LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Functional Foods are a Useful Adjunction to Antihypertensive Drug Treatment

First, of course there are false claims of several functional foods. However, pomegranate juice (PJ) was shown in rather small but indisputable clinical studies (Prof. Aviram is engaged with PJ for the last 15 years), that they possess antihypertensive, antioxidant, and antidiabetic effects to the degree that these can halt or even reverse atherosclerosis [2]. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the attending physician to explain to the hypertensive patient (mainly those with hypertension combined with diabetes, metabolic syndrome or smoking) that this is an adjunctive therapy on top of other no-pharmacological interventions or drug treatments for hypertension [2]. There are no data so far that functional foods compromise the adherence of the patient to antihypertensive drug treatment, if their utility is explained by the physician.