Grape seeds sow cholesterol benefits.

Grape seeds sow cholesterol benefits

First there was oat bran. Their rice bran. Later psyllium and barley. In the quest for yet another nutritional weapon against worrisome serum cholesterol levels, a preventive cardiologist has hit upon a rather surprising candidate: grape seed oil.

This natural fat, sometimes marketed as a gourmet alternative to olive oil, is extracted from the seeds left over from grapes pressed to make juice or wine. It caught the attention of David T. Nash when, dining with his wife in a South Carolina restaurant, he noticed that the menu touted entrees prepared with the allegedly heart-healthy fat. When the proprietors couldn't cite any studies to justify their claim, he decided to investigate the tasty oil himself.

Nash, of the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, recruited 23 men and women with elevated serum cholesterol levels and supplemented their already low-fat diets with 1 ounce of grape seed oil daily for four weeks. Over the course of this preliminary study, the extra oil did not significantly alter the volunteers' levels of total serum cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol). However, Nash reports, it did elicit a 14 percent increase in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol) and a 15 percent decrease in triglycerides, an independent risk factor in heart disease.

Grape seed oil's ability to raise HDL "appears unique," he told SCIENCE NEWS. Although many dietary constituents -- most notably soluble fibers -- can lower LDL cholesterol (SN: 5/26/90, p.330), Nash argues that until now, no foods and only a few drugs (including niacin, gemfibrozil and alcohol) have demonstrated an ability to raise HDL cholesterol. And that's important, he says, b ecause data from the Helsinki Heart Study indicate that for every 1 percent increase in serum HDL, the risk of adverse cardiac events, such as heart attacks, drops by 3 percent (SN: 9/9/89, p.171).

Nash speculates that grape seed oil may have an additive effect with soluble fiber, since these two foods appear to affect serum lipid levels by different mechanisms.