Pomegranate Juice: Benefits, How Much to Drink & Side Effects

Dr. Josh Axe · Free quiz

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Pomegranate juice is good for your heart and blood vessels. Across 14 trials, 100% pomegranate juice lowered systolic blood pressure about 5 points, and across 11 trials it brought CRP, a blood marker of inflammation, 2.55 mg/L lower than in the control groups.25 And it doesn't take much to get those benefits: a small glass of 100% unsweetened juice, about 4 ounces and no more than 8, alongside the whole fruit.3

My philosophy has always been to use food as medicine first,6 and with high blood pressure, I look for the root cause instead of just chasing the number. Much of that starts on your plate, because every meal either relaxes your arteries or tightens them, and pomegranate is one of the foods on the relaxing side.7

Pomegranates have been treasured since Bible times. When Moses described the Promised Land to Israel, he named seven foods: "A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey" (Deuteronomy 8:8).1 Pomegranates rank No. 2 on my list of the Bible foods that heal, right behind wild-caught fish.8

When you turn the fruit into juice, you keep most of its potassium and its signature polyphenols, but you leave nearly all of the fiber behind.910 Sugar itself isn't the culprit; the problem is sugar that has lost the fiber and nutrients of its whole-food form.11 That's why the whole pomegranate seeds, the arils, come first, about half a cup to a cup a day.3

Did you know?

• The word "juice" appears only once in the King James Bible, and it's pomegranate juice: "I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate" (Song of Solomon 8:2).1

• In a lab comparison of the polyphenol-rich drinks sold in U.S. stores, pomegranate juice had the highest antioxidant potency. It came in at least 20% above any other drink tested, including red wine, Concord grape juice and blueberry juice.12

• In Ayurvedic medicine, the pomegranate is considered "a pharmacy unto itself" and is used as a "blood tonic."13

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What is pomegranate juice?

Break open a pomegranate and you'll find the arils, the jewel-red sacs packed around its seeds that hold the juice. On the shelf, you'll see 100% pomegranate juice, juice made from concentrate, and blends or "cocktails" that mix pomegranate with other juices, water or added sugar. The ingredient list tells you which one you're holding: a 100% juice lists only pomegranate juice, or water and pomegranate juice concentrate if it's made from concentrate.

Concentrate does make a difference. In USDA's data, a shelf-stable juice made from concentrate carried 166 milligrams of potassium and 6 micrograms of folate per 100 grams, while the bottled juice carried 214 milligrams and 24 micrograms.189 That's a big gap, especially in folate, so look for 100% juice that isn't from concentrate when you can find it.

Pomegranates in the Bible

Pomegranates turn up all through Scripture. When the men Moses sent to scout Canaan came back from the brook of Eshcol carrying a cluster of grapes on a staff, they didn't come back with grapes alone: "they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs" (Numbers 13:23).1 Golden bells and pomegranates alternated around the hem of the high priest's robe, "a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about" (Exodus 28:34), and on the pillars of Solomon's temple, "the pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other chapiter" (1 Kings 7:20).1

In the King James text, the words "pomegranate" and "pomegranates" appear 33 times, and 21 of those mentions are ornaments on the temple pillars or the high priest's robe, which made the pomegranate part of the place of worship as well as a food for the table.1 In The Biblio Diet, Jordan Rubin and I write that in the Bible, the pomegranate symbolized royalty, fertility and abundance.19

Pomegranate juice nutrition facts

Calculated from USDA FoodData Central record 167787 (pomegranate juice, bottled) at USDA's 249-gram cup. % Daily Value uses FDA reference values.920

A cup is mostly water and natural sugar, and it also gives you a useful share of potassium, vitamin K and folate, plus smaller amounts of pantothenic acid and manganese. Its sugar splits almost evenly between glucose and fructose, about 15.6 and 15.9 grams a cup, with no sucrose.9 So none of it is table sugar, just the fruit's own sugar without the fruit around it.

Whole arils vs. juice

Gram for gram, the juice keeps most of the fruit's potassium, but it loses nearly all of its fiber and vitamin C.109 I advise choosing fruits that are high in nutrition, high in fiber and lower in sugar,19 and by that standard, the whole arils come first, as the fiber column below shows.

