Blueberries May Ward Off Age-Related Mental Decline
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Posted on Sep 19, 2002, 5 p.m.
By Bill Freeman
Eating a cupful of blueberries each day could help ward off age-related mental decline, say researchers at the Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston and the University of South Florida. Dr James A Joseph and his colleagues discovered that elderly rodents that were given the human equivalent of one cup of blueberries a day had less oxidative damage in tissue of two key areas of the brain.
Eating a cupful of blueberries each day could help ward off age-related mental decline, say researchers at the Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston and the University of South Florida. Dr James A Joseph and his colleagues discovered that elderly rodents that were given the human equivalent of one cup of blueberries a day had less oxidative damage in tissue of two key areas of the brain. Further studies by the team on the effect of blueberries in rats bred to develop Alzheimer's-like plaques, revealed that mice fed blueberries kept their mental faculties - although they still developed plaques - whereas the mental performance of the rats that didn't eat the berries gradually got worse and worse. According to Joseph, preliminary results of a human study due to be published in the Fall show that eating a cup of blueberries a day appears to have a similar protective effect upon age-related mental decline in humans.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Reported by www.reutershealth.com on the 19th August 2002
