By Jacob Schor, ND
Drinking a couple of glasses of juice each week lowers one's risk of getting Alzheimer's disease by 76 percent. At least that's the conclusion of the study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Medicine . The report was written by scientists who had monitored 1,836 older Japanese-Americans in King County, Washington for a decade. They found that those who drank fruit and/or vegetable juice at least three times a week had a 76 percent lower chance of developing Alzheimer's Disease compared to people who drank juice once a week or less.
As striking as these results seem, they are not coming out of the blue. Prior studies have suggested chemicals in fruits offered brain protection, but the magnitude of the protection offered still comes as a surprise. A March 2005 study on mice showed that apple juice slowed damage to the brain and prevented cognitive decline. Earlier this summer we saw an article on Mediterranean-like diets decreasing Alzheimer's incidence by 40 percent. Over the last few years several studies have shown that blueberries can both slow brain aging and improve cognitive function.
The idea that particular foods might be protective against certain diseases of course isn't a new idea, it's just that few would have predicted they would work so well. The ongoing belief is that if a food works you could isolate and concentrate some particular aspect of it, a vitamin for example, and get benefits that worked even better that the original food source. Though this is obviously true some of the time, it isn't always the way things work.
While evidence has mounted demostrating the protections provided by foods, against different diseases, some of the health claims ascribed to the vitamin pills have not been supported.
Life, it seems, is more complicated than we thought. At one time scientists thought that the health benefits of a particular food could be attributed to a single particular vitamin or nutrient found in that food. Rather than having to eat the food, people could, in theory, get the same benefit from taking a pill. You've got to remember that many of the scientists who came up with these ideas are from the generation that thought Tang was an adequate substitute for orange juice.
Betacarotene was the first vitamin to disappoint us. Carrots are good for people so the easy assumption was that these benefits were all derived from betacarotene because carrots are loaded with it; it's what makes them orange.
Betacarotene was once recommended to smokers to protect them from lung cancer. Carrots provide protection, so it seemed reasonable that betacarotene should also. The logic is simple enough. Unfortunately, it didn't work out the way we wanted. Researchers at the US National Cancer Institute recruited more than 18,000 people at high risk of developing lung cancer, either because they smoked or had been exposed to asbestos, and gave half of them betacarotene supplements. The trial was supposed to run for six years, but the researchers called it quits after four years; people taking betacarotene were doing worse than the controls. Their lung cancer rate was 28 percent higher, and the overall death rate was up 17 percent.
While betacarotene may have fallen from grace other things, particularly foods, have risen to replace it. Pomegranate juice must be mentioned in this article. This summer saw the publication of a study on pomegranate juice and prostate cancer that yielded results just as striking and promising as the juice results on Alzheimer's Disease.
It has been reported in a clinical trial in which men with metastatic prostate cancer drink eight ounces of pomegranate juice a day, drinking the pomegranate juice slowed the prostate cancer growth to less than one third the rate of those who didn't drink the juice. If space allowed we could review the earlier studies on pomegranate juice that would put these results into context. Suffice to say, that as with Alzhiemer's Disease, enough prior hints had been published that these current results are believable.
Does this mean it's time to throw out our multivitamin pills? Not quite yet. On the other hand, a daily glass of juice is starting to sound like a good idea. A very good idea.
Jacob Schor, N.D. majored in Food Science and Product Development as an undergraduate at Cornell University, and received his doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine at National College in Portland, Oregon in 1991. He served as President of the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians from 1992-1999 and maintains a private practice at the Denver Naturopathic Clinic. The clinic can be reached at 303 337-4884.
For more detailed information and references on the studies cited in this article, visit the Denver Naturaopathic website at www.denvernaturopathic.com.