Calculated from USDA FoodData Central records 169134 (pomegranates, raw; ½ cup of arils is 87 g) and 167787 (pomegranate juice, bottled; 1 cup is 249 g).109

What is pomegranate juice good for?

How does pomegranate juice work in your body?

Pomegranate juice does its work well before a number shows up on your blood pressure cuff, in the two places its polyphenols reach: the lining of your blood vessels and your gut.

In your blood vessels, healthy arteries widen on demand thanks to the nitric oxide made in their lining, the way a garden hose opened wider moves the same water with less pressure. Pomegranate is one of the polyphenol-rich foods that support nitric oxide and healthy arteries.7

The juice also works on the other side, the system that tightens blood vessels, where your body uses an enzyme called angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE). If nitric oxide opens the hose, ACE is part of the hand that squeezes it. In a two-week study of 10 people with high blood pressure, with no comparison group, 50 milliliters of juice a day (under 2 ounces, only a couple of swallows) lowered ACE activity in their blood by 36% and systolic pressure by 5%.32

The second place is your gut, where your gut bacteria turn the juice's tannins into urolithin A. Here's how the tannins get from the glass to your cells:

Health benefits of pomegranate juice, ranked by evidence

Pomegranate juice has human research behind six benefits, ranked here by how strong that research is: lower blood pressure, better blood flow to the heart and healthier arteries, lower inflammation, faster recovery from hard training, steadier memory with age, and more urolithin A from your gut.

Does pomegranate juice lower blood pressure?

You might expect more juice to mean a bigger drop, but in the 2017 analysis, the trials using less than 240 milliliters (about a cup) a day lowered systolic pressure 11.01 points, while trials using more lowered it 3.62, and systolic pressure was lower in trials both shorter and longer than 12 weeks.14 That's good news, because a smaller glass also means less sugar.

The 2023 analysis found something similar. There, 300 milliliters a day or less lowered systolic pressure 6.11 points, while larger amounts lowered diastolic pressure 3.10 points without a significant change in systolic, and the drop showed up in trials of two months or less but not in longer ones.2

Across every form of pomegranate, the drop was bigger: a 2024 analysis of 22 trials of juice, extracts and other forms found 7.87 points systolic and 3.23 diastolic. The drops were larger in people whose systolic pressure started above 130, which is worth knowing if your top number runs high.36

One 4-week trial shows what that can look like on a blood pressure cuff. Each of 28 overweight adults drank 500 milliliters of juice a day for one period and a placebo drink with similar calories for another, and during the juice period, systolic pressure fell from 136.4 to 128.9 and diastolic from 80.3 to 75.5, with no significant changes on the placebo drink.37

Not every review pools its trials, though. A 2017 Oxford review looked at 8 trials of pomegranate juice or capsules, with 619 people, one at a time, without pooling the results: 2 found a significant drop in systolic pressure, 3 found no difference between groups, and 3 didn't report the comparison.38 Seen that way, the trials look more mixed, which is one more reason to watch your own numbers.

My High Blood Pressure Protocol ranks pomegranate No. 9 on its list of blood-pressure foods and calls it a natural partner to beets and berries,7 which puts it among the foods that lower blood pressure you can eat every day. Even a 4-ounce glass brings 266 milligrams of potassium,9 one of the two minerals, with magnesium, that your arteries relax on.7 Treat a small glass as one part of a diet for healthy blood pressure, alongside the other natural ways to lower blood pressure, and then check your numbers at home, so you can see what it does for you.

How can you make more urolithin A from pomegranate juice?

Keep eating pomegranates, and feed your gut bacteria, because they're the ones that make urolithin A from the tannins in pomegranate juice, and the trials suggest your body can get better at it over time.

