WASHINGTON - Forget Viagra. Forget red wine. Anyone seeking to really feel young again should try blueberries, research on rats suggests.
Old rats fed the equivalent of a cup of blueberries a day not only were more coordinated, but were smarter than other old rats, a team at Tufts University in Boston found. They are now working to find out just what it is in blueberries that repairs the damage aging does to the brain. In the meantime, they are eating blueberries themselves.
"What I try to do now is I drink a protein drink in the morning and I throw blueberries in it," James Joseph, a neuroscientist who helped direct the study, said in a telephone interview. Joseph and psychologist Barbara Shukitt-Hale had already found that rats fed spinach and strawberries learned better than rats on a standard diet. Then they threw a blueberry extract into the diet. The rats who got the supplement not only learned faster than other rats, but their motor skills improved, too, they report in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
"There were a lot of changes in what we would call neuronal communication - the ability of one neuron to communicate with one another," Joseph said. "But what struck me was the ability to change motor behaviour. There is virtually nothing out there that can change motor behaviour in ageing."
But the blueberries did. The rats were 19 months, Shukitt-Hale said. "They are the equivalent of 60 to 65 years of age and we feed them for two months so they're up to 70-75," she said. They did better on standard rat tests, like swimming in a water maze, or finding an underwater platform in murky water. But they also did better on tests involving a spinning rod or an inclined rod - good tests or coordination.
"We call it our little rat Olympics," Joseph said. "You know the thing where lumberjacks used to stay on a log? It's like that, only we don't put them in water."
Young rats six months old could stay on a rod an average of 14 seconds. Old rats fell off after six seconds, but the blueberry-supplemented old rats could stay on for 10. The blueberries did not make the rats younger again, but did improve their skills considerably, Shukitt-Hale, whose reseach was funded by the U.S. department of agriculture, said. When the rats' brain were examined, the brain cells of the rats who got the blueberries communicated better. "One of our next steps is to start feeding them very young," Shukitt-Hale said. She said perhaps the effects will be even more dramatic. And they are doing tests to see what compounds in the blueberries are responsible for the effects. Other scientists have found that the components that give fruits and vegetables their colour - such as the lycopene that makes tomatoes red - are associated with health-giving effects.
"One of the things they might be doing is to protect against oxidative stress," Joseph said. Oxidation occurs all the time in the body and is cell damage created by charged particles known as free radicals. They also may reduce inflammation, he said.
Fruits and vegetables are loaded with antioxidants, which range from the resveratrol found in red wine, the anthocyanins that make strawberries red and blueberries blue, and the vitamins A, C and E. Diets rich in fruits and vegetables have been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. The rats ate supplements made from blueberry juice, but the researchers think the whole fruit may confer even more benefits.
"You can't overdose on blueberries," Shukitt-Hale said. "Really, fruits and vegetables are better than these supplements that people are taking."