Believe it or not, there is a great deal of merit to the age-old phrase, "Eat your fruits and veggies ... they're good for you." That's because they are!

According to a study, fruits and vegetables are packed with antioxidants that may limit brain damage from stroke and other neurological disorders. Researchers found rats that ate diets enriched with blueberries, spinach or spirulina (algae) experienced less brain cell loss and improved recovery of movement following a stroke.

Why?

Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory components of fruits and vegetables may somehow reduce the nerve cell injury and death evoked by a stroke.

Antioxidant-Rich Discovery

The study involved four groups of rats -- all fed equal amounts of food for one month. The first group was fed rat food supplemented with blueberries, the second group was fed rat food with spinach, the third group was fed rat food with spirulina and the fourth group was a control group fed rat food only.

Four weeks following, scientists induced an ischemic stroke in each rat with a blood clot, and then later removed it. The results were, to say the least, encouraging:

• Stroke size in the rats who received blueberry and spinach supplements was half that seen in the brains of rats in the control group.

• Rats that received spirulina supplements had stroke lesions 75 percent smaller than rats in the control group.

• Compared to the control group, rats that ate blueberry, spinach or spirulina diets demonstrated a greater recovery of poststroke movement.

The key beneficial ingredient in the fruits and vegetables: Antioxidants, which researchers explained may offset the burst of free radicals involved in the cascade of brain cell death caused by an ischemic stroke. Moreover, the supplemented diets fed to the rats contained anti-inflammatory components that may help reduce injury (provoked by inflammation) following a stroke.

Experimental Neurology May 2005;193(1):75-84

Science Blog April 13, 2005

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

The power of foods never ceases to amaze me. It always astonishes me to learn more of the awesome health-promoting effects an antioxidant-rich diet can have on your health, and this study certainly supports that principle. Of course, my favorite part about it is that the study was done using foods, rather than isolated or synthetic supplements. Because I believe that certain foods, along with food-based supplements, are typically more effective than supplements made with isolated nutrients, I suspect that results of a similar study, using isolated nutrients, would not have had such positive results. An additional point worth mentioning is that this study found there were benefits to be had from all three foods studied. This is an important finding if you have chosen to follow a diet based on your nutritional type. One of the basic tenets of this approach to eating is that the same supposedly healthy food can be beneficial for one person, but detrimental for another. For instance, in the case of the above study, spirulina, being high in chlorophyll, is a food that can provide much benefit to a carb type. However, this food may not be the best for protein types. Luckily, blueberries and spinach, because of other nutritional characteristics they possess, are both OK foods for protein types to eat. Therefore, to gain the benefits discovered in the above study, protein types can eat the blueberries and spinach, and carb types can focus on the spirulina. Related Articles: Vitamin C Levels and Vegetables May Lower Stroke Risk More Reasons to Eat Your Vegetables $75 Remedy Cuts Strokes by a Quarter