By Franklin St. John

In an earlier issue of Natural Awakenings, I wrote about blueberries, which contain green tea polyphenols and anthocyanins that fight free radicals. But those aren’t the only berries that contain high levels of antioxidants.

Most people have heard that cranberries help keep the urinary tract healthy. Whenever my wife gets an inkling that she may have a urinary tract problem, she rushes to drink cranberry juice as well as cranberry concentrate. She swears that she can control the problem with cranberry products.

That’s all well and good, but cranberries also have other properties that are beneficial to our health—including several types of antioxidants, which have been proven to fight free radicals.

Antioxidant Power

So cranberries can be an important health tool, because we must maintain a sufficient level of antioxidants in our system to keep free radical formation under control. It is also important that we use various types of antioxidant supplements to combat the diverse pollutants that enter our bodies from so many different sources.

What gives cranberries their outstanding antioxidant properties? Actually, a number of compounds in cranberries are known to neutralize free radicals, but some of the most important ones are from the antioxidant group known as proanthocyanidins. This grouping’s chemistry is very complex, and I’m not sure that reviewing the structures would be meaningful to most people, me included. But we do know that cranberries are good for you—for this and other reasons.

Another benefit of cranberries is reflected in a study referenced in an article in the July/August 2015 issue of Reader’s Digest. In that study, whose findings were presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association, subjects in a control group who drank low-calorie cranberry juice had a significant drop in blood pressure.

The study stressed the fact that it was low-calorie juice that was used and seemed to produce the health benefits. However, most cranberry drinks on the market today are loaded with sugar—and there’s a reason for that. Cranberries are sour, and when they are crushed to obtain juice, they are still sour. That’s why most producers add sugar: to make the product more palatable.

Unfortunately, refined sugar can cause many health problems, and they are not limited to weight control or even obesity. One major problem that’s been well documented in the medical literature is that refined sugar helps cancer grow. That fact alone should make us think about limiting our refined sugar intake. Other known problems include those associated with diabetes, which is still on the rise.

Cranberries Done Right

So in formulating Cranberry by HerbaSway, our goal was to find the most efficient, pleasant way to deliver the natural health benefits of cranberries without using sugar.

The body needs fairly high levels of antioxidants to reap the most health benefits, and we’ve found that it’s easiest to deliver those antioxidants in concentrate form. Our cranberry concentrate includes elderberry, because elderberry has been shown to improve and stimulate the immune system. (We all know the benefits of a strong immune system.) We also added two herbs to boost the concentrate’s antioxidant power. Finally, to make the concentrate pleasant-tasting even without the sugar, we added our proprietary blend of lo han guo and stevia to sweeten the formula.

By simply adding our cranberry concentrate to water, people can control urinary tract problems, help lower blood their pressure, and have another effective antioxidant in their system—all while enjoying a pleasant drink.

 

Franklin St. John, doctor of Chinese medicine and founder of HerbaSway Laboratories, was taught traditional Chinese herbal medicine and qigong by a Taoist master from the mountains of China. For more information, visit HerbaSway.com or call 1.800.672.7322.