Aronia: Why Has This Wonderful Berry Been Ignored in the USA?
The aronia plant is native to eastern North America and produces violet black berries. You may be familiar with the more common name for aronia berries, which is black chokeberries.
Despite being native to America, we lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to discovering the wonderful health benefits of aronia berries.
In particular, Europe and Russia now grow and use aronia berries extensively.
In fact, in Russia use of the aronia berry was developed to enhance the diets of Russian cosmonauts.
Much of the human clinical research involving aronia berries has been conducted at medical universities in Poland.
The initial focus of the research was on aronia’s ability to improve blood pressure.
Scientists at the Medical University of Warsaw, Poland first studied the blood pressure benefits of aronia in patients already taking statin drugs to lower cholesterol.
In this study, participants took either 255mg of aronia berry extract each day, or a placebo.
After two months there was a significant improvement in the blood pressure of those taking aronia. On average the group improved from 132/86 to 121/79.
What’s more, there was a significant improvement in C-reactive protein (CRP) and other markers for inflammation.
Next, scientists at Medical University of Lodz in Poland tested aronia on folks who were classified as having metabolic syndrome, but weren’t taking statins or other drugs.
In this study, 300mg of aronia extract was taken daily for two months. And the results were pretty dramatic.
On average the blood pressure of the group improved from 144/87 to 132/82. But the benefits didn’t end there.
Total cholesterol dropped 15 points from 243 to 228. Even better, this improvement was largely due to drops in “bad” LDL cholesterol, which improved by 12 points, and triglyceride levels, which improved by 28 points.
On top of this, the antioxidant status of the aronia users improved significantly over the two months, providing further health benefits.
The Polish researchers just recently completed a follow up study that confirmed many of these benefits.
Like before, participants were asked to take 300mg of aronia berry extract daily, or a placebo.
And the results were amazingly similar to the first study. On average, total cholesterol improved from 244 to 229, a 15 point drop.
This improvement was again due to improvements in the bad LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. In this study, LDL cholesterol declined by about 13 points, while triglyceride levels improved by about 16 points.
However, this time around the researchers discovered another important potential benefit of aronia berry supplementation.
The researchers believe that aronia may offer a beneficial reduction in the overall potential for clot formation.
This benefit was significant after one month of aronia supplementation, but the improvement was less noticeable after two months.
Thus, more work needs to be done to confirm the potential benefits of aronia’a ability to reduce the potential for clot formation.
One thing is clear: aronia berry extract appears to offer a multitude of heart and cardiovascular benefits, starting with supporting healthy blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
The key is to use a high quality aronia berry extract that provides at least 15% anthocyanins and 50% polyphenols in every serving.
You can find such an extract in NatureCity®’s recently introduced TrueBP™ product.
Please contact a NatureCity® associate for more information.
