Blueberry-Rich Diet Can Reduce Risk of Alzheimer's Disease

Filed in archive Investigational , Studies on July 1, 2007

The severity of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or cognitive disorders relating to aging may be reduced by eating a diet rich in blueberries.

That is if the results of an animal study from a team of researchers from the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health), Tufts University, and Louisiana State University System can be translated into humans.

As written by lead author Kara duffy in the journal Neurobiology of Aging:

"The current findings would suggest that a diet enriched in blueberry might attenuate degenerative processes due to oxidative or inflammatory stressors similar to the effectiveness of pharmacological strategies related to this hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease.

"The present findings indicate that rats exhibited impaired performance in maze learning following intra-hippocampal injection of kainic acid and that a blueberry enriched diet provided significant protection against these decrements in performance.

Additionally... [we] documented clear evidence that the blueberry-enriched diet reduced neuronal loss resulting from the excitotoxic effects of kainic acid."

It might be more than the antioxidant effects of blueberries. But this study's results should be pursued further because it definitely suggest that the wonder fruits rich in antioxidants, such as blueberries, could play a role in the prevention and possible treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

I haven't seen blueberries in the flesh, much less eat them fresh. But the preserved ones that usually top cheese cakes are really yummy. In which more food can we put blueberries? Because I guess eating blueberry cheesecakes on a regular basis would do harm to your blood sugar in the long run.

Source: NutraIngredients