Don’t you just LOVE taking pills? I know I do…
NOT!!!
And I know you don’t, either.
I mean…I’m all about taking a few awesome supplements to fill in common nutritional gaps. I don’t especially enjoy taking them but it beats heart disease (no pun intended…get it? It “beats” heart disea—okay never mind).
Nutritional supplements in a pill or capsule form are one thing. (These are my favorite)
Pills that artificially silence your body’s natural communication such as through pain or swelling…not advisable as a long-term solution. Those signals could be warning you long before developing conditions like Type II Diabetes, Arthritis, Heart Disease, or Dementia. Merely shutting the signals off ultimately causes more damage, and down the medical rabbit hole we go.
If I had an alternative… If something could make that rabbit hole avoidable, or even REVERSIBLE…would you like to know about it?
I have no doubt you would.
If I’m right…read on, dear one.
A Blueberry A Day (keeps premature aging away)
What if I told you that popping a few…not pills…but BLUEBERRIES…every day…
…could chase the pill case away?!
Free radicals…oxidation…inflammation…
These are terms you may have heard. If you have, then you might know they are directly associated with premature ageing, sickness, disease, and chronic pain.
God’s own nature-made remedies have lately been called “alternative” medicine, but shouldn’t we consider the newer, man-made versions “alternatives” to the originals?
Well in any case, the original powerhouses of healing and wellness are superabundantly found in…FOOD. Yay! And not just any food…but especially PLANT FOODS.
Get this.
Whereas eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes or any sugary cereal an hour later leaves you with lowered antioxidants and increased oxidation (can you say…premature aging?)…
…eating instead a bowl of fresh berries has the exact opposite effect, causing a beautiful SPIKE in antioxidant, cell protecting, health–inducing, anti–aging chemistry in your body.
Despite the fear that “all” carbohydrates or sugars including in fresh whole fruit can negatively impact your body’s insulin sensitivity, this study concluded that eating 2-3 ½ cup servings per week of “anthocyanin-rich foods, particularly blueberries” resulted in 23% lower risk of developing Type II Diabetes.
That’s a max of 1 ½ cups…per WEEK.
HELLO!
Turns out the tiny blue fruit is PACKED with micronutrients that greatly increase insulin sensitivity. Since Type II Diabetes begins with a condition called “insulin resistance,” anything that increases insulin sensitivity, such as fresh blueberries, could also be called “anti-diabetic.”
Imagine if you took a nutritionist’s advice and instead of 1 ½ cups per week, you ate a cup daily?
Blueberries vs Cardio
More research revealed that eating a “specified serving” of berries led to the equivalent metabolic benefits of walking one hour per day, 7 days per week.
This is astounding!
It’s not that you want to stop walking and just eat colorful fruits…but honestly, eating them will likely also ENERGIZE you for that walk.
What if you walk for an hour and eat the specified serving of blueberries? It might be more like walking two hours per day, seven days per week.
Back to that “specified serving.” Exactly how much is that serving, you ask? You wonder if you might have to eat a proverbial mountain of berries to get the promised benefits?
Nope.
Your ‘60-minute-walk’ serving comes to about one cup strawberries or cherries, ½ cup raspberries, ¼ cup blackberries, or a couple spoons of blueberries.
A couple. Spoons. Seriously? Yes. Seriously.
Arthritis & Pain
Osteoarthritis, or “wear and tear” arthritis, is the most common form. Frequent causes of the painful inflammatory condition include injury, overuse, obesity, or weak muscles, but its primary marker is inflammation, believed to be the expression of an “overactive immune system.”
Perhaps.
Regardless of what science now knows or will know in the future concerning the cause of this painful ailment, science already knows a wonderful adversary.
And how does our Little Blue Pill stack up against Osteoarthritis?
This study demonstrated over a 6-week study that blueberry smoothies effectively switch off pro-inflammatory genes in white blood cells.
THEY TURN OFF THE GENES!!
This switching off led, not surprisingly, to a major decrease in tissue-damaging free radicals…and by “major” decrease — I mean HALF.
Research has shown that strawberries can also reverse the progression of pre-cancerous lesions by down regulating inflammatory genes. Just adding 5 strawberries to any “unhealthy” meal can actually decrease the mal-effects of that meal on your body…also resulting in significant reduction in actual pain.
Adding berries to the regular diets of “obese” subjects suffering with osteoarthritis lowered inflammation and had a significant positive impact on the person’s health, well-being, and quality of life.
Let’s think about this for a pause.
