Eat Up! Blueberries Can Do WHAT?
By Cathryn Conroy,
Netscape News Editor
A cup of blueberries a day will very likely
prevent mental decline as we age. In other words, eat your blueberries now
and avoid "senior moments" later, as well as possibly ward off
the ravaging memory loss of Alzheimer's disease.
A team of scientists from Massachusetts and
Florida conducted research on rodents, giving them blueberry pellets to
eat. Aged rats that consumed the human equivalent of one cup of
blueberries a day showed less oxidative damage in tissue from two distinct
brain regions. Oxidation occurs naturally in our bodies, but it damages
tissues. A healthy diet of fruits and vegetables is known to help prevent
such damage, which has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart
disease.
This latest research shows that blueberries
may protect against Alzheimer's. Half the mice used in the research were
genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's-like plaques in their
brains; half of these mice were given blueberry-based food pellets, while
the other half were not. Reuters reports that the mice with
pseudo-Alzheimer's that didn't eat blueberries performed worse and worse
on a three-armed maze over time. However, the genetically modified animals
given blueberries showed no decline, performing just as well as normal
mice--even though they developed plaques in their brains.
Lead researcher Dr. James A. Joseph of the
Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston told Reuters that he
believes the berries' brain-protecting power goes beyond its known
antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Blueberries seem to
"directly influence the way neurons communicate."
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