Most people start low: in a randomized study of 100 healthy adults, only 12% had detectable urolithin A in their blood at the start, and after a glass of pomegranate juice, about 40% made significant amounts; the people who did had more diverse gut bacteria.23 If your gut isn't a strong converter yet, that can change. When you keep eating pomegranates and get more probiotics, from a supplement or from foods like goat milk yogurt, kefir or coconut kefir, your body gets better at making it over time.8

Two trials back that up. In a placebo-controlled trial of a pomegranate extract in 49 overweight adults, 3 of the 6 people who made no urolithins at the start began making them.31 And in a 91-day placebo-controlled trial of 32 healthy adults, a probiotic capsule with 400 milligrams of pomegranate extract raised the share of people making urolithin A from 50% at the start to 100% at day 91, against 44.4% on placebo, so by the end every person on the capsule was making it.24

Fiber helps too. In a 3-week placebo-controlled trial of 68 overweight adults, adding inulin, a prebiotic fiber, to 200 milliliters of juice a day shifted gut bacteria more than juice alone and raised the gut's output of short-chain fatty acids and pomegranate polyphenol metabolites.39

To improve your conversion, eat more pomegranates, berries, walnuts and extra virgin olive oil, and get probiotic supplements and probiotic foods.40 Berries and nuts carry the same family of tannins,33 so the other ellagic acid foods on your plate feed the same conversion. My Mitochondrial Longevity Protocol lists pomegranate, or urolithin A, in its renewal phase because it supports mitophagy, the recycling of worn-out mitochondria.16

How much sugar is in pomegranate juice?

In a whole pomegranate, the sugar comes packed with fiber and water,10 but juice keeps the sugar and leaves the fiber behind, and since even natural sugars are small-amount foods, the glass stays small.

Even with its sugar, though, pomegranate has moved blood sugar markers slightly down in trials. A 2024 analysis of 32 trials of juice, extracts and other forms found fasting blood sugar 2.22 mg/dL lower and fasting insulin 1.06 μU/mL lower, with HbA1c 0.22 percentage points lower and HOMA-IR, a score calculated from fasting blood sugar and insulin, 0.30 lower.41 And in the overweight adults from the blood pressure trial above, fasting insulin fell from 9.36 to 7.53 during their juice period.37

If you're following an insulin resistance diet or managing diabetes, choose the whole arils first, since half a cup brings 3.5 grams of fiber along with its sugar.10 If you drink juice, have a small glass with a meal that includes protein or healthy fat, and build the rest of your plate from low-glycemic foods.

How much pomegranate juice should you drink a day?

There's no official daily amount for pomegranate juice, so let the trials guide you. The blood pressure trials used anywhere from 50 milliliters (under 2 ounces) to 500 milliliters (about 17 ounces) a day,14 and the smaller amounts did at least as well, which points to a small glass.

If you train hard, the exercise research supports pairing the juice with your workouts, and it adds one detail on timing. A 2018 review of the trials, which tested juice or extract, found the benefits less likely when the drink wasn't rich in polyphenols, or when an hour or less separated drinking it from exercise or testing,4 so have your glass more than an hour before you train, and on other days, drink it with a meal instead of on its own.

For children, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises no juice before 12 months of age unless there's a medical reason. After that, it sets a daily limit on total juice: at most 4 ounces from ages 1 through 3, 4 to 6 ounces from 4 through 6, and 8 ounces from 7 to 18. Offer it with a meal or snack, instead of letting your child sip it through the day.42 That limit covers all juice, so a splash of pomegranate counts toward it.

How to choose pomegranate juice

Turn the bottle around and read the ingredient list first: the one you want says 100% juice and lists pomegranate juice as its only ingredient.

• 100% juice, nothing added. Skip blends and "cocktails," which mix in other juices, water or added sugar.

• Pressed from the whole fruit. Whole-fruit pressing puts far more of the rind's tannins in the glass than pressing the arils alone.17 Those are the tannins your gut bacteria turn into urolithin A.

• From a source you trust. In a 2019 lab test of 20 commercial pomegranate beverages, 4 showed no punicalagins at all, even though those signature tannins turned up in all 14 pomegranate varieties the researchers tested,43 so buy 100% juice from a company or farm whose sourcing you know.

