Thrive to 105

When I began thinking about writing this particular blog, it seemed like it might not fit my “theme”, so to speak.  So while it may be a stretch, the topic of cryonics is rather fascinating.

First of all, I’ve always struggled with deciding what I wanted to do with my physical body once I’m declared dead.  The thought of being put into the ground in a box isn’t very appealing and neither is going into an oven ending up as a pile of ashes.  I suppose a mausoleum is a little more palatable, but I don’t think I have the money for one of those.  Taxidermy could be an option…LOL…but I rather doubt my children and grandchildren want me standing in the corner of their living rooms peering over their shoulders for years to come.

There is always the off chance that I may not make my goal of 105, and cryonics just might be the answer to that possibility.  It’s at least an intriguing thought.  Until I started researching, I didn’t know much about cryonics, although I was aware it existed.  Did you know Ted Williams is “on ice” as I write this blog?  Anyway, in layman’s terms, cryonics is:

“…the science of placing humans and animals into a low-temperature, biologically unchanging state immediately after clinical death, with the expectation that advances in medical technology may eventually enable full restoration to life and health.”

Here is an even better medical explanation of the logic behind cryonics:

“The purpose of cryonics is to save the lives of living people, not inter the bodies of dead people. Death is a neurological process that begins after the heart stops. A stopped heart only causes death if nothing is done when the heart stops.  Alcor uses life support equipment to restore blood circulation to maintain brain viability after the heart stops, ideally within minutes. This means that every cell and tissue of a cryonics patient can be just as alive at the beginning of cryonics procedures as any other medical patient.  The purpose of cryonics is to intercept and stop this dying process within the window of time that it may be reversible in the future. The first few minutes of clinical death are certainly reversible, even today. There are good reasons to believe that this window will extend further in the future. That is why cryonics is sometimes implemented even long after the heart stops. Cryonics is not a belief that the dead can be revived. Cryonics is a belief that no one is really dead until the information content of the brain is lost, and that low temperatures can prevent this loss.”   Alcor Life Extension Foundation

It makes sense, don’t you think?  Apparently, several hundred “participants” do, including Ted Williams.  It certainly does have me thinking.

More to come in my next blog post.

I found it!!!  My Second Half of Life book, that is.   It was becoming most frustrating that I couldn’t remember what I’d done with it.  Of course, I only found it because I was looking in file drawers for something else I’ve misplaced (and still haven’t found)!  But now we can continue on through the Eight Gates of Wisdom, thank God!  I was afraid we would all be stuck at the White Gate forever and never gain the wisdom we so richly deserve.

As you may or may not recall, here at the White Gate our Task is “…to uncover or awaken to the essence of who we truly are…” and accomplish this by integrating the five faces that are a part of our whole being (child, youth, adult, elder, and essence).

The Challenge at this gate is to overcome the face of our ego that will not want to give up control.  There is, in fact, an acronym for FACE referred to by Arien and created by David Richo, author of the book, Shadow Dance. The acronym is:

F – Fear; A – Attachment; C – Control; E – Entitlement

Overcoming FACE (and, in essence, our ego) entails shifting…

“…our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility”.

Personally, I think the second and third parts of this acronym are the most challenging for me.  Letting go and not being attached to the outcome of things is much easier said than done; and giving up control, trusting in something or someone other than myself is often times outside my comfort zone.  It could take a while to unveil my true face if I first have to conquer my ego in this way.

I think another part of the Challenge is then being able to recognize ourselves once our egos have been cast aside to make room for the five true faces.  What a transformation there should be once we get in touch with our true essence, the child inside, etc. and have them come together to form a brand new person!

Once we meet the Challenge, our reward or Gifts at the White Gate are curiosity, flexibility, and self-acceptance.  Those all feel like “comfortable” gifts to my way of thinking, so I guess I better get to work on the attachments and control issues I have!

