Most of the plant-based meals we eat contain polyphenols, which are chemical molecules. Some polyphenolic chemicals, including green tea flavonoids, soy-based isoflavones, quercetin, curcumin, and resveratrol, may possess major cancer prevention qualities, as I explore in depth in my new book, A Cancer Prevention Guide for the Human Race. A large body of evidence suggests that eating foods high in certain natural dietary polyphenols may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Oranges, orange juice, and other citrus fruits are good plant-based sources of the flavonoid polyphenol hesperidin. The latest edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition features a prospective, randomized, blinded clinical investigation that provides fascinating indications that hesperidin may actually reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in high-risk patients.
Twenty-four overweight (but otherwise healthy) men, ages 50 to 65, participated in this pilot trial, split evenly among three groups for 4-week intervals. The first group was instructed to consume 17 fluid ounces (or 500 milliliters) of tropicana orange juice every day. The second group drank a “control drink” that looked like orange juice but did not include any real orange juice. However, hesperidin was added to this “fake orange juice.” The third group was also given the fake orange juice, but with an added supplement that looked and sounded like hesperidin to the study participants and the study nurses, but was actually an inert placebo with no hesperidin or other polyphenols.
Before and after the men rotated through each of these three groups, they were given complete physicals and blood workups.
The results of this modest clinical investigation, which were nonetheless of good quality, were intriguing. Men in the other two experimental groups had their blood pressure drop significantly, compared to the control group that drank the fake orange juice and took the false hesperidin supplement. In particular, the hesperidin in both the orange juice and the non-juice beverage supplemented with hesperidin significantly lowered the men’s diastolic blood pressure, suggesting that the hesperidin improved the men’s arterial elasticity and compliance. Further testing corroborated the first finding that consuming hesperidin increased vascular compliance. The considerable increase in arterial compliance after hesperidin consumption was lost when the same males were retested the next day after fasting. (A lower risk of cardiovascular disease, such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, and stroke, is connected with increased arterial compliance.)
Whether in the form of orange juice or as a supplement, hesperidin appeared to considerably enhance arterial elasticity and reduce diastolic blood pressure in middle-aged overweight men, according to the results of this study. There is abundant data from other research studies linking improved arterial compliance with a reduced incidence of cardiovascular disease, but this brief study cannot prove that the improvements in arterial compliance observed and transient in these high-risk men reduced the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Before we can declare for sure that hesperidin considerably reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, we need to replicate this tiny pilot trial on a much larger scale, and the volunteers in this larger study need to be followed for a much longer period of time. Nonetheless, the results of this modest but carefully executed and beautifully designed randomized, controlled, prospective clinical research study are striking.
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