They say that you are what you eat, and there may be truth in this. People have been made aware of the importance of healthy eating. People have joined the bandwagon and are beginning to feed their bodies with the so-called power foods.
For those who want to power their minds, they also need to know what’s good for them. Not much is known about cranberries, and for some, this is the perfect cure for UTI (urinary tract infection). But there’s more to this fruit than meets the eye.
Researchers have now seen how adding cranberries to your diet could help improve health, especially when it comes to people’s memory enhancement and brain functioning. These are also able to lower ‘bad’ cholesterol. According to the new research, the fruit comes with a myriad of benefits.
The study was made from the University of East Anglia. In it are the highlights of the neuroprotective potential of cranberries. This was discovered because the research team behind it have studied the benefits that come with consuming the equivalent of a cup of cranberries a day among 50 to 80-year-olds who were part of the study.
The team had very interesting findings during this time and they hope what they discovered could help people especially in terms of its implications for the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases like the much-dreaded dementia.
“Dementia is expected to affect around 152 million people by 2050. There is no known cure, so it is crucial that we seek modifiable lifestyle interventions, such as diet, that could help lessen disease risk and burden,” said lead researcher Dr. David Vauzour. He is from UEA’s Norwich Medical School.
He also said, “Past studies have shown that higher dietary flavonoid intake is associated with slower rates of cognitive decline and dementia. And foods rich in anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins, which give berries their red, blue, or purple color, have been found to improve cognition.”
Dr. Vauzour explained, “Cranberries are rich in these micronutrients and have been recognized for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. We wanted to find out more about how cranberries could help reduce age-related neurodegeneration.”
A New Study
The research team wanted to understand the benefits further and investigated the impact of eating cranberries for 12 weeks. They observed the effect it had on brain function and cholesterol levels among 60 cognitively healthy participants.
To do so, they made half of the participants consume freeze-dried cranberry powder, which is tantamount to a cup or 100g of fresh cranberries. The group had to do this daily. The other half, on the other hand, simply had to consume a placebo. This is actually the first of its kind because they examined cranberries and their long-term impact on cognition and brain health in people who consumed them regularly.
The results were impressive because the consumption demonstrated how consuming cranberries significantly improved their memory of everyday events (this is called visual episodic memory), neural functioning, and delivery of blood to the brain (or what is known as brain perfusion).
“We found that the participants who consumed the cranberry powder showed significantly improved episodic memory performance in combination with improved circulation of essential nutrients such as oxygen and glucose to important parts of the brain that support cognition – specifically memory consolidation and retrieval,” Dr. Vauzour explained.
“The cranberry group also exhibited a significant decrease in LDL or ‘bad’ cholesterol levels, known to contribute to atherosclerosis, the thickening or hardening of the arteries caused by a build-up of plaque in the inner lining of an artery. This supports the idea that cranberries can improve vascular health and may in part contribute to the improvement in brain perfusion and cognition. Demonstrating in humans that cranberry supplementation can improve cognitive performance and identifying some of the mechanisms responsible is an important step for this research field.”
The doctor also addex, “The findings of this study are very encouraging, especially considering that a relatively short 12-week cranberry intervention was able to produce significant improvements in memory and neural function.”
“This establishes an important foundation for future research in the area of cranberries and neurological health.”
This study has been published in Frontiers in Nutrition and they hope that people recognize the specific functions of fruits that nature has given us.
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