Protecting your heart may be as simple as consuming the right colorful foods. Britt Burton-Freeman, Ph.D., director of the Center for Nutrition Research at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) told Sirius Satellite Radio listeners how polyphenols – compounds which provide much of the color and flavor in fruits and vegetables – help moderate your body’s inflammatory response. Burton-Freeman is studying the benefits of polyphenols, including their positive effect on cardiovascular health, on human subjects at IIT’s Institute for Food Safety and Health.
In her clinic, people are fed specific diets and monitored for six to eight hours. “Throughout the day we take blood from people, and look at their glucose and insulin,” explained Burton-Freeman. “How is the body metabolizing the fuel that we fed them?” Burton-Freeman and her team also look at the inflammatory mediators. “These are proteins that are circulating,” she explained. “We graph these wonderful things, and try to understand what’s going on in the body over this series of time.”
Burton-Freeman’s clinic, as well as others nationwide, has seen an increase in blood’s inflammatory cytokines, the small signaling proteins, after a meal. “After a high carb/high fat meal, these things go up,” she said. Including polyphenol-rich fruits and vegetables – also known for their antioxidant effect – however, has a mediating effect. “It nicely blocks that response,” explained Burton-Freeman, who advocates keeping the body’s inflammatory response in balance.
Consuming regular quantities of polyphenol-rich foods may help manage the body’s inflammatory response. “Every meal counts,” she said. “When we consume these foods over a long period of time – so over days and weeks and months – that’s when we start to see the levels drop,” she explained. Burton-Freeman’s studies were conducted using Polyphenolic’s MegaNatural-BP, a patented grape seed extract. Clinical studies have shown polyphenols found in MegaNatural-BP help maintain ideal blood pressure, and contribute to a healthy cardiovascular system.
