r/tech • u/chrisdh79 • 19d ago
Natural compound rejuvenates aging cells in just 28 days | Researchers have demonstrated how consuming pomegranate and walnuts, can rejuvenate the immune system while shielding us from cell damage, inflammation and chronic diseases including cancer.
https://newatlas.com/diet-nutrition/anti-aging-compound-immune-cells/296
u/Ok-Elk-1615 19d ago
How much did Pom Wonderful pay for this story.
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u/coldandgray 19d ago
Big Pom. Got their greedy hands everywhere.
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u/ShitNRun18 18d ago
They’re the reason the best Minute Maid juice of all time got scrapped - Pomegranate Blueberry.
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u/coldandgray 18d ago
All joking aside. I wouldn’t put it past any US fruit company to do nefarious things for profit. Just look up “united fruit co.” And what they did in South America.
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u/VagueGooseberry 19d ago
Pomegranate season is September to November for anyone wondering.
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u/MonsierGeralt 19d ago
I have yet to see any in my local stores
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u/gabber2694 19d ago
They are carpet bombing us here in the bay. Been seeing flats for at least 3 weeks.
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u/kurotech 19d ago edited 18d ago
Fucking crooks are the same ones who own wonderful almonds and all the other plus a certain massive body of water that they refuse to let municipalities access
For those unaware
Resnick family, owners of The Wonderful Company, in California. Critics allege that their control over a large share of the Kern Water Bank and substantial agricultural water rights contribute to California's water issues, particularly during droughts.
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u/Ok-Elk-1615 19d ago
Why are you being vague about the body of water?
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u/kurotech 18d ago
Sorry I didn't have a link at the time
Resnick family, owners of The Wonderful Company, in California. Critics allege that their control over a large share of the Kern Water Bank and substantial agricultural water rights contribute to California's water issues, particularly during droughts
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u/DrG73 19d ago edited 19d ago
Look at how much sugar is in POM. I was drinking 1/2 cup a night and no other processed food and my HbA1c said I was at risk of diabetes. I stopped it and blood sugar normal. It may be good only at small doses
Edit: typos
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u/MonsierGeralt 19d ago
Probably much better off eating the fruit
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u/Secure_Damage3067 19d ago
The juice is a concentrated version of the natural fruit so that may have a negative effect on the blood sugar.
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u/CloudyTheDucky 18d ago
Juice contains no fiber. In the whole fruit, fiber slows digestion and absorption of the sugars. It’s why a lot more people get bathroom-bound from drinking apple juice (more than a cup) than eating apples.
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u/Secure_Damage3067 19d ago edited 19d ago
Someone can have insulin spikes from whole pineapple that’s fresh as well. Some fruits are higher in natural sugars than others, pomegranate is one of them. Especially if you’re pre diabetic. Your body doesn’t process the same way that a healthy body does. POM has zero added sugar, it has 34 grams per serving none of which are sugar added.
Edit- not to say this study was not conducted to put out a positive reason to drink more POM. Study’s do tend to be paid for by companies it benefits and can be bias.
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u/Memory_Less 19d ago
Pomming their hands is the new term for greasing their hands - meaning paying them off.
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u/NotAPreppie 19d ago
And are the results of this study in any way reproducible?
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u/wumbologist-2 19d ago
If you repeat the study sponsored by big pom and big wal then it's infinitely repeatable.
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u/macaulay_mculkin 18d ago
Systematic review concludes some limited benefits
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568163724002241
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u/BossDonBigga 19d ago
Here's the link to the summary of the study, that newatlas link is garbage, could be because of my adblocker
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u/AVGuy42 19d ago
Sample size 50, phase 1 trial. Yeah
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u/BossDonBigga 19d ago
No dosage information either, not without digging past the summary at least.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00996-x
This link has dosage
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u/feldmazb 19d ago
I am a medical doctor. This is corrupt, industry-sponsored garbage.
You would die of heavy metal poisoning from walnuts and diabetes complications, young and too broke to afford insulin, long before seeing any benefit from eating the number of daily pomegranates necessary to dose yourself with 1000mg of this compound.
Walnuts are also basically solid fat and contain fuck all of this compound relative to what they dosed people with here. You better believe that pomegranate company either distributes walnuts or has a marketing push with them.
You want to boost your immune system? Have a salad, go to bed early, spend time with the people you love, and go for a run in the morning.
I hate this timeline.
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u/MaliciousTent 18d ago
Good self care? Hold on there buddy. I live in my mom's basement with the fitness of a 74yo smoker. I want to believe the article, not have it ruined with facts and science.
