Açaí vs. Wild Blueberries for Artery Function
Michael Greger M.D. FACLM shared in his bog that“Plant-based diets…have been found to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease” and some of our other leading causes of death and disability. “Studies have shown that the longest living and least dementia-prone populations subsist on plant-based diets.” So why focus on açaí berries, just one plant, for brain health and performance?
Well, “foods rich in polyphenols…improve brain health,” and açaí berries contain lots of polyphenols and antioxidants, so perhaps that’s why they could be beneficial. If you’re only looking at polyphenols, though, there are more than a dozen foods that contain more per serving, like black elderberry, regular fruits like plums, flaxseeds, dark chocolate, and even just a cup of coffee.
As you can see at 1:02 in my video The Benefits of Açaí vs. Blueberries for Artery Function, in terms of antioxidants, açaí berries may have ten times more antioxidant content than more typical fruits, like peaches and papayas, and five times more antioxidants than strawberries. But blackberries, for instance, appear to have even more antioxidants than açaí berries and are cheaper and more widely available.
Açaí berries don’t just have potential brain benefits, however. Might they also protect the lungs against harm induced by cigarette smoke? You may remember the study where the addition of açaí berries to cigarettes protected against emphysema—in smoking mice, that is. That’s not very helpful. There is a long list of impressive-looking benefits until you dig a little deeper. For example, I was excited to see a “[r]eduction of coronary disease risk due to the vasodilation effect” of açaí berries, but then I pulled the study and found they were talking about a vasodilator effect…in the mesenteric vascular bed of rats. There hadn’t been any studies on açaí berries and artery function in humans until a study published in 2016.
Researchers gave overweight men either a smoothie containing about two-thirds of a cup of frozen açaí pulp and half a banana or an artificially colored placebo smoothie containing the banana but no açaí. As you can see at 2:26 in my video, within two hours of consumption of their smoothie, the açaí group had a significant improvement in artery function that lasted for at least six hours, a one or two point bump that is clinically significant. In fact, those walking around with just one point higher tend to go on to suffer 13 percent fewer cardiovascular events like fatal heart attacks.
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