DWQA QuestionsCategory: Healing ModalitiesA study was reported in 2004 of people with advanced coronary artery disease who started taking just 50 ml of pomegranate juice daily. At the end of 1 year, control subjects taking a placebo showed a further 9% increase of coronary artery media-intima thickening. Those on pomegranate juice, had up to a 30% decrease [M. Aviram, et al., Pomegranate juice consumption for 3 years by patients with carotid artery stenosis reduces common carotid intima-media thickness, blood pressure and LDL oxidation. Clin Nutr. 2004 Jun;23(3):423-33]. Were these findings truly reflecting an important therapeutic benefit of a simple, widely available nutraceutical? Is there anything sinister about the limited follow-up by the medical community?
Nicola Staff asked 10 hours ago
These results were highly meaningful because this is a benefit achievable through regular use of pomegranate juice by those at risk of coronary artery disease and, in fact, vessel disease anywhere in the body. There are a combination of biochemical benefits provided by an extract of this natural fruit, both in terms of promoting healing in countering consequences of inflammation and perturbation by the immune system in the case of an autoimmune-type ramping up that begins to injure normal tissue. Pomegranates also have antiviral activity, and thus there can be some benefit as well to the great number of illnesses of a chronic nature that are virus-caused but still not appreciated by medical science, as yet, that this is so. These multiple benefits work together nicely and can have a synergistic overall benefit, with long-term use especially, given that, in many cases, when a disease process has a headstart it may take considerable time to undo. So the observation was accurate and valid in representing a much wider group of individuals with vessel damage. Even though this was a small-scale trial, the results were certainly compelling enough it should have been followed up more aggressively. The lack of seeming interest or appreciation is not simply due to Big Pharma discouraging nutraceuticals. They more ignore the area than disparage it because they are often on the weaker end of the argument and so simply do not engage. They carefully cultivate an aura of superiority. After all, the practice of medicine is named after their sole product, being medicine's artificially synthesized chemicals, believed to have a medical benefit because they alter some bodily symptom or physiologic change that can be measured through lab tests. Aside from the vested interests in terms of where money can be made, there is an active mind control manipulation of medical opinion leaders, the scientific community, and the broad arena of medical practitioners who are heavily programmed to ignore the nutritional interactions and potential benefits historically identified, clearly, again and again amongst many cultures around the world in seeing various plant extracts, to make teas and edibles in the diet, to be beneficial but ignored medically to this day. This is entirely sinister and orchestrated to deny humanity the divine source of natural medicines designed into nature specifically for the benefit of humans who might develop chronic illnesses.