Keeping Young at Heart with Grapes, Berries and Fantastic Flavonoids
By Suzanne Diamond, B.Sc., M.Sc.
Grapes and berries are foods that can help you to keep young at heart and soar to the heights of good health with their many proven cardiovascular rejuvenating, youth promoting and anti-aging benefits. My book, Nature's Best Heart Medicine, published by Alive Books in 2004, covers some of this important research and provides people with delicious recipes to help improve daily diets.
According to Dr. Ralph Holsworth Jr., Lt. Cmdr. of the U.S. Public Health Service who is also a family doctor, when people are young, their blood flows through their arteries and veins easily, "like water through a gentle brook". In youth, arteries are soft and flexible and easily expand and absorb the contractile force of the heart and the heart pumps efficiently. But with age, animal fats in the diet, environmental and microbial toxins and other stresses, the blood becomes thicker and stickier. Plaque can also form on the arteries making them less flexible. In these conditions, the heart must pump harder which increases blood pressure risks. Thankfully, nature has provided us with many delicious foods that can help to rejuvenate heart and cardiovascular health and even reverse heart disease, especially flavonoid-rich foods and extracts from grapes, blueberries, cranberries, hawthorn berries, strawberries, elderberries and dark chocolate. Fantastic flavonoids from these foods including anthocyanins ("anthos" means flower and "cyan" means blue (first discovered in blue pea flowers)) and oligomeric proanthocyanidins (OPCs) in grapes and grape products such as juice, wine and seed extracts and pine bark extracts have been shown to exert antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, platelet inhibitory and arterial relaxing effects in vitro, in animal studies and in human trials. A highly researched natural extract from the inner bark of the maritime pine tree, Pinus maritima Mill., called pycnogenol also contains active procyanidins and organic acids that are indicated for many health benefits (Rohdewald 2002).
Soaring to the Heights in Good Health
If you want to soar to the heights with good health then keep these fantastic flavonoids readily on hand and in toe! Long periods of immobility, decreased fluid intake and water loss in the dry, compressed airplane cabins during flights are identified as important triggers of leg swelling. These factors can lead to a dangerous blood clot and even a stroke. Long-haul flights, such as from North America to Europe, are associated with an increased risk of superficial and deep vein thrombosis and ebolisms that can be potentially life threatening. More than 1.5 billion passengers travel by aircraft every year making this a serious health concern for many people and families.
Mittermayr et al. 2003 studied the effect of air travel on leg edema (and fluid shifts to interstitial space) under real flight conditions. Leg edema, as a sign of venous stasis or blood stagnation, is a well-known problem with flying. Researchers found that long-haul flights induce significant fluid accumulation in the lower extremity, involving the lower leg and thigh. This increase in tissue thickness was maintained for some days after the flights. A recent study found no difference between the fibrin content and other blood clotting factors before and after long-haul flights (Schobersberger et al. 2007).
Several controlled human studies have shown that Pycnogenol® pine bark extract can improve circulation and prevent this leg and ankle edema and blood clots caused by long flights (Cesarone et al. 2005; Belcaro et al. 2004). Most people will notice the effects of in-flight swelling if they take their shoes off during the flight and have difficulty getting back into them at the end of the flight. A double-blind, placebo controlled study published in the July 2005 issue of Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis tested in-flight ankle swelling for 169 participants. Before the airline flight, ankle size was similar for the control group and participants who supplemented with Pycnogenol®. Upon arrival, untreated passengers showed increased ankle swelling which was almost twice as high as in the group of passengers supplemented with Pycnogenol®. The researchers showed that Pycnogenol prevents swellings by strengthening the veinous walls. This enables veins, stretched by pooled blood, to better resist the increased pressure, letting less liquid seep into the tissue, and hence less swelling occurs.
Belcaro et al. 2004 studied the occurrence of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and superficial vein thrombosis (SVT) and its prevention with Pycnogenol® in long-haul flights, in 198 subjects at moderate to high-risk of DVT and SVT. All subjects were scanned within 90 minutes before the flight and within 2 hours after disembarking. Subjects were supplemented with 100 mg Pycnogenol per capsule and received two capsules between 2 and 3 hours before flights with 250 mL of water; two capsules were taken 6 hours later with 250 mL of water and one capsule the next day. The control group received comparable placebo at the same intervals. The flight duration was on average 8 hours and 15 minutes. In the control group there were five thrombotic events (one DVT and four superficial thromboses) while only nonthrombotic, localized phlebitis was observed in the Pycnogenol group (5.15% vs. no events; p<0.025). No unwanted effects were observed. The researchers concluded that Pycnogenol treatment was effective in decreasing the number of thrombotic events (DVT and SVT) in moderate-to-high risk subjects, during long-haul flights.
