I once had a patient who came to me after his cardiologist told him his arteries resembled highways under construction. They were inflamed and narrow, headed for an inevitable end at a rather unpredictable rate. He was fifty-six years old, not particularly overweight, didn’t smoke, and he really couldn’t understand how he’d gotten himself into such a position. So, he asked me what he could do before signing up for the statin prescription that sat unsigned on his kitchen counter. I told him to give me three months and his full attention and then I told him about the most potent arterial food that lay hidden in plain sight because no one was eating it on purpose.

Pomegranates hold the record as the only food documented so consistently to help the arteries as a cardiologist researcher might prescribe medication, with results so predictable that the researchers themselves call them “almost pharmaceutical” in their method of action. They contain something called punicalagins, which are so effective at reducing oxidative stress on the arterial wall that regular consumption has been shown to reduce the thickness of the arterial wall. Aside from pomegranates, other foods include wild caught fatty fish providing omega 3s, which actively break down components of the inflammatory plaque; garlic, which activates allicin, preventing cellular wall inflammation; turmeric and black pepper, which provide curcumin, preventing new plaque adhesion; and beetroot, which stimulates the creation of nitric oxide widening the artery’s diameter in less than twenty-four hours of consumption.

There is no shortage of information in the books on our shelf and in my patients’ hands. The exact combinations, preparations, and timing of those foods that maximize the bioavailability of their healing properties. There is even some ancient knowledge about the proper treatment of arteries and blood from the Amish people, who have preserved their traditions across generations, or from traditional Chinese medicine… have been practicing the holistic treatment of cardiovascular disease for over three thousand years. Everything my patient needed to know was in a single book, one I consider one of our most precious possessions. Three months after using it, his cardiologist called me personally. He was impressed. Sometimes the oldest knowledge is simply waiting to be found by the right person at the right moment.