Pick Berries to Protect Your Aging Brain

Pick Berries to Protect Your Aging Brain

Those berries adorning your breakfast cereal or topping your yogurt may be doing more than merely adding fruity flavor to your day. A “bunch” of new research suggests thatblueberries, strawberries, grapes and other berry fruits could help protect your brain from decline with aging.

In a review of the scientific evidence published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Marshall G. Miller and Barbara Shukitt-Hale, PhD, of Tufts’ USDA-HNRCA Neuroscience and Aging Laboratory note, “A growing body of preclinical and clinical research has identified neurological benefits associated with the consumption of berry fruits. In addition to their now well-known antioxidant effects, dietary supplementation with berry fruits also has direct effects on the brain. Intake of these fruits may help to prevent age-related neurodegeneration and resulting changes in cognitive and motor function.”

Some of the latest research, the Tufts scientists point out, focuses on beneficial effects of berry fruits on the ways that neurons in the brain communicate. By boosting the brain’s signaling functions, berries may prevent damaging inflammation in the brain and protect cognition and motor control.

At least some of berries’ brain-protective power appears to derive from antioxidant flavonoid compounds called anthocyanins, which give the fruits their vivid red, purple and blue colors. These anthocyanins are found in berry fruits including blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, bilberries, huckleberries and cranberries, as well as grapes and currants.

The case for berries’ brain benefits was also recently bolstered by a study the authors call the largest and longest of its kind. Elizabeth Devore, ScD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and colleagues analyzed data on berry consumption among 16,010 women age 70 and older participating in the Nurses’ Health Study. The women completed dietary questionnaires every four years beginning in 1980, prior to cognitive testing; they were tested for memory and other cognitive function every two years between 1995 and 2001.

Berries Could Battle Inflammation, Atherosclerosis

Berries may also be good for your blood vessels, according to laboratory tests in Finland. Researchers fed lingonberry, cranberry and blackcurrant juice to rats specially bred to develop high blood pressure. All three juices were associated with reductions in compounds linked to inflammation. Lingonberry juice was also linked to significant improvements in biomarkers associated with damage to cells thought to contribute to atherosclerosis. The positive effects can’t be linked to a single phenolic compound in the juices, scientists noted, although several such antioxidant www.antiagingwoners.com compounds have been shown to have anti-inflammatory benefits. Overall, researchers concluded that “lingonberry juice appears to be the most effective of the tested juices.”

TO LEARN MORE: Journal of Functional Foods, April 2012; abstract atdx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2012.02.010. Publishing their findings in Annals of Neurology, Devore and colleagues found that women who consumed two or more half-cup servings of strawberries or one or more half-cups of blueberries per week saw slower mental decline—equivalent to up to two and a half years of delayed cognitive aging. Intakes of anthocyanins and total flavonoids were also associated with slower cognitive aging.