In a new study from Pennsylvania State University, researchers found that prunes are not only good for your gut but also good for bone health.
Prunes can help prevent or delay bone loss in postmenopausal women.
It is possibly due to prunes’ ability to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, both of which contribute to bone loss.
As professor Connie Rogers says, in postmenopausal women, lower levels of estrogen can trigger a rise of oxidative stress and inflammation, increasing the risk of weakening bones that may lead to fractures.
Adding prunes into the diet may help protect bones by slowing or reversing this process.
Osteoporosis is a condition in which bones become weak or brittle that can happen to anyone at any age, but is most common among women over the age of 50.
The condition affects more than 200 million women worldwide, causing almost nine million fractures each year.
While medications exist to treat osteoporosis, the researchers said there is a growing interest in ways to treat the condition with nutrition.
“Fruits and vegetables that are rich in bioactive compounds such as phenolic acid, flavonoids and carotenoids can potentially help protect against osteoporosis,” said Mary Jane De Souza, professor of kinesiology and physiology, “with prunes in particular gaining attention in previous research.”
Bones are maintained throughout adult life by processes that continually build new bone cells while removing old ones.
But after the age of 40, this breaking down of old cells begins to outpace the formation of new ones.
This can be caused by multiple factors including inflammation and oxidative stress, which is when free radicals and antioxidants are unbalanced in the body.
Prunes, however, have many nutritional benefits such as minerals, vitamin K, phenolic compounds and dietary fiber—all of which may be able to help counter some of these effects.
For this study, the researchers analyzed data from 16 preclinical studies in rodent models, ten preclinical studies and two clinical trials.
Across the studies, the researchers found evidence that eating prunes helped reduce inflammation and oxidative stress and promoted bone health.
The findings suggest that prunes may help to reduce bone loss due to altered bone turnover and by inhibiting inflammation and suppressing markers of oxidative stress.”
If you care about nutrition, please read studies about diet that may prevent or even reverse Alzheimer’s disease, and diet that could reduce inflammation in the body.
For more information about food and health, please see recent studies about diet linked to better thinking skills later in life, and results showing that this diet can increase heart disease and death risk.
The study was conducted by Janhavi J Damani et al., and published in Advances in Nutrition.
Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
