Health Benefits of Strawberries

I love strawberries! Their taste, their texture, their color.  Everything about a fruit draws me in, but I bet you didn’t know these cold facts about this incredible berry.

CLOTTING:      

Recent research has shown that strawberries are not only full of antioxidants but also have antiplatelet, aka anti-clotting properties.????

What does this mean?  Platelets are components of your blood that clump together and cause clots. These can then travel throughout your body until they get stuck, like in your legs, your brain, your heart, your lungs.

Those are thrombotic events, and in medicine, they’re called strokes, pulmonary emboli, and heart attacks. Many medications on the market today prevent platelets from forming these clots to lower the risk of thrombotic events.????

A diet that can lower the risk of these events even more would benefit everyone who is on these medications and have other diseases that increase their risk of having them.

                           ANTI-GOUT

There might also be some anti-gout effects.  Uremic acid is the culprit here, and it can deposit in your joints, causing gout symptoms: redness, pain, warmth, inflamed, and unbearable should be another one.   At the moment, research is a bit inconsistent, and more info is needed, but in the off chance that strawberries COULD lower levels of uremic acid in your blood… I’d say:

                  CHILL AND EAT STRAWBERRIES 

                               LIPID LOWERING, LOWER CHOLESTEROL

Before I get into this, I want to give you some word definitions to explain better what things are. I know I had some trouble understanding all these terms when I first started medical school.

• Oxidative stress

  1. Damage
  2. An excellent way to remember its damage is this:
     1. When something gets oxidated = it RUSTS & RUST is BAD
     2. For Spanish speakers – think: Oxidar = RUST = BAD

• LDL

  1. Bad cholesterol
  2. But if you’re a Curios George, its Low-Density Lipoprotein

• HDL

  • Good cholesterol
  • And if you’re a Curious George, its High-Density Lipoprotein
    

                  Okay, so now we can Start: 

  • 

Strawberries found to lower oxidative stress (DAMAGE). Now, higher levels of damage to LDL (BAD CHOLESTEROL) are the most dangerous because it’s what starts narrowing your arteries.????????

• • Its kind of like HARD FAT depositing on the walls of your arteries until the blood that flows through there is so low that whatever organ the blood is traveling to, gets hurt and a part of it can die.  This is what happens in a heart attack; the coronary arteries can be so narrow that an area of the heart dies.
  •                        There you have it!???? Strawberries are not just delicious and colorful. They are great for your health!