Strawberries may help reduce harmful inflammation in the colon
Research presented at the 256th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) suggests that consuming less than a cupful of strawberries a day could mitigate colonic inflammation and improve gut health.
Research presented at the 256th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) suggests that consuming less than a cupful of strawberries a day could mitigate colonic inflammation and improve gut health.
The dietary consumption of fruits and vegetables has been associated with a lowered risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). To establish an effective and practical approach to decrease colonic inflammation in both IBD patients and the general population, the researchers focused on strawberries due to their wide consumption. The researchers used four groups of mice—a group of healthy mice consuming a regular diet, and three groups of mice with IBD consuming a regular diet, a diet with 2.5% whole strawberry powder, or a diet with 5% whole strawberry powder.
The researchers found that dietary consumption of whole strawberries at a dose equivalent to as low as three-quarters of a cup of strawberries per day in humans significantly suppressed symptoms like body weight loss and bloody diarrhea in mice with IBD. Strawberry treatments also diminished inflammatory responses in the mice’s colonic tissue.
But decreased inflammation wasn’t the strawberry’s only conferred benefit during this study. Colonic inflammation adversely impacts the composition of microbiota in the gut. With IBD, the abundance of harmful bacteria increases, while levels of beneficial bacteria decrease in the colon. Following the dietary treatments of whole strawberries, the researchers observed a reversal of that unhealthy microbiota composition in the IBD mice. Next, the researchers will try to validate their findings in IBD patients.