Yes, I’m a day late with my “information”…sorry!  So let’s not delay any longer…

• I loved this heading from one of my medical newsletters…”Garlic protects women’s hips”. Visions of cloves of garlic stuck all over my hips suddenly filled my head.  I mean, garlic is one of my favorite food items, and I knew it could help my heart…but my hips?  Well, apparently researchers in England found that women who ate a lot of garlic and onions had a lower incidence of hip osteoarthritis.  Of course, no one can stand to be in the same room with them after a meal!

• Now, I have used hummus in place of mayonnaise on a turkey sandwich in the past, but I recently ran across a suggestion for other healthy spreads for sandwiches that sound worth trying.  The three examples are:

1. Black beans with balsamic vinegar and tahini
2. Kidney beans with apple cider vinegar and basil
3. Lentils with sesame ginger dressing

Put three parts of the vinegar with one part of the cooked legumes in the blender, doctoring it until it suits your fancy.  Not only is it suggested for  sandwiches, but also as a veggie dip and sauce for pizza and pasta (I’m not so sure about that one).

• I thought this was pretty cool…there are actually websites out there that will buy your unused gift cards from you.  Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever NOT used a gift card; but apparently it happens a lot, to the tune of $2.5 billion of unused cards in 2010!  Be forewarned that more money is paid for the cards from the more popular retailers out there, i.e. Walmart, Home Depot, Macy’s, the Apple Store, etc.  Of course, they aren’t going to give you the face value of the card, but it’s certainly better than having them gathering dust in a kitchen drawer.  Not only can you sell the cards you won’t use, but you can buy discounted cards from these sites for a retail outlet you might want or even trade.  The sites I looked at were Cardpool, Giftcardrescue, Giftcards, and Monstergiftcard.

• Thanks to AARP (again!), I found this site that, in actuality, my children would be using for me if I wasn’t the wonderfully tech savvy person that I am (try to keep the laughter to a minimum).  The website was developed by Google (of course), and is a way for “kids”, as they call them, to email techie instructional videos to their parents who need help with such things as copy/paste, how to change the screensaver or wallpaper on the computer, how to find directions or have a video chat.  The format is very humorous, but not condescending enough to be insulting.  If my mother had a computer, I might even send her a few.  If you know someone who needs “help”, check out TeachParentsTech.org.

That’s info junkie for this week.  I think I’ll go eat some roasted garlic now while I search my kitchen drawers for old gift cards!

No doubt about it, when I think about thriving to 105, I’m usually thinking about what it is that I can personally do to improve my chances of reaching my goal.  However, it’s always very exciting to learn about what organizations, such as the Life Extension Foundation, are doing to help “the cause”.

In the past year or so, I’ve read about little things called “telomeres”…and they are, indeed, little!  They are little pieces of DNA that are like the plastic ends of shoelaces, only they sit at the end of our chromosomes to help prevent them from falling apart.  As we get older, the telomeres start to get shorter at a rate that is greatly dependent on our lifestyles.  Eventually, they get so short that our cells do start to become dysfunctional and we begin to age.

An article in Nature, a scientific journal, addressed a study done on mice whose aging had been accelerated by depriving their systems of the enzyme telomerase.  When telomerase was re-introduced back into their bodies, the telomeres that had shortened began to grow again, working like a “fountain of youth”, restoring their organs and brain functions to their younger versions.

According to Life Extension Magazine for April 2011:

“The significance of the Nature study is that it tested the effects of telomere lengthening in an animal model analogous in many ways to disabled elderly humans.”

Studies have been done on human cell cultures that show “restoring” the length of the telomeres promotes cell division, rather than having them deteriorate and die.

There are many who would argue that the benefits to humans cannot be established or even suggested merely by rapidly aging mice then administering the telomerase enzyme.  However, those who authored the study had this to say:

“In conclusion, this unprecedented reversal of age-related decline in the central nervous system and other organs vital to adult mammalian health justify exploration of telomere rejuvenation strategies for age-associated diseases, particularly those drive by accumulating genotoxic stress.”

