Some Berries Can Keep Memory Loss At Bay

Well that is what a new research study suggests that berries like strawberries and blueberries eaten at least once a week slows down memory loss in adults. I remember as a child I used to love eating berries not because they were tasty or full of nutrition but because they used have a color which used to color my hands. But over the years I changed from health food to junk and fast food and actually forgot what berries even taste like. But with so much talk on health and eating fruits and vegetables which are actually beneficial to health I realized I need to get back on track. And of course who does not want a better memory. I need one desperately as half my day goes in finding things which I think I kept in the right place. So getting back to berries, it is a known fact that berries like strawberries and blueberries flavonoids which is essential for slowing down of memory loss. Plants contain flavonoids which are actually compounds abundant in anti oxidant and anti inflammatory properties. These flavonoids help in calming down and decreasing stress and cellular inflammation in the body which results in reducing or slowing down of memory loss.

The American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society are supporting this study and have even published it in the journal Annals of Neurology. Dementia or memory loss is a very common problem especially with the older generation who has crossed sixty years. America is has a very huge population of senior citizen and most of them face the problem of memory. The problem is that this population has grown over the past few years rapidly maybe faster than the American population in totality from the period 2000 to 2010. About 16000 individuals were taken in for this research and data was also used from the Nurses’ Health Study which consists of 121,700 females between the age of 30 and 55 years who accomplished the health and their daily routine questionnaire. Since the year 1980 for four continuous years these people were surveyed with regards to their eating lifestyle. In the years 1995 and 2001 their memory functioning was checked. It was found that people who had a regular intake of strawberries and blueberries had better memory than those who did not have the berries in their regular diet.

The effect seems to be higher in elderly women. Anthocyanidins and total flavonoids were also a huge help in reducing the dementia cases. It is not completely evident that having only berries could have reduced the memory loss in individuals but there could be other factors that could have helped in the dementia to slow down like eating other healthy food, regular exercise, stress free environment, good weather, general healthy lifestyle and even an individual’s own constitution could have helped with the slowing down. What is the exact combination of factors is still unknown but with all this it is definite that berries do help in some way however small in the path of recovery of memory.