Pomegranate and Kidney Disease. Is Pomegranate Juice Good For Kidney Disease?

Pomegranate juice and kidney disease, that’s what today’s video is about. Pomegranate juice– it’s tasty and delicious, but how helpful is it? Maybe it’s not good for kidney disease? 

Pomegranate is a fruit that comes from the pomegranate tree. You can eat it and it, but it has a lot of seeds making it a little difficult to eat. However, they make a lot of juices out of it. You can buy all types of pomegranate juices on the market. They also make pomegranate supplements.

So, what do we know about pomegranate and kidney disease? As we look at the national library of medicine, we do have quite a bit of research on pomegranate. When it comes to human trials, we have a study in people with dialysis and then we have some other human studies. Pomegranate has a lot of great benefits, lots of antioxidants, a lot of good nutrients, and it’s high in potassium which for the regular person that’s great.

For people with kidney disease, you might want to be mindful of it because with excess potassium you might be restricting it, or have a reason to restrict it. That’s one of the issues with pomegranate juice. As far as the research shows it could be helpful in terms of antioxidants, but there were no major improvements seen with blood pressure as compared to people without kidney disease.

We’ve seen it helpful for blood pressure but when you have kidney disease it doesn’t seem to be helpful. It’s shown in kidney disease to possibly provide some protection for the kidney as well as help your antioxidant levels which help cell damage. If you’re helping cell damage, you’re helping kidney disease. However, there weren’t major benefits seen–such as a person took pomegranate juice and the blood pressure lowered, or it improved kidney disease, or lowered the creatinine, or it improved the raise the GFR-we didn’t see any of those.

We saw some other good benefits, and the thing I like about it is it’s something you can alternate into a kidney disease diet. If you’re watching potassium, you probably need to avoid it for the most part. What they did in the trials of people with dialysis is they either gave them a supplement, or they gave them three and a half ounces. It was 100 milliliters, which is just under three and a half ounces.

Three and a half ounces is about 245 milligrams of potassium– so it’s not a lot which means you generally can include it in a kidney disease diet. Three and a half ounces is not a lot so what I would recommend is to dilute it with lots and lots of water. For three and a half ounces, you can easily 16 ounces of water and then you have a nice refreshing drink. Maybe you want to squeeze some lemon in it or make it really cold on a hot day. This drink is something that gives you some different taste; it’s something else besides water. It’s still hot out so you can hydrate with it.

Give yourself a variety in your kidney diet. To reiterate– that’s three and a half ounces. If you are a diabetic you probably will be okay with three and a half ounces. It’s not gonna raise your blood sugar high so if you want to add pomegranate juice make sure it’s a hundred percent pomegranate– don’t get any blends like pomegranate cranberry. Also make sure there’s no added sugar because that’s going to defeat the purpose of the benefits of the pomegranate.

Don’t expect miracles. There are a lot of better things to focus on and do. 

Check out this article on our website about lemon juice and kidney disease!