Posted on by Californiacontrarian

For What It’s Worth

For what it’s worth, I am going to provide my annual health tip. This is a health tip that you are unlikely to hear about on this side of the pond, as it is based on research that was done at the University of East Anglia. For those of you whose might be more interested, the details were published in Science News in May, 2022. At this point you might be asking, “If it was published in May, why am I writing about it now?” The answer is quite simple … because this British study is very apropos to Thanksgiving. Despite the many presumed benefits of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy, this study demonstrates the benefits of that other Thanksgiving standby … Cranberries.

From this Science News article:

“Researchers have found that eating cranberries could improve memory, ward off dementia, and reduce ‘bad’ cholesterol. The research team studied the benefits of consuming the equivalent of a cup of cranberries a day among 50 to 80-year-olds.

Lead researcher Dr David Vauzour, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: ‘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.’

The research team investigated the impact of eating cranberries for 12 weeks on brain function and cholesterol among 60 cognitively healthy participants.

Half of the participants consumed freeze-dried cranberry powder, equivalent to a cup or 100g of fresh cranberries, daily. The other half consumed a placebo.

Dr Vauzour said: ‘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.’

They hope that their findings could have implications for the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia.”

Now granted, while this study is quite small, and it involves cranberry powder, and not actual cranberries, for what it’s worth, perhaps we can all use this study to rationalize the cranberry’s balancing effect on our cholesterol as we eat our pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream.

Happy Thanksgiving!

11/24/22

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