unnoticed for years. Individuals with the problem may not experience any symptoms, though some start to complain that they hear a "swishing" noise with each heartbeat, which is due to blood swirling past the blockage.
A more common complaint is eventually this narrowing can lead to a mini stroke. This occurs when small pieces of the fatty deposits lining the arteries break loose and block small blood vessels further up in the brain. The result can be memory loss, temporary blindness, numbness, tingling, and muscle weakness.

Fortunately, the effects are generally temporary, but these events are often just a prelude to a bigger, full-blown serious stroke.

Normal treatment for carotid artery blockage falls into basically two categories. If the blockage is less than 70 percent, the treatment is to keep the blood thin and flowing with aspirin, anticoagulants, and other drugs-and hope nothing "breaks loose." If The blockage is over 70 percent; surgery to clear out the blockage is often the course of action. Many folk who have blockage of the artery also have narrowing elsewhere in the body, too. It's a systemic problem, so there is likely some degree of blockage in the arteries of the heart and elsewhere.

Reading the research

Reading the research done on pomegranate juice is exciting and may be the perfect treatment for removing the blockages in the carotid arteries.

It seems that atherosclerosis is best addressed through diet and nutrition.And that’s where pomegranate juice has been shown to be a tremendous help.

Go figure! My favorite juice is not only delicious makes tasty ice cream it also helps my arteries stay healthy.
Everyday is an opportunity to nurture your body-mind, every day is an opportunity to tend your garden, and to nurture all that nurtures you in return.
Now that’s our grokking Numian way to live.My secret of aging with wellness.

HAPPINESS IS: A daily jogging, grazing the greens from our gardens, and meals made from garden grown veggies.

Pomegranate Juice the Miracle Nectar

Dr. Michael Aviram, with the Lipid Research Laboratory at Rambam, thinks it's possible that many high-risk cardiovascular patients can be spared both bypass and carotid surgery by simply drinking pomegranate juice.

Why Pomegranates Are Better Than Red Wine

NEW YORK, N.Y. and HAIFA, Israel, May 4, 2000 -- In a strong confirmation of the power of pomegranates to fight heart disease, studies of healthy human subjects and mice with atherosclerosis showed why even moderate consumption of pomegranate juice could have significant clinical results.

According to studies at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, the cholesterol oxidation process -– which creates atherosclerotic lesions that narrow arteries and result in heart disease -- was slowed by as much as 40 percent when healthy subjects drank 2-3 ounces of pomegranate juice a day for two weeks. Further, the juice reduced the retention of LDL, the "bad" cholesterol that after its oxidation aggregates and forms atherosclerotic lesions.
The study is published in the May issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"Pomegranates are proving to be the most powerful antioxidant available, better than red wine, tomatoes, vitamin E and a variety of other headline makers," says Prof. Michael Aviram of the Lipid Research Laboratory at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who led the team. Prof. Aviram, who was the first to prove the beneficial effects of red wine on cholesterol oxidation in humans, is an internationally recognized authority on the effect of food on heart disease.

Earlier, pomegranate juice was tested on mice from a special strain susceptible to atherosclerosis. When these mice were fed pomegranate juice for 11 weeks, their arteries had only half as many lesions as did the arteries of the control mice who got no juice. This strengthened the evidence that the juice would also slow or prevent the formation of lesions in humans.

Most recently, using sections of excised human arteries, Prof. Aviram showed that the active ingredient in pomegranates not only slows down cholesterol oxidation but actually minimizes the retention and aggregation of LDL cholesterol, the "bad" cholesterol, two additional processes that create atherosclerotic lesions. These lesions are minimized if the cholesterol is not retained, oxidized and subsequently aggregated.

When the subjects stopped drinking the pomegranate juice, the beneficial effects lasted for about a month.

Aviram chose pomegranates for his study because the fruit has long been in use in folk medicine in the Middle East, Iran and India for treating disease and infections, and he suspected that some of its medicinal value could be due to antioxidants.

Dr. Aviram's recent study involved 19 patients (5 women and 14 men, 65-75 years old) with severe carotid artery stenosis.

Ten were selected to receive 250 mL (8.3 ounces) of 100 percent pomegranate juice daily, and the other 9 were given a placebo.

"Several tests were performed on the different groups. The primary one Utilized ultrasound to measure any changes in the thickness of the walls of the carotid arteries.

After one year, those not consuming the pomegranate juice had a 9 percent increase in thickness of their carotid arteries, meaning their arteries were becoming even less resilient. Those consuming the juice showed a decrease in thickness of 35 percent. These changes began to show up rather quickly. There was a 13 percent reduction in just the first three months of drinking the juice. And there were other benefits, as well. While the blood pressures of those on the placebo didn't change, the systolic pressure (top number) of those on pomegranate juice went from an average of 174 to 162 mm Hg in just a month. And it reduced even further, to an average of 152 mm Hg at twelve months.

Other tests indicated that the juice drinkers had lower blood levels of oxidized cholesterol and more antioxidants. Even though this study was relatively small, the results are quite remarkable and confirm the similar findings of previous studies. In one earlier study, atherosclerotic lesions in mice were reduced in size by 44 percent by supplementing the diet with pomegranate juice.

The Promise of Pomegranate

An important branch of his research focuses on the protective role against oxidative stress and atherosclerosis development played by antioxidants and paraoxonases. Dietary antioxidants studied by Aviram include the polyphenolic flavonoids found in red wine, pomegranate, licorice, ginger and olive oil; as well as vitamins E and C, beta-carotene, and tomato's lycopene. HDL ("the good cholesterol") – associated paraoxonase was shown by Aviram to act as a second line of defense against oxidative stress, by hydrolyzing specific oxidized lipids.

Pomegranate juice has exhibited some of the strongest antioxidant activity of any food. For thousands of years, pomegranates have been used medicinally particularly in the Middle East. In fact, the healing powers of pomegranates have been mentioned in the Bible, Greek mythology, and ancient Chinese literature. Some scholars believe that the fruit referenced in the Garden of Eden story was actually a pomegranate. It may be new to our society, but researchers are just rediscovering one of the ancient health secrets known to our ancestors thousands of years ago.

Pomegranate juice may also prove to be promising in the treatment/prevention of breast and prostate cancer as well as in the treatment of diabetes. Additionally, one of the more unusual uses of pomegranate juice has to do with preventing the spread of AIDS.

Since the AIDS pandemic continues to spread researchers have started to look at topical microbicides in the form of creams or suppositories to block the entry of HIV into cells.
Efforts are underway to discover a microbicide that would be acceptable, accessible, affordable, and able to be moved quickly from the development stage to the millions of people who need it.Researchers evaluated numerous juices and their ability to block HIV infections, pomegranate juice showed remarkable potential. It was not only safe, stable, and economical, it was also more effective than any other juice tested.

Pomegranate juice is rich in tannins, phenolic acids, polyphenols, and flavonoids. It is also known to contain a rare fatty acid, punicic acid that is structurally related to conjugated linolenic acid.
If you’re looking for paradise on Earth, Grow a pomegranate tree, plant fig plants, tend your organic gardens and go solar.

Now let’s relax, watch the sunset and have a glass of red wine together.
Tony Crow, Numian Institute


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