"Boosting Natural Killer Cell Activity"
For disease prevention and health maintenance,
berries of all colors have emerged as champions.
Most of the work has focused
on cancer prevention and treatment.
Studies have show the anticancer effects of berries
are partially mediated through their abilities
to counteract, reduce, and also repair damage
resulting from oxidative stress and inflammation.
They may also boost detoxifying enzymes,
and a bunch of other things.
But this is new...
The effect of blueberry ingestion on natural killer cell counts.
Natural killer cells are part of our immune system's
rapid response team against cancer cells,
taking them out through the activation
of cancer cell suicide via death receptors.
They're called natural killers,
because they don't require activation by prior exposure.
You don't want to have to wait until your second tumor
before your immune system starts fighting.
We have about 2 billion of these soldiers
circulating in our blood stream at any one time,
but we may be able to get a troop surge with blueberries.
They had athletes eat about a cup and a half a day
for 6 weeks to see if blueberries could reduce
the oxidative stress of long-distance running.
And indeed that's what they saw, no surprise,
a blunting of the spike in oxidative stress,
but that's not what sets this study apart.
The number of natural killer cells in the blood
typically decreases after prolonged endurance exercise,
dropping by half to only about 1 billion–
unless you've been eating lots of blueberries,
in which case you can end up here,
because six weeks of blueberries doubled the number
of natural killer cells up to over 4 billion.
This has never before been demonstrated
in humans consuming blueberries.
Well, no one's ever looked before.
There was a study done on goji berries
and despite a cup a day for a month,
there was no significant change
in the number of natural killer cells.
There was a study, though, that showed
a significant increase in natural killer cell activity
thanks to the spice cardamom.
Hmm, cardamom and blueberries—
I never thought we'd be fighting cancer with blueberry muffins,
but check this out:
You take some lymphoma cells in a petri dish
and you add cardamom and… nothing happens.
If however you add some natural killers,
and about 5% of the cancer cells are wiped out.
But then you add a little cardamom,
and your troops do a little better.
And then if you add more and more and all the sudden—
same number of natural killer cells,
but they're now able to kill off 10 times more cancer cells.
And remember, cardamom alone even at the highest dose
had no effect on cancer cells,
but it really seemed to enhance our NK cells' killer instincts.
The same thing found for black pepper.
Black pepper alone, nothing.
And a little black pepper no effect,
but with enough there seemed to be a boosting effect,
to up around 30 or 40% cancer cell clearance.
And if you add them both together,
they appear to synergize and they kind of work
even better together.
Taken together, these data strongly suggest
that black pepper and cardamom have the potential
to markedly enhance the anti-cancer activity
of natural killer cells.
And then imagine if you had twice as many in your bloodstream,
thanks to this study brought to you by, of course,
the North American Blueberry Council
and the North Carolina Blueberry Council.
But then the last sentence is my favorite.
There were no conflicts of interest.