Pycnogenol researchers report that the majority of thromboses occurring during travel remain symptomless as the developed clot spontaneously dissolves before it may affect blood flow. Many travelers do not realize they developed a thrombosis and were lucky. Travelers affected by thrombosis typically experience a warming sensation in one of their calves, swelling and show a blue-red discoloration after some time. Thrombosis may be fatal when the blood clot is dislodged and travels with the blood stream to block arteries in the lungs or to the brain.
Other studies have shown that Pycnogenol® inhibits platelet aggregation in a dose-dependent manner in humans. The effect lasts for more than 6 days and unlike aspirin, it does not produce increased bleeding time (Pütter et al. 1999). Pycnogenol® also counteracts the constriction of blood vessels due to stress. The vaso-relaxant activity of Pycnogenol® is mediated through nitric oxide (Fitzpatrick et al. 1998).
Similar active ingredients in peanut skin extracts were studied in France in 1945 by researcher, Jacques Masquelier. He first called these flavonoids "leuco-anthocyanidins" literally meaning "pale anthocyanins" ("leuco" means "pale" in Latin). He was asked to do animal studies with guinea pigs and it was then that he discovered the remarkable capillary strengthening effects of these flavonoids. Masquelier fed guinea pigs the concentrated peanut skin extract and then expose a small area of skin of the guinea pig to suction. He determined that normally capillaries burst at a suction pressure of 25mm of mercury or more, resulting in the formation of a characteristic red patch of skin, or "hicky" where the suction was applied. But when he had given the guinea pigs the concentrated leuco-anthocyanidin extract, he had to apply much more pressure in order to get the capillaries to burst. The capillary strengths were even seen to double within hours of giving the animals the extract! It was soon clear from these and other studies that concentrated leuco-anthocyanidin extracts had dramatic circulatory strengthening effects. It so happened that at the time of these studies, Masquelier's professor's wife was pregnant and was suffering from terrible edema (swelling often due to water retention) of her ankles and knees, a frequent condition suffered by pregnant and nursing mothers. Being from a medical background, Masquelier and his supervisor knew that edema is caused by broken and leaky blood vessels and capillaries, and so they decided to see how well their extracts worked for her painful and debilitating condition (she could hardly walk or get around). Much to their delight, she was completely cured within 48 hours!
Kalus et al. 2004 more recently confirmed those early findings when they found that the administration of grape leaf flavonoids (rich in the same OPCs and related flavonoids found in grape seeds, pine bark and peanut skins) in the product AS 195 improved objective symptoms of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) and may prevent CVI deterioration. The study was a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial for which 129 men and women, aged 18 years or more with CVI stage I or II were screened. After 6 weeks of treatment with 360mg of grape leaf flavonoids the leg circumference was decreased significantly at both the ankle and the calf. Patients in the AS 195 group also had significantly increased microvascular blood flow values and increased oxygen.
Clinical studies have shown that flavonoids from red grapes acutely improve endothelial function in patients with coronary heart disease (Lekakis et al. 2005). These results could probably, at least partly, explain the well known and documented favorable effects of red wine on the cardiovascular system. Grape Seed Extracts standardized for OPCs have also been shown to dramatically improve blood circulation, improve the flexibility of blood vessels and capillaries and reduce the pressure on the cardiovascular system.
Dr. Jacques Masquelier now has a U.S. patent for OPC-85TM grape seed extract. Decades ago he tested his extract double-blind on a group of elderly people with fragile capillaries and 89% had significant improvement after two weeks with only 100-150mg/day. Studies on capillary resistance in rats treated with bilberry extract (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) given at a dosage of 100mg/kg show a 40% strengthening of capillaries within only four hours! It is thought that improved blood flow to the brain from taking these flavonoids can also reduce the symptoms and risks of senility.
Leading American heart specialist, Dr. Jonathon Folts of the Madison Medical School in Wisconsin-the doctor who first recommended people take an aspirin a day to prevent heart attacks-now believes flavonoids from grapes and berries may be altogether better than taking ASA tablets for thinning the blood, and preventing coronary artery disease.
Experimenting on 17 volunteers, himself included, Folts found that both aspirin and red wine slow the activity of blood platelets by about 45 percent, while drinking one glass (270 mL to 360 mL) of ordinary purple grape juice dampens them by about 75 percent.
Folts presented his findings in 1997 at a conference of the American College of Cardiology.