The Life Extension Foundation is so encouraged and excited by the potential benefits of telomere lengthening in fighting the aging process that is has been funding research to delve into reversed aging in humans, which included telomere lengthening.  As of December of 2010, it has donated $2 million to ReCyte Therapeutics to do a new group of studies, at least one of which will be with mice to delve into cell rejuvenation and how it can be done.  One part of the study will include telomere lengthening in rejuvenating vascular systems (to prevent heart attacks) and immune senescence to help protect humans from cancer, infectious disease and autoimmune disorders.

Once these studies have proven, hopefully, the great potential for telomere lengthening and its affect with mice, the research can go on to try and document findings using human specimens.  Pretty amazing stuff, and something I intend to keep my eyes on.

Today you get two for the price of one!  You don’t hear from me in six months…and now I tap on your email window twice in one day…what’s that all about?!?!

I apologize to you…and to myself…for letting so much time lapse since my last post.  Many of you who are my personal friends know that from August through November of last year, I was dealing with issues regarding my father and finally have him with me here in the St. Charles area.  Then came the holidays and also just trying to get myself back on track after traveling so much and not taking the best care of myself and my recovery.

BUT!!! Now I am feeling good and am functioning in a more organized fashion…which means I am once again making time to blog for me and my “fans”!

SOoooooooo, on to Information Junkie Day!

From my January 2011 Natural Healing newsletter, more on the benefits of eating walnuts.  If you suffer with high blood pressure, you should consider adding walnuts to your diet.   Penn State University researchers have shown that for those with high LDL levels, eating walnuts and/or walnut oil can lower their resting blood pressure and stress level blood pressure by a couple points.

Next, here are a few websites dealing with travel just in time to start planning those summer vacations:

Air Travel –

• Momondo.com
• Dohop.com
• Kayak.com

Car Rentals –

• AutoSlash.com
• BreezeNet.com

Hotels –

• HotelsCombined.com
• BetterBidding.com
• BiddingForTravel.com

Home Rentals –

• HomeAway.com
• VRBO.com
• Zonder.co
• Rentalo.com
• SecondPorch.com

Cruises –

• VacationsToGo.com
• CruisesOnly.com
• CruiseStar.com
• CruiseBrothers.com
• Cruise.com
• OnlineVacationCenter.com

Okay, I must admit I’m not a big fan of Martha Stewart, but somehow last year I ended up with a subscription to her magazine, Living.  Grudgingly, I must say there have been some interesting ideas and products in it.  Here’s a product I didn’t know about…”silver-crowned bulbs”.  If you have light fixtures in your home where the light bulbs are exposed, you may want to consider trying these.  The top of the bulb has a silver coating that covers up the internal parts of the bulb and “diffuses” the light.  Of course, this fashionable option comes at a price…$5 each.  If you’re interested, check them out at www.gracioushome.com, which is actually a pretty cool site with everything you could possibly want for your home…sort of like a Bed, Bath & Beyond online.

Lastly today, I was reading in AARP…yes, I am a card-carrying member…about new words that have now made it into the dictionary.  Here are a few, along with their definitions:

• Sheeple, noun – Unquestioning followers (from sheep + people)
• Turducken, noun – Roast of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey – WHAT???????
• Cheeseball, adj. – Lacking taste or style
• Bromance, noun – Close platonic male friendship – I HAVE A LOT OF THESE!  It’s a lot easier than romance!
• Matchy-matchy, adj. – Excessively color-coordinated
• Chillax, verb – To calm down and relax…which is what I’m going to do right now, since I’m no longer feeling stressed that I haven’t posted to my blog in six months!

Glad to be back in the saddle, so to speak.  More to come…but not today!

As I prepared to start writing this blog post, I stopped to read an article on Yahoo about the tsunami and one of its survivors.  Although the town of Shizugawa had prepared itself for future tsunamis with a four-foot breaker wall and a “refuge” situated high above the harbor, when this tsunami hit, neither of those defenses were enough.  It’s a reality check of sorts that makes me wonder if we can ever really be prepared for what life can present to us.  I know I wasn’t prepared on January 14, 2010, to get a diagnosis of breast cancer; but rather than let it knock me down, it made me more determined and awakened the fighter inside.

