Stevia And Cardiovascular Disease

Replacing sugar by Stevia can cut cholesterol levels, but we're going to talk about something much more exciting here: The healing effects of the medicinal herb Stevia Rebaudiana on people with heart disease or cardiovascular disease in general.
We've all heard about how important Omega-3 is for a healthy heart. DHA is perhaps the most important of those polyunsaturated fatty acids, and our bodies can produce but very little of their own. DHA is present in fatty fish and in supplements, but the best way of getting it would be to somehow increase the body's own production. Similar to how sunshine makes the body create vitamin D, and that self-produced vit. D is much more beneficial to the body than vit. D from supplements, it would likely be much more preferable in terms of benefit-to-the-body to let the body synthesise more of its own Omega-3. Not to mention the benefit on the wallet - Omega-3 supplements are not exactly cheap. Wouldn't it be great to go to your garden and harvest your own Omega-3 booster?

Enter Stevia. There is an exciting but totally unknown US patent nr. 6,500,471 by Minoru Sato et al., where many beneficial - almost spectacular - effects are described on small amounts (2% of the feed) of powdered Stevia plant on various livestock like pigs, cows and poultry.

One of their main findings was that a tiny amount of Stevia extract added to pig feed tremendously raised the pigs own ability to make DHA! As a result, their meat didn't leak juices when it was kept for days on supermarket shelves. And they sought to ameliorate that problem for Japanese supermarkets.
Because meat with a high amount of DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid, the most important polyunsaturated Omega-3 fatty acid for cardiac health) tastes better, smells better, looks better and feels better. You get it - animals with more DHA are healthier.
Stevia's capacity to boost DHA production seems to be unique: The patent says: "There is no precedent that DHA is detected from meat of domestic animals such as swine."

Because the patent mentions that very small percentages of Stevia leaf and stem powder already have a noticeable effect, I believe that "medicinal" Stevia leaf extract is in fact a cheaper and perhaps even better alternative than taking Omega-3 capsules.