Eating healthy is a staple of advice for those with\ncardiovascular disease. Doctors will tell you to fill your diet with fruits,\nvegetables, high-fiber and low-protein foods, but how big a difference does nutrition\nmake? A new study can give a very specific answer, as least as it related to\nblueberries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cardiovascular\nbenefits of anthocyanins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers from the Department of Nutritional Sciences at\nKing\u2019s College London wanted to focus on blueberries and their potential\nbenefits on the cardiovascular system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They had 40 perfectly healthy volunteers divide into two\ngroups. One group consumed a drink with 200 grams of blueberries daily while\nthe other group received a control drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team measure the volunteers\u2019 flow-mediated dilation of\nbrachial arteries\u2014which measures how much the artery widens at a greater blood\nflow\u2014as well as their blood pressure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In just two hours\nafter consuming the blueberry drinks, the researchers that the anthocyanins (which\ngive the blueberries their color) were already having a positive effect o\nendothelial function. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Better still, after a month of consuming the blueberry\ndrinks daily, the volunteers had lowered their blood pressured by an average of\n5 mm of mercury, something that usually only happens with medication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur results identify anthocyanin metabolites as major\nmediators of vascular bioactivities of blueberries and changes of cellular gene\nprograms,\u201d concluded the study authors. Lead author Ana Rodriguez-Mateos when\non to say, \u201cIf the changes we saw in blood vessel function after eating\nblueberries every day could be sustained for a person\u2019s whole life, it could\nreduce their risk of developing cardiovascular disease by up to 20 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part two of the study<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To see if it was indeed the anthocyanins in the blueberries\nthat created the benefits to the cardiovascular system, the researchers also\nhad other volunteers drink purified anthocyanins or the control drink with\nconcentrations of fiber, minerals or vitamins equivalent to those in\nblueberries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those drinks with purified anthocyanins were similar to the\nblueberry drinks, while the control group had no significant improvements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eating healthy is a staple of advice for those with cardiovascular disease. Doctors will tell you to fill your diet with fruits, vegetables, high-fiber and low-protein foods, but how big a difference does nutrition make? A new study can give a very specific answer, as least as it related to blueberries. The cardiovascular benefits of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[980,760,878,723,732,719],"class_list":["post-13386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness","tag-blueberries","tag-cardiovascular","tag-cardiovascular-disease","tag-diet","tag-nutrition","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}