Time to stock up on cherries.

By Jacob Schor, ND

  Jerry Spinelli of Spinelli's Market in Park Hill is my main cherry connection. Every year he fills his freezer with gallon buckets of frozen organic Montmorency pie cherries which he rations out to me over the course of a year. This years harvest has arrived, and these delicious cherries did not arrive a moment too soon.

  I need little encouragement to bake a cherry pie, but was happy to see a new study on the benefits of cherries that appeared in the June 21, 2006 edition of the British Journal of Sports Medicine .

  This study reports on work done at the University of Vermont. In scientific parlance, this was a randomized placebo controlled crossover study. Fourteen guys were given a big glass (12 ounces) of cherry juice to drink twice a day for eight days. Another group of guys, the guys studying the effects know which group was which, got some sort of red placebo liquid, heavens knows exactly what, except that it was NOT cherry juice.

  On the fourth day of drinking this stuff, both the cherry and the placebo guys did some sort of nasty exercise, curling their arms using some sort of exercise machine. Strength, pain, muscle tenderness and stiffness were measured before and after this intense little exercise session. Two weeks later the participants 'crossed over' and the placebo guys got the juice and vice versa. This is the right was to do scientific research.

  For the four days after the exercise session the placebo boys lost 22 percent of their muscle strength while the cherry boys lost only 4 percent The cherry guys also had significantly less pain than the placebo guys.

  It looks like cherries can prevent exercise induced muscle damage and loss of strength.

  Based on the information of this study there is no question that I can and will reserve a couple of extra gallons of Jerry's prized cherries.

  Reference: Br J Sports Med. 2006 Jun 21, The efficacy of a tart cherry juice blend in preventing the symptoms of muscle damage., Connolly D, Mc Hugh M, Padilla-Zakour O.

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.