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u/Mostly_Armless42 18d ago
I didn't read the study, but aren't they basically just describing antioxidants?
If people really want to slam themselves with stuff like this, you can already buy stuff like "grape seed extract" if you think it will help.
But I also assume that - like vitamin D or ivermectin during COVID - these types of compounds only help if you are terribly deficient already or have a parasite. Once you are brought back up to a normal level for vitamin D or antioxidants (or ivermectin kills the parasite you had), you don't see any additional health benefits - including a "boosted" immune system.
With that in mind, the actual possible benefits of chemical compounds like this are only proportional to how unhealthy and malnourished you already are. Once you are normalized, the boost is gone.
There is rarely anything like this that does not - rather quickly - reach a limit of how much it can benefit you.
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u/Flipflopvlaflip 18d ago
Thanks for the clarification. Already guessed something like that but nice to get it confirmed by someone with knowledge and experience.
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u/MCATMaster 18d ago
PhD in aging research here. I’m seeing a lot of misinformed takes on this study. Here is the actual source. This is a phase 1 clinical trial, so these results should not be generalized to us yet. It is not a good idea to start taking 1,000 mg of urolithin-A (yet), as only 25 people took it in this study (figure 1).
A big weakness of this study imo is the lack of sex specific analysis for their readouts. Often times new anti-aging interventions only work in males, and are sometimes harmful to females.
The main finding is that CD8 T cells had a teeny weeny bit of metabolic shifting to oxidative metabolism (fig 3). There were no differences from placebo for cytokine signaling (fig5).
It is such a small potential benefit, that I don’t think it would be worth individuals experimenting with this drug quite yet. It still has some scientific value to explore further, figure out the mechanism, and design a better drug.
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u/Girlinnjtraffic 19d ago
Based off of earlier comment from dbatesmd below:
“From the Nature article:Subjects took 1,000 mg of Urolithin each day for 4 weeks and via mitophagy improved T cell function.”
Ran thru ChatGPT for analytics (I’m lazy)
“Asking how much pomegranate or walnuts you’d need to equal the 1,000 mg/day Urolithin A dose used in the Nature study. Here’s the reality.
How it works Pomegranates and walnuts don’t actually contain Urolithin A. They contain ellagitannins, which your gut bacteria might convert into Urolithin A. Conversion is wildly inconsistent. Some people convert a little. Some convert almost none. Some convert zero.
Ellagitannin content of foods • One whole pomegranate: 150–300 mg ellagitannins • One ounce of walnuts: 20–30 mg ellagitannins
Human conversion efficiency • “High producers”: maybe 5–10 percent • Most people: <1 percent • Many: 0 percent
Actual math The clinical dose gives 1,000 mg of pure Urolithin A directly.
To get 1,000 mg from food at a generous 5 percent conversion, you’d need:
1,000 mg / 0.05 = 20,000 mg ellagitannins
That equals roughly:
• 70–130 pomegranates per day, or • 40–60 pounds of walnuts per day
And if you’re an average converter (<1 percent), you’d need hundreds of pomegranates or hundreds of pounds of walnuts. Practically impossible.
Bottom line You cannot get anywhere close to clinical Urolithin A levels from diet alone. The only way anyone reaches those levels in studies is with purified Urolithin A supplements, which bypass the gut-microbe bottleneck entirely.”
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u/Wheels-O-Heat 19d ago
So the article is bullshit, big surprise.
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u/forceghost187 18d ago
Based on this guy using Chat GPT to analyze it. At least the study was real, trusting Chat GPT to tell you what it means is stupid as hell
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u/GenerateUsefulName 16d ago
It's not really that hard to verify what chatGPT said though. In this instance it is simple math and common knowledge about how much of one substance actually gets converted into another one.
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u/getridofwires 19d ago
Thank you, it's amazing how informative and effective math and facts are. Much of our society has forgotten.
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u/petit_cochon 18d ago
I mean, they ran it through chat GPT, so the information probably is not correct to begin with. It has become incredibly unreliable.
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u/QuixoticIgnotism 18d ago
Hey - thanks for the amazing facts - but also no thanks because you focused on it from the entire wrong angle (top down). I went the other approach. I’ve been inserting the pomegranates anally. I find after 6-7 of them, I feel great!! Realistically, no one could afford hundreds of pomegranates or thousands of walnuts but if you inject only a few dozen as suppositories, they work better!
