If you eat a lot of commercial salt (not healthy salts like Celtic and Himalayan), you can protect your heart without changing your diet. At least that is what a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says.
In this study, researchers fed two groups of rats a diet loaded with salt. They split the rats into two groups. They gave one a placebo. And they gave the other a supplement containing grape powder. The grape powder had lots of flavonols. You might be familiar with resveratrol. It is a key grape flavonol.
After 18 weeks, the group taking the grape powder had lower blood pressure, better heart muscle function and structure, and lower markers of inflammation than the placebo group. A third group fed a low-salt diet and grape powder had the additional benefit of less cardiac stress (by molecular testing).
Its amazing that JAMA published this article. But it would be even more amazing if your doctor ever used it. That is because the same issue of JAMA extolled the virtues of a study that suggested statin drugs could lower inflammatory markers of heart disease. Of course, you can probably guess who funded the statin study — Big Pharma, which stands to make bazillions for each use of statins it can invent.
At the same time, who can patent grape powder? Leave it to Big Pharma. As soon as Pharma can devise a synthetic version of grape powder that it can patent, you will see a flurry of studies on the patented version.
Even if they succeed in a synthetic version, I say stick with resveratrol if you have hypertension or congestive heart failure. Admittedly, it is concentrated out of the plant. But it is a molecule that God made, not some petrochemical. Its a whole lot cheaper than anything Big Pharma will create. And it can protect your heart when you do eat too much salt. You can order resveratrol by calling Advanced Bionutritionals.