The Treasures of the Pomegranate and the Vanishing Research

Pomegranate juice cannot be patented, so it cannot generate the revenue streams that justify a pharmaceutical company's existence. Pomegranates grow in gardens and are sold by the kilo at the market. Valid evidence simply disappears from the collective consciousness when no one discusses it, even if no one has disproved it.

In 2004, a study was published that should have changed cardiovascular medicine forever.

But today you won't be able to find it, because that fateful study simply... disappeared.

Its disappearance is not because more than two decades have passed since then, not because the study's data were poor, not because the way it was conducted was flawed, and certainly not because anyone refuted it.

Promising, welcome findings quietly slipped beneath the rug of medical discourse, like a stone dropped into a lake without making a single ripple, defying every law of physics.

In 2004, Michael Aviram and his colleagues at the Technion published a clinical trial in humans in the journal Clinical Nutrition (1). The title was rather dry and scientific: “Pomegranate juice consumption for 3 years by patients with carotid artery stenosis reduces common carotid intima-media thickness, blood pressure and LDL oxidation.”

But what lay beneath this clinical prose was anything but dry.

It was a bombshell!

The researchers took a group of 19 patients aged 65 to 75 whose arteries had narrowed over years, to the point of severe stenosis of the carotid artery (the main artery running along the neck that carries oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the brain): a blockage of 70 to 90 percent (!). Just to put it in perspective: these are values that put anyone on the fast track to a stroke.

The patients were divided into 2 groups, a pomegranate group (10 patients) and a control group (9 patients).

The 2 groups were matched for age, blood pressure, lipid profiles, glucose levels and medication use.

Both groups started from the same baseline and received the same standard treatment.

Five patients in the pomegranate group continued the standard treatment protocol for three full years, with just one addition: pomegranate juice.

The intervention was almost absurdly modest: about 50 milliliters of pomegranate extract every day, roughly what you would pour into a small juice glass.

What happened next contradicts everything we have been told about the irreversible course of cardiovascular disease.

The researchers measured intima-media thickness (IMT), the standard ultrasound measure of arterial wall thickening and early atherosclerosis, at baseline and then at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months.

In the pomegranate group, the average intima-media thickness at baseline was 1.5 mm.

The findings over the following year showed a gradual regression:

After 3 months: a 13% decrease in IMT.

After 6 months: a 22% decrease.

After 9 months: a 26% decrease.

After 12 months: a decrease of up to 35%, with average IMT dropping from 1.5 mm to 1.1 mm.

And what became of the control group, which received identical standard cardiac treatment without pomegranate juice?

Their average IMT rose by 9% over the same twelve-month period, from 1.45 mm to 1.58 mm.

Read that again. One group's condition reversed course and improved.

The other kept deteriorating as expected, despite the prescription drugs it was taking.

The same starting point, different paths.

The only variable was one fruit: the pomegranate.

And it doesn't end there. The pomegranate group enjoyed several more wonderful “side effects”:

Oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the form of cholesterol that actually drives plaque formation, dropped by 90%.

Paraoxonase-1, an HDL-associated enzyme that actively protects the arteries from oxidative damage, rose by 83%!!

Systolic blood pressure dropped by 21%!!

Total antioxidant status rose by 130%!!

This is what a true physiological reversal looks like: not suppression of symptoms, but a change in the direction of the disease process itself, without the life-threatening side effects associated with blood thinners, cholesterol-lowering drugs and surgical interventions.

And what makes this study especially inconvenient for the standard narrative is that these patients did not abandon conventional medicine. 60% of them were already taking statins, and many were taking ACE inhibitors, beta blockers and calcium channel blockers. Their diet and exercise habits remained unchanged.

Pomegranate juice did not replace drug treatment. It was added on top of it, and still produced dramatic benefits.

In fact, its results outshone those of all the prescription drugs.

And that is exactly why this study had to disappear, and fast…

Pomegranate juice cannot be patented, so it cannot generate the revenue streams that justify a pharmaceutical company's existence. Pomegranates grow in gardens and are sold by the kilo at the market. Valid evidence simply disappears from the collective consciousness when no one discusses it, even if no one has disproved it.

The system is designed to suppress this kind of research, in favor of the patented substances that generate enormous profits.

Finally, a glimpse of another treasure within the pomegranate: beyond all these benefits, a series of laboratory experiments proved that daily pomegranate consumption raises testosterone levels by 24% within two weeks (2). Did you catch that, men?

May our lives be like a pomegranate: sweet, varied and rich.

Wishing us all complete health,

Ran❤️

(1) https://www.tesble.com/10.1016/j.clnu.2003.10.002

(2) https://www.endocrine-abstracts.org/ea/0028/ea0028p313?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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