• Not from concentrate, when you can. In USDA's data, juice from concentrate carries less potassium and folate than bottled juice.18

If you're thinking about capsules instead, know that pomegranate extract capsules are a separate product, and they vary a lot. In a test of 27 extract supplements, only 5 had the fruit's typical tannin profile, while 17 were mostly ellagic acid, with little or no pomegranate tannin, and 5 had neither.44 So for the polyphenols this page describes, the juice and the whole fruit are your surest choice.

To make your own, pulse fresh arils in a blender for a few seconds and strain the juice through a fine sieve, which gives you aril juice without the rind's tannins. Fresh pomegranates are in season from about October into January,3 so those are the best months to press your own. Refrigerate any juice once it's opened or freshly made.

How to use pomegranate juice

A few ounces go a long way, and the easiest ways to use pomegranate juice pair it with food or stretch it with sparkling water.

Pomegranate juice side effects and who should be careful

Does pomegranate juice interact with medications?

It can with a few, and the steps for each are simple. In lab and animal studies, pomegranate compounds slowed CYP3A4 and CYP2C9, two liver enzymes that clear many drugs,46 but in people, the effect has been small. In 12 healthy men, 3 days of juice didn't significantly change simvastatin levels, while grapefruit juice raised exposure about ninefold.47 Healthy volunteers also handled midazolam, flurbiprofen and cyclosporine the same with or without it.484950

Blood thinners, such as warfarin. In one documented case, a 64-year-old woman had been drinking pomegranate juice two to three times a week. After she stopped, her INR, the blood test that tracks warfarin, fell below her target range, and her warfarin dose had to be raised.51 So the key is consistency: keep your juice intake steady from week to week, and ask the doctor who manages your warfarin to check your INR after any change.

Statins, such as rosuvastatin. In another documented case, a 48-year-old man with a possible underlying muscle condition was taking rosuvastatin. Three weeks after he began drinking 200 milliliters of juice twice a week, he developed rhabdomyolysis, a serious breakdown of muscle.52 So if you take a statin, call your doctor right away about any unexplained muscle pain or weakness.

Blood pressure medication. The juice can add to its effect.2 Check your readings at home when you add a daily glass, and share them with the doctor who manages your prescription.

Can you be allergic to pomegranate?

Yes. Allergic reactions to pomegranate have been reported,45 including a documented case of anaphylaxis traced to cross-reactivity with a peach allergen, a lipid transfer protein,53 which means the immune system reacted to pomegranate as if it were peach. So if peaches give you an itchy mouth, hives or swelling, ask your allergist about pomegranate before you try it, and learn the signs of a food allergy.

Is pomegranate juice safe during pregnancy?

It may be. According to NCCIH, drinking pomegranate juice during pregnancy or while breastfeeding may be safe, though little is known about other forms of pomegranate or other parts of the plant.45 The root, stem and peel may not be safe in large amounts, so stick to the juice and the arils.45 If you're pregnant, also know that FDA advises pregnant women and young children to skip juice that hasn't been pasteurized or otherwise treated to kill harmful bacteria, and that includes fresh-squeezed and homemade juice.54

The bottom line

Pomegranate juice: frequently asked questions

References

1. The Holy Bible, King James Version. Project Gutenberg eBook #10. Verses quoted and word counts computed from this text.
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3. Axe J. Pomegranate: Benefits, Nutrition, Uses & Side Effects. DrAxe.com. 2026.
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5. Jazinaki MS, Rashidmayvan M, Pahlavani N. The effect of pomegranate juice supplementation on C-reactive protein levels: GRADE-assessed systematic review and dose-response updated meta-analysis of data from randomized controlled trials. Phytother Res. 2024;38(6):2818-2831. doi:10.1002/ptr.8188. PMID:38553998
6. Axe J. #1 Cellular Health EXPERT: Most Longevity Advice Gets It Backwards. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. March 19, 2026. Line cited at 4:06.
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44. Zhang Y, Wang D, Lee RP, Henning SM, Heber D. Absence of pomegranate ellagitannins in the majority of commercial Pomegranate extracts: implications for standardization and quality control. J Agric Food Chem. 2009;57(16):7395-400. doi:10.1021/jf9010017. PMID:20349921
45. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Pomegranate. National Institutes of Health.
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