Israeli Scientists Find Natural Remedies to Lower Cholesterol

And now a story for the health-conscious ...The buildup of cholesterol can cause heart attacks and stroke, but as our Israel correspondent discovers, there are some easy ways to stay healthy.

For the past 30 years, doctors and researchers at Rambam Hospital's technical college in Haifa, Israel, have been studying the effects of cholesterol in the human body.

The buildup of cholesterol can cause atherosclerosis and heart disease—the main cause of mortality in the Western world.

[Professor Michael Aviram, Rambam Faculty of Medical Studies]:
"The research is about trying to understand the mechanisms relating to the sedimentation of cholesterol in the coronary arteries—such blockages that cause heart strokes—and the carotid artery, which if blocked, causes a cerebrovascular accident."

Eating antioxidants like fruits and vegetables is one of the ways to fight the buildup of cholesterol on the artery walls.

So which fruits and vegetables should we eat?

Professor Aviram says research found the most effective antioxidants to be in pomegranates, red wine, olive oil and licorice root.

[Professor Michael Aviram, Rambam Faculty of Medical Studies]:
"We chose people who have a partial blockage of the arteries leading to the brain and asked them to drink a glass of pomegranate juice every day. After one year, not only did the size of the atherosclerotic lesion not increase—the enlargement happened to people who did not drink pomegranate juice—but had also decreased by thirty percent."

Similar results were obtained from red wine and olive oil.

In 1993, one experiment had a group of students drink half a cup of olive oil a day. The students' cholesterol decreased remarkably after only one week.

Professor Aviram says ancient culture also understood the benefits of different foods, as pomegranates, red wine and olive oil are the main ingredients often used in the traditional Mediterranean diet.

[Professor Michael Aviram, Rambam Faculty of Medical Studies]:
"Apparently the ancients knew and their knowledge came about from a lot of observations. Today we enter into the world of mechanisms and understand much more about the defense mechanism of these antioxidants."

Reporter:Aviva Grunpeter Photographer:Anat Markram
NTD News, Haifa, Israel.

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