Eating a cupful of blueberries each day could help ward off age-related mental decline, say researchers at the Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston and the University of South Florida. Dr James A Joseph and his colleagues discovered that elderly rodents that were given the human equivalent of one cup of blueberries a day had less oxidative damage in tissue of two key areas of the brain. Further studies by the team on the effect of blueberries in rats bred to develop Alzheimer’s-like plaques, revealed that mice fed blueberries kept their mental faculties – although they still developed plaques – whereas the mental performance of the rats that didn’t eat the berries gradually got worse and worse. According to Joseph, preliminary results of a human study due to be published in the Fall show that eating a cup of blueberries a day appears to have a similar protective effect upon age-related mental decline in humans.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Reported by www.reutershealth.com on the 19th August 2002