I think it’s important that we are constantly aware of that fact; because in that awareness should lie the motivation to live each day to the fullest, give it all we have, love with all our hearts, and then put our heads on our pillows at night able to look back on the day with satisfaction, joy, and gratitude.

Today is Wednesday, and according to my original “blog plan”, this is supposed to be Information Junkie Day.  Although having an Information Junkie Day seems rather trivial considering the mass destruction we’ve recently seen and the threats of a nuclear disaster on the horizon, there is something a tad comforting about continuing to live our lives as normally as possible.  Not that we aren’t concerned and aren’t filled with sympathy and empathy for those who are suffering, but if they have to put one foot in front of another to get through their day, it should be easy for us.  As we offer up prayers and perhaps donate money or whatever else we can do to aid those in Japan, we need to remember that today is all we’re guaranteed.  We need to think about how we want to feel when we put our heads on our pillows tonight.  I, for one, want to breathe a sigh of contentment, say a prayer of thanks for this day, for my life and how I’ve lived it.

It’s 4:43 a.m., and I’m once again in East Aurora, New York.  I was just here for 13 days exactly four weeks ago to give my brother a vacation from care giving for our father and do some much-needed work on my dad’s house.

My dad is a recluse; and if it wasn’t for my brother, my sister-in-law, and I regularly cleaning up his place, they could use him in one of those hoarding shows on TV.  They would have to dig him out from under used paper towels and junk mail.  On my last trip, a good friend helped me rip up the carpeting at the house and put down area rugs and carpet tiles…a HUGE improvement!  While there, I remember thinking to myself (and possibly speaking the words out loud to someone) that I almost wished  something  would send Dad to the hospital so we could get into his bedroom (his one bastion that is always off limits to visitors) and get it cleaned out.

So, “Be careful what you wish for”!  Here I am back again, because Dad had an accident at home that sent him to the hospital.  Although I really wasn’t anticipating or wanting to come back this soon, I am overjoyed to have gotten that bedroom tackled.  Today we shop for a new bed and linens for Dad’s room; and when he returns from the hospital, there will be a wonderful transformation awaiting him!

But will he be happy and grateful for the effort and ultimate caring that has gone into this new, clean, and healthy environment?  Hell, no!!

What does all this have to do with the main thrust of my blog theme…Thrive to 105?  In a nutshell…my father is NOT thriving in his senior years.  He is a lonely, miserable, old “geezer” (as my kids affectionately call him); and it’s a very sad commentary on a life that could have been so different for the past 20 years.

My father was a highly intelligent man, a high school teacher of creative writing, English, and mass media, a writer of newspaper columns and a book of poetry, and a painter.  He was handsome and witty.  Unfortunately, he was also manipulative, self-serving, and depressive.  He retired at the age of 57 from teaching and for a while kept himself occupied volunteering as an ombudsman for a local nursing home, consulting for GM as a Spanish interpreter, and teaching Spanish in night classes.  Slowly, but surely, however, he started to change, becoming more and more agitated when around people and letting himself go in his personal hygiene.  Eventually, he began to drink every day, all through the day.  Which brings us to where he is today…that lonely, angry, and still self-serving old man.

When I consider my dad’s existence over the past 20 years, it is a wake-up call to me…and now to any of you reading this.  No doubt some are predisposed to depression and/or have long-standing personality traits that might be hard to change; but if you’re young enough and aware enough now to realize that those traits aren’t serving you at this point in your life, now is the time to make an effort to transform yourself!!  Do you have a vision of what you want the next 20, 30, or 40 years of your life to be like?  Does that vision include a never-ending chain of days spent alone and lonely, not caring for yourself or anyone else or do you want to live out your remaining years active, happy, and surrounded by the people you love and care for?

