• Question: How will this pill you're making help prevent heart attacks? How does it work?

    Asked by Daire to John on 11 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Ella, 965fscd32.
    • Photo: John Gleeson

      John Gleeson answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      So this awesome Japanese scientist in the 90s found these small protein pieces (called peptides) in milk that interacted with an enzyme called ACE. Now ACE is a nice guy he does his job. He turns Ang1 into Ang2. And normally this is fine and part of life, Ang1 causes our blood pressure to rise. But sometimes our blood pressure is already high from stress and then Ang2 comes along and puts a bit too much stress on our heart.

      So these peptides stop ACE producing Ang2 stopping blood pressure increasing. And lots of people have tried giving these in yoghurt or sour milk (like Yakult). But we thought NAH! Let’s try a pill. So I’m trying to figure out how much we’d need to give to lower blood pressure and make a pill 🙂

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