This Juice Improves Heart and Artery Health

You probably know cranberry juice is great for your urinary tract. It fights off infections. It acts like a tonic for your bladder. And it keeps all the tissues soft and flexible (which keeps things flowing).

But cranberry juice does a lot more. In fact, it’s one of the best things you can take for your heart and arteries.

You see, the lining of the urinary tract and the lining of the arteries are similar. They’re both endothelial cells.

So a group of researchers decided to test to see if cranberry juice would have protective effects on the arteries, like it does in the urinary tract.

They took a group of patients and gave them cranberry juice for 4 weeks.

The Results of Three Different Tests

The researchers then measured the patients’ artery health using three different tests.

The first test was femoral wave velocity. It measures artery stiffness. Amazingly, the femoral wave velocity improved (from 8.3 to 7.8 meters/second) in the patients drinking cranberry juice. In contrast, those drinking a placebo, the wave velocity actually got slightly worse.

The second test was digital pulse amplitude. It measures heart rhythm and the strength of a heart contraction. The people drinking cranberry juice saw it improve from 0.10 to 0.23. That’s more than double!

The third test was brachial artery flow. It measures how much blood is flowing through the major artery in the arm. People drinking cranberry juice saw improvements of artery dilation from 7.7 to 8.7 mm.

It Works Fast

What startled the researchers about these results was how fast cranberry juice softened the arteries. They noticed it took just 4 hours after drinking a single glass of juice to see improvements!

If cranberry juice can improve arterial health this effectively, it will improve your overall health. It will lower your blood pressure. And it will significantly lower your risk for many cardiovascular events.

How much cranberry juice should you drink? For fast results, you can drink 16 ounces a day. If you don’t want to drink that much, you can drink 4-8 ounces daily. But it will take a little longer to see the same results.

Just make sure you’re actually drinking cranberry juice. The cranberry juice cocktail at the grocery store is loaded with sugar and probably contains only a fraction of actual cranberry juice.

Look at the label to make sure you’re getting plain, unsweetened cranberry juice with no other ingredients. The label should say “100% real juice.” If you find the taste too sour, you can dilute it with water and/or sweeten it with Stevia.