The choice really is yours and no one else’s.  There are so many resources available these days for helping with physical AND mental/emotional problems and challenges.  I read a great entry in my Science of Mind guide this morning that said,

“…if we learn to keep our thoughts fresh and young, and if we have a keen enthusiastic zest for living, we will never grow old.  Like the exuberant energy of spring, we can choose to imagine a continuously wonderful life.  Every season has its gifts.  With an open mind, anything is possible.”

THRIVE TO 105…sadly, my father is not doing that.  Although I didn’t need his example to motivate me, my trip here this time reinforces and soundly resonates through me the resolve I have to spend my next five decades in a much different way!  I hope you will do the same!!!

I hope you all have had enough “pondering” time at the Silver Gate; after all, I’ve given you eight weeks!  If I do that regularly, the second half of our lives may be over before we get all the wisdom we should gain before we move on!  So please forgive me…and let’s see what the next gate holds.

The second gate of the Eight Gates to Wisdom is the White Picket Gate.  It’s appropriately named, because at this gate we’re urged to see who we really are and stop believing we’re the trappings of all that we’ve built around us…the white picket fence, so to speak.  At this gate, we want to peel away all the things we say we are and that others assign to us in order to see our “true face”.  At this gate, we will hopefully discover the face that has been transformed over the years by all we’ve done and experienced and is now new, yet wiser, in appearance.

It’s time, at the White Picket Gate, to take off our masks that many of us put on each day after we get out of bed and prepare to venture out as we did yesterday and the day before.  This is a time to let a little fresh air and sunshine on your face while observing with a renewed and different point of view who it is you’ve been covering up.  As Angeles Arrien shares in this chapter:

“Often what we have long searched for in the external world has in fact always been within us, patiently awaiting our recognition, while we took detours or busied ourselves creating identities that were unrelated to our true self.”

So, in a nutshell, here is the Task for this gate:  “Uncover or awaken to the essence of who we truly are…”.  Well, we know this isn’t always easy and not always comfortable.  It’s easier to stay in the roles we’re playing that we’ve now become comfortable in.  It’s much more peaceful there…no rocking of the boat and all that “status quo” to keep it balanced.  At the White Picket Gate, you make the choice…

“…to be someone who is fully alive, a courageous explorer and adventurer who is willing to disturb the comfort of familiar roles in order to discover the true face that lies beneath…”

Part of discovering our true face involves what Arrien calls “The Integration of the Five Faces”.  These five faces consist of:

1. The Child – “…experiencing wonder, awe, and curiosity”
2. The Youth – “…sense of adventure; comfort in our own bodies…”
3. The Adult – “…experienced, trustworthy, and responsible…”
4. The Elder – “…magnificence of strength, softness, and sublety that merge to reveal a mysterious and textured wisdom”
5. The Essence – “…the timeless, radiant face of our being’s presence and essential spiritual nature.”

I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of the five faces as a part of my true self.  We certainly can’t be accused of being shallow then, unless, of course, we choose not to remove the mask and just settle for what’s on the surface.

Here are the obstacles that are going to make this gate a challenge:  (1) Continuing to seek acceptance and approval…all you approval whores out there, you know who you are [I can say that, because I’ve been one]; and (2) Sustaining a false face by “performing, pretending, and hiding”.  We know these obstacles are a part of the ego-driven side of our personalities and faces.  Unearthing all five of your faces and discovering which you’ve ignored, which don’t get along well with the others, which one(s) most often feeds your ego…this is the task at the White Picket Gate.  Next time we’ll talk about the Challenge at this gate.

How about you…are you looking in the mirror at your “true face” right now or will this gate be a hard one for you?

