Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Drinking Juice and Alzheimer's

HealthDay

Well, pretty cool information -- those who drink fruit and vegetable juices regularly (over a 10-year period of study) had a 76% reduction in incidences of Alzheimer's!   I am fairly positive that my father's dementia is "vascular dementia" or the other term referring to dementia attributed to having had several mini-strokes (not that his heavy drinking hasn't also contributed to killing off of brain cells).  

Still, I do not wish to have Alzheimer's myself:)   I like drinking juices.   Besides, Realage.com had an article recently about how citrus fruits and juices actually aid in breathing, not just the vitamin C, either, but something specific to citrus fruits.  Has to help asthmatics, then, right?! :)

In terms of fruit and vegetable juices aiding against incidences of Alzheimer's:   "It's not the general kind of antioxidants in fruit juices that produce the benefit, said Dr. Qi Dai, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and lead author of the report. Rather, he attributed the effect to polyphenols, a particularly strong antioxidant.

"That is why we chose to look at fruit and vegetable juice," Dai said. "They [polyphenols] are found in the outer sections of fruits and vegetables, only in the peel or skin. When you process the whole fruit, they go into the juice."

But the article didn't otherwise indicate that the juices had to be whole-fruit juices.   It also didn't say whether or not consuming these fruits in non-juiced form (such as simply peeling an orange and eating it), would have the same benefit, or more or less.  

I'll still let my aunt know, though.   My uncle (by marriage) was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  He seemed fine enough to me this summer, forgot a couple things that actually are worrisome, but basically very healthy.  

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