Tiny Berry BOOSTS Your Brain
When it comes to maintaining cognitive function as you age, there are two important things to consider:
- How you’re exercising your brain
- What you’re feeding your brain
Exercising your brain simply means using it. Talk to people. Read books. Take up a new hobby.
Feeding your brain means eating food that contains nutrients your brain needs to perform at peak function—like fish and walnuts.
But there’s one particular food you’d probably NEVER put in the same sentence as brain health.
Yet according to a recent study, just one cup per day can help boost your memory and promote cognitive health.
Besides their place at Thanksgiving dinner, cranberries are most well known for their connection to urinary tract health.
But even if you’re not worried about UTIs, you probably ARE concerned about your brain health.
Well, cranberries can help in that category, too.
In a recent study, adults from 50-80 years old took freeze-dried cranberry powder every day for 12 weeks.
Results showed that those taking the cranberry powder had improvements in visual episodic memory. This is when you see an object and then remember it again later.
It would be like seeing an item on your grandchild’s birthday wish list and then recognizing it when you see the object in the store.
They also had improvements in the circulation of nutrients in their brain.
In other words, the nutrients in cranberries appear to be able to help memory retention and boost cognitive health.
A key reason for benefits like these is that cranberries are loaded with two particular brain-protecting flavonoids: anthocyanidins and proanthocyanins.
You probably don’t want to eat a cup of tart cranberries every day. (Even the thought of it makes the sour juices in my mouth water.)
But I also don’t recommend chugging sugar-laden cranberry juice, either.
Instead, if you want to gain the benefits of the flavonoids found in cranberries, you have a few other options.
The first is to try a cranberry powder like the one mentioned in this study. You can add it to a smoothie or water.
Or, you can skip the cranberries altogether and opt for other foods high in anthocyanins and proanthocyanins, like grapes, pomegranates, and goji berries.
Although this study focused on cranberries specifically, plenty of other studies have demonstrated that flavonoids, in general, can help protect against cognitive decline and dementia.
P.S. Cranberries do offer a whole lot more benefits for your health that you probably don’t even know about. Click here to read about its heart health benefits.
SOURCE:
Brown, S. (2022, June 3.) “Cranberries May Support Memory and Brain Health, Study Finds.” VeryWell Health. https://www.verywellhealth.com/cranberry-supplements-brain-health-5324277