There are many things you can do to increase antioxidant activity and reduce inflammation. How great, then, when one of those things is super easy, super cheap (as blue pills go), and pretty dang delicious (as most ripe blueberries and strawberries go).
Add to that the inflammation healing powers of, say, Turmeric, Frankincense, or soaking in a steam room…and you’re chances of major improvement without touching a ‘little white pill’ are looking really good.
Accelerated Recovery After Muscle Training
Or how about recovery after training? It’s well known that building new muscle requires you train them beyond their normal capacity, effectively causing microscopic tears within the muscle tissue, triggering the signal to repair and grow more.
In the meantime, you might not only feel sore but fatigued…and this could delay the continuance of your training.
Unless of course…you pop some of those little blue pills (yes, I’m still talking about blueberries).
In a study on the effects of blueberry consumption on recovery after training, treatment groups were given either a blueberry smoothie OR a smoothie containing supplements equating to similar antioxidant capacity. The writers of the study conclude:
“This study demonstrates that the ingestion of a blueberry smoothie prior to and after EIMD [exercise induced muscle damage] accelerates recovery of muscle peak isometric strength…These findings may benefit the sporting community who should consider dietary interventions that specifically target health and performance adaptation.”
In short, the study found that eating blueberries after strenuous exercise ACCELERATED RECOVERY.
Blue Brains!
Blueberry “supplementation” — which just means eating blueberries — improved cognition and memory in older adults after just 12 weeks. That was eating 6 cups per day, which is probably only achievable in a smoothie, but a later study found older adults eating one cup of blueberries per day also improved cognition, memory, and even functional mobility.
It works for kids, too.
Children not only showed improved brain function and mental focus but when they ate two cups they also experienced a better mood. Nice!
Just a side-note…but this is the exact opposite of reports we’ve heard for some 30 years concerning the effects on children of artificial food dyes in fruit-flavored candy. There are many studies and studies of studies covering this with findings mostly that the artificial food dyes do aggravate the symptoms of ADHD in most children…but while many effects are somewhat mild…a smaller but statistically significant number have severe aggravation of ADHD symptoms.
The candy is no good regardless and eating them as a child can make living healthy harder as an adult, but maybe this gives my fellow grownups a little more nudge to make the switch from “fruity” candy for kids in favor of the real thing…which is not just better, but 1000 times better.
Health(ier) Heart, Anyone?
Know and love any smokers? Ever been one? According to the CDC in, “Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease”:
Coronary Heart Disease occurs when arteries that carry blood to the heart muscle are narrowed by plaque or blocked by clots. Chemicals in cigarette smoke cause the blood to thicken and form clots inside veins and arteries. Blockage from a clot can lead to a heart attack and sudden death.
Did you know that blueberries can actually mitigate the effects of smoking upon arteries?
Research showed that 1-2 cups of blueberries per day significantly improved artery function and reduced damage from previous years of smoking. By now, though, you’re used to hearing about the superpowers of the awesome blueberry, so that’s not the biggest WOW factor.
The most wow fun part for me is that the results were the same whether you ate the blueberry cold and fresh…or baked in a bun. Yessss. Blueberry pie, anyone?
Stomp on that cigarette butt and all its detriments with none other than our new favorite fruity superhero!
More research has further concluded that eating your daily blue produces up to 40% reduction in risk for heart disease. The younger you are when you get started, the higher the reduction of risk.
And the more the better.
“For every 15mg/day a 17% drop in risk.”
If you’re wondering what 15mg would look like, consider that 100mg = ½ cup. Easy peasy!
But wait! There’s more! High cholesterol run in the family?
Tea Infusions and Children’s Cholesterol
One study gave blueberry tea to kids who were genetically predisposed to high cholesterol. After three months, the children’s cholesterol dropped 30%! I’m not sure what took them so long but that’s just a little tea once per day…not even the whole fruit. What’s just as telling…once the kids stopped drinking the blueberry tea, their cholesterol levels returned to previous levels.
What I love about this kind of information is it gives you even more incentive — not so much to think in terms of cutting out entire food groups or giving anything up at all…but to simply ADD GOOD THINGS.
We don’t need studies to show us how blueberries affect insulin…or antioxidants…or arteries…or mood and cognition…to know they are probably a good choice for a sweet.
But the studies don’t hurt!
So go for it. As an “alternative” to toxic and harmful drugs, trying popping a handful (or three) of nature’s little sweet blue pills a day, let your kids have some, too, and make blueberries a part of your everyday diet.
For all references and direct links to study sources go to this page on NutritionFacts.org.
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