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Credit: www.blueberrycouncil.org
4. Fights Heart Disease
Heart disease is still the #1 killer in the world. One way that heart disease gets started is when oxidative damage occurs to the LDL (the bad type) cholesterol in the blood. Oxidation of LDL cholesterol is one of the main freeways on the road to heart disease! Mother Nature gave us an off-ramp, however; blueberries. Studies show that eating 50grams of blueberries each day lowered the oxidation of LDL cholesterol by 27 percent after just 8 weeks. Another study showed that eating 75 grams of blueberries with a meal also significantly reduced the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Fight back against heart disease and dig into that bag of frozen blueberries you have in the freezer!
5. Reduces Muscle Damage after Exercise
Everyone knows that strenuous exercise can lead to muscle fatigue and soreness. This is due to oxidative stress in the muscle along with inflammation. Blueberries can reduce this damage that occurs at a molecular level, which can minimize muscle soreness and the amount of time needed to recover. One study showed that when female athletes consumed blueberries before strenuous leg exercises, they had accelerated muscle recovery when compared to the control group that did not receive blueberries. (A moment of silence for the control group.) If you are a weekend sports player or a serious gym enthusiast, you cannot go wrong with adding more blueberries to your diet.
6. The King of Antioxidants
We all want more antioxidants in our diets, don’t we? After all, they protect our bodies from free radicals, those little devils that cause us damage on a cellular level, causing wrinkles and chronic disease, even cancer! Blueberries are known to have the highest antioxidant capacity of any fruit or vegetable on the planet. To top it all off, it’s as if Mother Nature knew we would one day have freezers. The antioxidant capacity of blueberries only gets more powerful when they are frozen! So, now you have no excuse to not clean out that freezer and add a few more bags of blueberries the next time they go on sale.
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