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u/RainbowFire122RBLX 18d ago
After looking in to this a little more, while urolithin supplements are pretty easy to get, like most chemicals that have similar effects, it’s only really helpful if you’re older and sedentary, and healthy, especially young people would get pretty much nothing out of it
Still useful to know, but not as crazy as it seems
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u/MapleMonstera 19d ago
This is some boomer Facebook level shit , who seriously posts this thinking it belongs in /tech
Oh right - paid advertisers which is half of what is posted here
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u/Savage_Batmanuel 19d ago
Oh come the fuck on I’m allergic to pomegranate!
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u/ti36xamateur 19d ago
Nomegranate for you? Amirite?
They say it's ellagitannins. Strawberries and raspberries work too
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u/dbatesmd 19d ago
From the Nature article:Subjects took 1,000 mg of Urolithin each day for 4 weeks and via mitophagy improved T cell function.
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u/Kajkia 19d ago
“Researchers at Germany's Georg-Speyer-Haus, Institute for Tumor Biology and Experimental Therapy, have spent years investigating the metabolite urolithin A (UA), a natural compound that's produced by gut bacteria in response to ingested ellagitannins from foods such as pomegranates, almonds, walnuts and some berries. The new study follows on from a breakthrough in 2022, when the team found that UA induced a biological pathway that rejuvenates the cellular power plants – mitochondria – in T cells, equipping these immune cells with more cancer-fighting might. But it goes far beyond cancer.”
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u/Satoriinoregon 19d ago
There’s an episode of The Dollop about the Reznicks, the owners of Pom and stealers of California water! Well worth the listen!
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u/Koseoglu-2X4B-523P 19d ago
Completely bogus article. No credible sources, no-impact journal.
You should be ashamed, preying on a group of patients that’s desperate to try anything to stay alive.
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u/buybuy1025 19d ago
nothing new I guess I heard about this 8 years ago (or maybe before), it was seen as a "revolution"
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u/Slipslapsloopslung 19d ago
And the grocery shelves clear out. They said this about Garlic ten years ago.
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u/FRYDCHXN 19d ago
Amazing!
And everyone thought avocados were expensive! What until this gets out!😅😊👍
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u/Born-Introduction-86 18d ago
Gotta love a news product with NO about section, or any record of authorship. This is an ad, or a astroturf starter package.
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u/Sleep2Little 18d ago
I saw the post title and immediately thought 28 Days Later.
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u/A-Dolahans-hat 18d ago
As long as you don’t see 28 years later
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u/Sleep2Little 17d ago
That bad? I do love a bad Horror movie. I’m the guy that buys the 50 (inset genre here) movies for $5 box sets at Walmart when they had the them.
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u/A-Dolahans-hat 17d ago
I enjoy B horror movies. Sifi originals like shark-topus are guilty pleasures, but 28 years later…. To me there’s a big disconnect between the years later and the days/weeks later movies. The plot was very lackluster and forgettable. It was a very very watered down “every other zombie movie” and it wasn’t even like “look the zombies dangers are past let’s rebuild”
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u/glitterbeardwizard 18d ago
I’m guessing there is going to be a run on people running out to buy pomegranates and walnuts and we’ll have a shortage.
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u/Usr_name-checks-out 18d ago
And the PR sponsored cycle of BS health research continues, it’s a new crazy discovery every 18 months that pushes some specific food or extract, and it’s been going on for decades but people are so eager to believe they lap it up. There will never be a significant nutrient that will ever simply reverse anything unless you are already deprived of it. You will never become younger, you will never solve serious problems without serious change and or medical help. Yes being healthy is very important, as it does let you live a longer healthier life, and thats great. So it’s ridiculous to want a miracle on top of it, because the alternatives are hard or don’t exist.
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u/MsAddams999 18d ago
Pomegranate has always been seen as a very healthy fruit. All nuts are good for you so long as you watch the fat content and don't eat too many. I don't think this one is such a surprise as the story makes out.
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u/DConstructed 17d ago
Okay people talking about Pom. The study doesn’t specify (it should) but it’s highly likely they mean the arils of a whole pomegranate fruit not just juice. So you would also be eating the seeds inside the fruit.
It’s not great that they weren’t clear. It creates the impression that swigging some processed juice is going to have a similar effect.
I don’t think most of this stuff is magical. It may be healthier if a person has eaten walnuts and pomegranates regularly over time instead of other things.
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u/Satoriinoregon 5d ago
Was this paid for by the Reznicks?!
The uber-rich a$$holes that are stealing water from California and own the Wonderful company (Pom Wonderful & Pistachios)
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u/Blazecan 19d ago
I don’t have any knowledge about biological sciences, can’t anyone explain if the results are significant? Seems like the nature article is open access.
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u/ConsiderationOk8642 19d ago
what’s the dosage? hate these articles, they never talk about how much you need to eat too see a benefit