Blueberries And Strawberries To Reduce The Risk Of Heart Attack

Blueberries And Strawberries To Reduce The Risk Of Heart Attack.
Eating three or more servings of blueberries and strawberries each week may aid slash a woman's gamble of heart attack, a large new study suggests. The study included nearly 94000 unfledged and middle-aged women who took part in the Nurses' Health Study II. The women completed questionnaires about their chamber every four years for 18 years. During the on period, 405 participants had heart attacks. Women who ate the most blueberries and strawberries were 32 percent less fitting to have a heart attack, compared to women who ate berries once a month or less.

This held firm even among women who ate a diet rich in other fruits and vegetables. This help was independent of other heart risk factors such as advancing age, high blood pressure, kind history of heart attack, body mass index, exercise, smoking, and caffeine and hard stuff intake. The findings appear online Jan 14, 2013 in the journal Circulation.

The learning can't say specifically what about the berries seemed to result in a lower risk of heart offensive among these women, or that there was a direct cause-and-effect link between eating the berries and lowered heart denigrate risk. But blueberries and strawberries contain high levels of compounds that may help add to arteries, which counters plaque buildup, the researchers said.

Heart attacks can occur when plaque blocks blood go to the heart. "Berries were the most commonly consumed sources of these substances in the US diet, and they are one of the best sources of these resilient bioactive compounds," said study lead author Aedin Cassidy. "These substances, called anthocyanins - a flavonoid - are unpretentiously present in red- and blue-colored fruits and vegetables, so they are also found in momentous amounts in cherries, grapes, eggplant, black currants, plums and other berries".

Men are plausible to benefit from eating berries as well, although this study included only women, said Cassidy, who is crisis of the department of nutrition at Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia, in England. Although more inspect is needed to confirm these benefits, "these data are leading from a public health perspective because these fruits can be readily incorporated into the habitual diet," the study concluded.

Dr Suzanne Steinbaum, a anticipative cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, famed that this was a "huge study that followed women for a long period of time. Women who ate three or more servings of strawberries and blueberries per week decreased their humanity attack risk by one-third. This is tuneful compelling".

Steinbaum's advice to both women and men is to include berries in their diet, and build them part of their daily fruit and vegetable fill. One serving of blueberries or strawberries equals about one cup. Dana Greene, a nutritionist in Boston, regularly tells her patients to eat up more fruits and vegetables, including berries.

So "They are so groovy for you," Greene said. Besides flavonoids, berries also are flush with other nutrients, including vitamin C, potassium and folate. "I barrow all patients to make sure that half of their plate is filled with fruits and vegetables, especially richly colored ones for example blueberries and strawberries," Greene said. "Berries can also help people suffer the loss of weight and maintain that loss because they feel fuller faster hamdard. there is no downside". The den was funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.