Information Junkie Day…and do I have some fun “junk” to share!  Here we go…

The July 15, 2010 edition of Bottom Line Personal had quite a few gems I found interesting:

• Buzzillions.com – This is an awesome website that will help you with your purchasing decisions.  Somewhat like a Consumer Report, the reviews of the items at this site (over 11.5 million, BTW) are all done by average Joes like you and me!  They have every category imaginable (electronics, computers, sporting goods, home and garden, shoes, toys, YOU NAME IT!).  Plus on the home page, you will see the Most Popular Top 10 Lists (washers, robotic pool cleaners, hybrid bikes, etc.).  On the right-hand margin, you’ll see an ever-changing  selection of individual product reviews.  It’s a well laid out, clean, user-friendly site.  The product review pages even have Q&A sections for people who are looking but need more information.  Before you part with those big bucks, you may want to try it out!
• Frequent Flier Award Tickets – In a recent poll of 22 airline websites checking on the availability of free tickets using Frequent Flier miles, results confirmed what most of us already know…all airlines are not created equal!  Not surprising to me, Southwest Airlines came up the big winner, fulfilling 99% of the free ticket requests.  They really are the way to go these days (i.e. no baggage charge and extremely easy online flight changes).  Next in line unfortunately (unless you’re traveling internationally) were Air Canada (94%), Lufthansa (86%), Alaska (75%)…oops, how did that get in there?…and Qantas (73%).  United and American weren’t horrible, I guess…69% and 58%, respectively.  But if you’re planning on using your Delta or US Airways miles (13 and 11%), good luck!
• Do you use bulky, awkward-to-handle bags of dry goods (i.e. rice, flax seeds, beans, and bird seed) on a regular basis?  Well, here is an intriguing product…the Bag Spout.  In a nut shell, there are a couple parts that go together and form a “collar” for the corner of the bag; then a cap attaches to the collar, creating a pour spout, of sorts.  The website (Lee Valley) caters to people who do woodworking and gardening, and it’s a company based to our north (Canada).  I think it’s a handy little item (#EA158) and reasonably priced, as well…..only $3.95 for two!
• Shorter days! Don’t you just love little bits of useless knowledge?  Apparently, the earthquake in Chili this past February (8.8 on the Richter scale) made the Earth “wobble” on its axis, increasing the rate at which it rotates by 1.26 microseconds!!!!  Do you know what this means???  Are you sitting down???  After 130,000 years, our days will be 23 hours and 59 minutes long!  Yes, that’s right, days will be one minute shorter within the next 1,300 centuries.  Now I’m planning to live a good long time, but I think I’m not going to worry about that little “issue”.
• Grilling and carcinogens – I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating, in my humble opinion.  Even people who make an effort to eat more healthy love to grill their foods.  Personally, I try to avoid food cooked on a grill; but I know I’m in the minority on this one (and believe me…I do love a charcoaled hotdog, for sure!!!).  So here’s the deal…USE A MARINADE!!! It’s such an easy solution to a rather serious situation. Follow these simple guidelines, and you can reduce the carcinogens produced from grilling your meats by up to 90%…that’s huge!

Marinate for at least 20 minutes

Season with antioxidant herbs, such as turmeric, garlic, ginger, rosemary and cumin

Grill at cooler temperatures – sear the meat briefly, then cook slowly at low temps

Cook the meat rare, medium-rare or medium (be sure to cook poultry to an internal temperature of 165 degrees)

Use lean cuts to avoid “flare ups” caused by fat dripping

“Smoking” may increase cancer risks

Grill veggies instead…brushing with olive oil prior to grilling.  HCAs and PAHs (carcinogens) are only created from animal proteins

• Islands for sale! No doubt buying an island is on your bucket list…and I’m here with the website that will help you make that dream come true…Private Islands Online!   I went online and found locations in South and North Carolina…so you don’t have to go far for your island!  The one in South Carolina, called Live Oaks Island, has a “motivated seller”, so you should probably jump on that one if you don’t mind staying state side!

Okay, this is my last bit of info junk for the week!  You know I had to include more than just one “healthy”-type bit of info.  I’ve told you about grilling, now I want to give you a website (found in my Eating Well Magazine, July/August 2010) where you can actually order your own customized energy bars!  It’s called YouBars.   Isn’t that cool??!!  Build-A-Bar!! This site is AWESOME!  Not only can you customize your own energy bar, but you can also customize your own trail mix, cereal, shakes, and cookies!  Once you create your item, it even provides a Nutrition Fact bar for it!  Granted, these bars aren’t cheap ($2.99 each), but not much that’s customized is!  They even print your name on YOUR bars.  I think I’m going to try it!

