RSS
Home
Why the blueberry is tops!
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Tiny yet powerful. (Photo: Meetak; flickr.com)
Now that the weather is warming up, people tend to eat more fruit since a variety of Mother Nature’s sweets are in season. Naturally, eating any fruit is beneficial to your health, but if you really want to get a bang for your buck, do your body a favor and make it a point to eat the all-mighty blueberry.
This may seem hard to believe, but this bite-size fruit proves that good things do come in small packages! So here are just a few of the reasons why you should toss a few of these suckers into your morning bowl of oatmeal:
They’re super-high in antioxidants: Not only are blueberries, both fresh and frozen, known for being the ultimate brain food (all because of polyphenols, special compounds derived from plants), they also scored big-time in the ORAC (the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) rating system of antioxidant power. “The ORAC rating tells you how much protection and value antioxidants and phytochemicals give you as a group in a particular food,” explains Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S. nationally known expert on weight loss and nutrition and author of The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. “And the highest-scoring fruit of all time? Blueberries!”
They can give you a youthful glow: Blueberries are also rank high on the good-for-you list because they prevent cell death. In other words, the older we get, the faster our cells die off. But blueberries may be able to slow down this process, which means they keep us looking younger longer!
They keep your brain sharp: Blueberries also protect us from the loss of dopamine neurons that is normally seen in aging. Dopamine is an energizing neurotransmitter that has many functions in the brain, such as learning skills, attention span, sleep and mood. Since dopamine naturally decreases as we age, we run the risk of suffering from a chemical imbalance, which can led to a number of health issues, including the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, like loss of balance, slow speech and impairment in intellectual ability. But blueberries have been known to keep dopamine levels balanced, helping to maintain youthful brain function.
Not bad, huh?
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
