Snack Size Science: Cranberry’s promise for prostates
The following is a transcript of the podcast:
This is NutraIngredients’s Snack Size Science. I’m Stephen Daniells - bringing you the week’s top science in digestible amounts.
This week we get under the skin of cranberry’s potential for boosting prostate health.
The little red berries, and the proanthocyanidins they contain, are well known to help maintain a healthy urinary tract, with France approving a health claim back in 2004 for at least 36mg of proanthocyanidins to “help reduce the adhesion of certain E. coli bacteria to the urinary tract walls”, and subsequently fight urinary tract infections.
Research has now indicated that the benefits for ‘down there’ may also extend to a man’s prostate: New data from the Czech Republic reports that a daily serving of cranberry may improve measures of prostate health as well as those linked to a better overall “quality of life”.
Without getting too bogged down in the details, six months of supplementation with 1,500 mg per day of dried powdered cranberries was found to significantly improve all the targeted markers, including lowering the levels of prostate specific antigen, a marker commonly used to screen for prostate cancer.
The study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, is said to be first to link cranberries to prostate health. If further research supports the link it could be berry, berry good news for prostates.
For NutraIngredients Snack Size Science, I’m Stephen Daniells.