More recent studies done by Dr. Folts and other researchers published in the Journal of Nutrition (Keevil et al. 2000), comparing purple grape juice with orange and grapefruit juice, came to the conclusion that grape juice is better, at least for the heart. While grapefruit and orange juice also contain plenty of flavonoids, they are different from the ones in purple grape juice and they have no effect on platelet stickiness.
Additionally, Dr. Folts found that when people drink purple grape juice once a day, the benefits linger. In one experiment, people drank the juice for a week. Even after they had stopped for two days, their platelets were still sluggish. "It appears to be around-the-clock protection," Dr. Folts said.
Dr. Folts recommended including grape juice in a healthy diet, which should include five to seven servings a day of vegetables, fruits and juices. However, he said people should not stop taking aspirin or other heart medications just because they are drinking grape juice.
However, Dr. Folts argues that taking standardized flavonoid extracts may be the best option in order to avoid all the sugar in grape juice and the alcohol in red wine. He also maintains that if these flavonoids are to replace ASA as natural blood thinners for heart patients, further comparative studies are needed to determine proper dosages.
Folts (2002) showed that in the dog, monkey, and human taking 5 ml/kg of red wine or 5-10 ml/kg of purple grape juice but not orange or grapefruit juice inhibits platelet activity and protects against epinephrine activation of platelets. Red wine and purple grape juice enhance platelet and endothelial production of nitric oxide (Räthel et al. 2007; Anselm et al. 2007) which is thought to be one of the mechanisms whereby the purple grape juice significantly improved endothelial function in 15 patients with coronary artery disease (Chou et al. 2001). The consumption of purple grape juice by the patients also offered increased protection against LDL cholesterol oxidation.
A double-blind, placebo controlled intervention trial showed that Concord grape juice supplementation reduces blood pressure in Korean hypertensive men (Park et al. 2004).
Another clinical study looking at grape-seed polyphenols found no effects on blood pressure (Ward et al. 2005). However, when these grape seed polyphenols were given with 500mg/day of vitamin C, there was an increase in blood pressure seen. These results suggest caution for hypertensive subjects taking supplements containing combinations of vitamin C and polyphenols. Grape seed polyphenols are known to have a vitamin C sparing effect. However, this study used unusually high dosages of grape seed polyphenols which may explain the findings. The daily dosage of grape seed polyphenols used in this study was 1000mg/day which is over three times the highest dosage recommended for OPC-85TM grape seed extract.
A human clinical study published in Dec. 2006 (Banini et al. 2006) of muscadine grape juice, muscadine grape wine and dealcoholized muscadine grape wine on glycemic indices, blood constituents, lipid profile and nutrient intakes of healthy and type II diabetic subjects (over a 28 day period) found that the daily intake of 150 mL of the more flavonoid-concentrated muscadine wine or dealcoholized muscadine wine with meals improved several metabolic responses among diabetics compared with diabetics given muscadine juice.
Whatever your choice is, much clinical and experimental research supports including fantastic flavonoids in your daily diet as a safe way to keep yourself young at heart and soar to the heights of good health.
References:
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Banini AE, Boyd LC, Allen JC, Allen HG, Sauls DL. 2006. Muscadine grape products intake, diet and blood constituents of non-diabetic and type 2 diabetic subjects. Nutrition. 2006 Nov-Dec;22(11-12):1137-45. Epub 2006 Oct 9.
Belcaro G, Cesarone MR, Rohdewald P, Ricci A, Ippolito E, Dugall M, Griffin M, Ruffini I, Acerbi G, Vinciguerra MG, Bavera P, Di Renzo A, Errichi BM, Cerritelli F. 2004. Prevention of venous thrombosis and thrombophlebitis in long-haul flights with pycnogenol. Clin Appl Thromb Hemost. 2004 Oct;10(4):373-7.
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Diamond, S.M. 2004. Nature's Best Heart Medicine. New Scientific discoveries reveal how flavonoids are beneficial for people with Heart Disease; High blood pressure; Varicose veins; Circulation problems; and more. Alive Natural Health Guides 27. Published by alive Books. 7432 Fraser Park Drive, Burnaby, B.C. V5J 5B9. Pp. 1-64. http://www.healthy-eating.com/alivebooks.htm
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Ward NC, Hodgson JM, Croft KD, Burke V, Beilin LJ, Puddey IB. 2005. The combination of vitamin C and grape-seed polyphenols increases blood pressure: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. J Hypertens. 2005 Feb;23(2):427-34.
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The content in this article is meant for informational purposes only, and is not intended for use as official health consultation or recommendations. Suzanne Diamond takes no responsibility for harm that may result from the use, abuse or misuse of information contained in this article.
Aging and Longevity 