Let me know if you check out and/or try any of these sites and let me know what you think…especially if you buy that island you’ve been wanting!  I expect an invitation for a little vacation!  Have a great week!

I’m afraid I kind of dropped the ball recently in regards to a follow-up blog I had committed to write.  After “reporting” on the acai berries, I was going to blog the next time about the other berries that were in the same article and their benefits.  So, although I didn’t get it done on the originally promised day…I’m here to do it now!

Before I begin, however, let me inform you all that I bought and tried jicama! You may recall it was one of the vegetables I wrote about recently, along with sweet potatoes and kale.  First let me say that peeling the darn thing is NOT such an easy thing to do…at least not with a potato peeler…or at least not with MY potato peeler.  What I found to be easiest was prying up a strip of skin with a paring knife and just peeling it off with my fingers.  The whole time I was doing it, I kept thinking, “This thing better taste good after all this!”  As a matter of fact, it is pretty good!  The video I included with my blog post where it was described as similar to an apple, but not as sweet, and the consistency of a water chestnut was pretty accurate.  It’s crunchy and moist.  I enjoyed it.  Don’t expect a huge taste sensation; it could be considered kind of bland.  However, I would definitely suggest trying it; I’ll buy another.  It’s nice to have something new to add to my new eating repertoire.

Now…back to fruits, specifically, berries!  You may have heard the term polyphenols used before; they are plant-based chemicals which are beneficial to your health.  One of these polyphenols is anthocyanins. This nutrient helps make your favorite berry red, blue or purple.  As cited in the June 2010 issue of Life Extension, recent research is proving the health benefits of anthocyanins.  They include:

• Stopping the growth of cancer cells and actually killing them (apoptosis) in some cancers.
• Lowering heart disease risks
• Helping with eye functions
• Controlling oxidative DNA damage on a cellular level

As we discussed before, bioavailability is of utmost importance.  Quoting from Life Extension,

An 8-week, randomized, placebo-controlled study published this year confirmed not only that they are highly bioavailable—they can also significantly increase levels of other beneficial polyphenols in the blood.

Here is the list of these darlings of the fruit world:

• Blueberry
• Bilberry
• Black currant
• Cranberry
• Elderberry
• Pomegranate (is this a berry????)

To give a quick, down-and-dirty description of just part of what these fruits may do for you…

Blueberry – helps with memory; improves insulin resistance; helps protect the myocardium

Bilberry – I don’t even know what these look like, though they’re related to blueberries; inhibits ACE (which contributes to hypertension); inhibits breast cancer cells from multiplying

Black currant – I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one, although I’ve seen the jelly!  Very potent anti-viral traits; reduces oxidative stress

Cranberry – Most women already know this one…urinary tract assistance! May help fight proliferation of certain cancer cells

Elderberry – Anti-viral, as well; protects endothelial cells (lining the blood vessels) against oxidative stress

Pomegranate – cardiovascular help; reduces inflammation (arthritis); promising studies show reducing metastasis in breast cancer and cell death in other cancers

In addition to the above, it’s generally accepted that other fruits we love are also similar in benefits:

• Raspberries
• Grapes
• Strawberries
• Blackberries
• Cherries

Remember the ORAC scale (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity)?  Here is where these berries fall on the scale…all behind the acai berries reported on previously, of course:

1. Pomegranates – 10,500
2. Blackberries – 5,100
3. Bilberries – 4,200
4. Blueberries – 3,200
5. Raspberries – 2,600
6. Strawberries – 2,400
7. Elderberries – 2,100
8. Cherries – 1,160
9. Black Currant – 1,100
10. Red grapes – 1,100

Obviously, we can’t go wrong with any of these fruit choices.  Anybody have an easy way of getting into one of them there pomegranate things?