What Your Gut Can Do With a Pomegranate
By Editorial Staff
A pomegranate doesn't contain urolithin A. But eat one, and something interesting can happen. Natural compounds in pomegranates travel to the gut, where certain bacteria can transform them into urolithin A – a substance that has attracted scientific attention for its potential effects throughout the body. New research suggests the heart could be one of its targets.
In a 2026
Science Advances study, researchers focused on a common but difficult-to-treat form of heart failure in which the heart can still pump normally but has trouble relaxing and filling properly between beats. The researchers discovered that urolithin A acts on a protein involved in the heart muscle's ability to relax.
When they gave urolithin A to mice with features resembling this form of heart failure, their hearts relaxed better and showed fewer of the unhealthy structural changes associated with the disease.
The researchers then took an important additional step: They tested urolithin A on engineered human heart tissue. Again, the heart tissue relaxed more quickly, while its ability to contract also improved.
It's an intriguing example of the increasingly apparent connection between what we eat, the microbes living in our gut and the rest of the body. Pomegranates aren't the only potential starting point, either. The plant compounds used to make urolithin A are also found in foods such as walnuts and some berries.
For now, perhaps the most interesting message isn't just that scientists have discovered another reason to eat pomegranates. It's that food doesn't necessarily stop affecting us once we've digested it.
