Appels
voor een goede gezondheid.*
Uit wetenschappelijk onderzoek blijkt dat appels lichaamscellen kunnen beschermen tegen schade die leidt tot hartproblemen en kanker. Nutriënten in appels zorgen voor een goede communicatie tussen de cellen en voorkomen dat cellen beschadigd worden door lichaamsvreemde stoffen in het lichaam. Zie het als de werking van een spamfilter, het goede wordt doorgelaten en het slechte aangepakt en verwijderd. In eerdere studies is al aangetoond dat de bioactieve stoffen in appels goede antioxidanten zijn en oxidatieschade aan het DNA door vrije radicalen kan bestrijden. Deze studie nu laat zien dat de nutriënten in appels ook de communicatie tussen de cellen verbetert en een filter vormen tegen schadelijke vreemde stoffen.
Flavonoid-rich
Apples And Apple Products Exhibit Unique Way To Enhance Health
Apples
have long been a symbol of health, and doctors encourage Americans to add more
fruits and vegetables, including apples and apple products, to their daily
diets. Now, researchers Dr. Eric Gershwin and Carl Keen at the University of
California, Davis have discovered a new way in which flavonoid-rich apples and
apple products protect cells from the type of damage that leads to heart disease
and age-related cancers.
The current findings appeared in the issue of Experimental Biology and
Medicine.
. "We discovered how the unique mix of nutrients found in apples and apple
products can actually help improve health, starting at the cellular level,"
says Eric Gershwin, professor of medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine.
According to the researchers, proper communication between cells in the body is
vital to every aspect of life. But when that communication is disrupted in some
fashion, cells can be damaged or even die, leading to various disease states. In
this case, Gershwin and his colleagues found that the distinctive combination of
nutrients in apples and apple products is able to protect cells from destruction
by fighting off damage caused by unwelcome intruders in the body.
"It's almost like having a spam filter on your computer; the good emails
get through and the bad emails get stopped," remarks Gershwin. "Here,
the apple components we observed acted like the spam filter."
Earlier studies have shown that components in apples and apple products known as
flavonoids work as antioxidants, taking up free oxygen radicals that can cause
damage to DNA. The UC Davis study takes that research further by looking beyond
the beneficial antioxidant effects that apples and apple products provide to
recognizing the ability of flavonoids to promote the cellular communication and
filter the harmful effects of unwanted intruders.
In the current study, Gershwin and his colleagues exposed human cells to an
extract of an apple mash made from different apple varieties. The researchers
revealed that the apple extract was able to protect the cells from the normally
lethal damage by interfering with the pathway that would otherwise damage or
kill cells in the body. This damage could have lead to an increased risk of
heart disease and certain cancers, if it was without the assistance of apples
and apple products.
"This research on apples and apple products has helped us discover a new
frontier that extends beyond what we have known for a long time - that apples
and apple products can contribute to better health," says Gershwin. He adds
that further research will help identify additional mechanisms by which the
nutrients in apples and apple products can be protective against disease.
This research was funded through an
unrestricted grant from the US Apple Association and the Apple Products Research
and Education Council.
(Aug. 2006)