# @nutrition_facts_org on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DBbrJLTtC1E
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/29043644-nutrition-facts-org-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/be7b71836e.jpg
- **Posted:** 2024-10-22T16:03:18.000+00:00

## Caption

Berries are packed with polyphenols, which have powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Anthocyanidins, the natural blue-purple pigments in plants, are a type of polyphenol and can cross the blood-brain barrier and may provide neuroprotective effects.

Our brain makes up less than about 2 percent of our weight, but it may burn up to 50 percent of our body’s fuel, creating a potential firestorm of free radicals. Might the brain-seeking phytonutrients in berries fight oxidation, inflammation, and increase blood flow?

The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study followed 16,000 women for years and found that those eating more berries over the long term had “significantly slower rates of cognitive decline” even after controlling for socioeconomic status. In the study, higher consumption of blueberries and strawberries was associated with “delayed cognitive aging by as much as 2.5 years”—thought to be because of the brain-localizing anthocyanins.

Performing a randomized cross-over study, researchers had participants drink a smoothie with blueberries, black currants, elderberries, lingonberries, strawberries, and…a tomato. Not only did the study subjects achieve a drop in LDL cholesterol during the berry intervention, but they “performed better” on short-term memory tests, too. Good for heart, good for the brain.

When adding the equivalent of one daily cup of blueberries to the diets of older adults, researchers found improvements in their long-term memory and other aspects of cognition. In terms of the number of errors on the test, the placebo group got worse while the blueberry group got better.

You can even correlate the cognitive improvements with enhanced brain activation. Using brain scan technology, you can actually visualize the improved blood flow to those same regions of the brain caused by the blueberry consumption.

All these results suggest that eating just a handful of berries every day, an easy and delicious dietary tweak, may slow your brain’s aging by years.

PMIDs: 22658645, 22535616, 22907211, 22535616, 29141041, 28283823, 28249119

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- **Views:** 41,742
- **Likes:** 3,813
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- **Comments:** 41

## Credits

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lucy R | @Lucyonsocial | https://gondola.cc/Lucyonsocial | Social Manager |

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