Acai berry - Six ways this superfood can change your health

If you've never heard of the acaiberry, you're missing out on the enormous benefits this superfood offers.

Acai berry contains anthocyanins and antioxidants - elements that have been linked to a slowing of the body's aging process. Studies indicate that acai berry has 10 times more antioxidants than grapes and fully twice as many as blueberries, making it extremely beneficial for those of us trying to thwart the aging process.

How does a boost of energy sound?  Acai berry is known to increase energy levels, and that's a plus considering the willy-nilly, hectic pace of life these days. There are times when we can all use some help maintaining enough energy to fulfill our daily life obligations (both at work and play). That is especially true for those of us who work a non-traditional shift, like day-evening, or evening-night shifts (we're pretty much designed to be awake during the day and asleep at night). Studies indicate regular Acai berry supplementation can boost your body's energy levels; increased energy levels mean more work gets done, making you more productive and valuable.

Keep your ticker ticking better. Acai berry has been found to improve overall cardiovascular health by improving the flow of blood and other nutrients to the heart and other organs. Acai berry is rich in omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids, which are known to lower levels of bad cholesterol in the body. It's well known that bad cholesterol can accumulate in the form of plaque along the walls of your arteries and if not properly treated (or prevented in the first place), can eventually block blood vessels, causing stroke, heart attack or even sudden death. Acai berry also contains anthocyanins, the same substance found in red wine (which has also been shown to improve cardiovascular flow and function).

Good for hearts - and minds. Data shows that acai berry is good for both body and mind, by balancing the body's nervous system. "Most neuro-psychiatric problems arise from the imbalance of the nervous system," "Depression is also prevented if the stability of the mind and body is maintained. When the physical body is stable and functioning properly, the mind is also in harmony to the body preventing mental health problems..."

Take the extra pounds off. When eaten in conjunction with a healthy diet, acai berry can contribute to weight loss by boosting both metabolism and your energy levels. Also, the antioxidants, vitamins and fatty acids are much safer than many of the so-called "diet pills" and other products. What's more, acai berry is not known for harmful side effects.

Keep the extra pounds off. Once you reach your diet goals, you want to keep the pounds off; acai berries can help because, again, they work to increase metabolism in a way that is healthy and not harmful. Increased metabolism means food is digested faster and, thus, less likely to create fat stores.

Though research is limited, "Acai berries are widely touted as a so-called superfood, with proponents claiming that they are helpful for a variety of health concerns, including arthritis, cancer, weight loss, high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, detoxification and improving general health," says registered dietician Katherine Zeratsky.

The one bad thing about acai berries is that in order to eat them fresh, you have to live in a region where they grow. That's because they are perishable within 24 hours of being picked. Lucky for Americans they can be freeze-dried, powdered and put into supplements.

Where does the acai berry rank on a list of superfoods? For Dr. Nicholas Perricone, noted dermatologist and nutritionist, the acai is number one.

"Harvested in the rainforests of Brazil, acai tastes like a vibrant blend of berries and chocolate. Hidden within its royal purple pigment is the magic that makes it nature's perfect energy fruit. Acai is packed full of antioxidants, amino acids and essential fatty acids. Although acai may not be available in your local supermarket, you can find it in several health food and gourmet stores (often in juice form). A new product featuring the unsweetened pulp is now also available, and I highly recommend that you choose this form of acai," he says.

Cold Temperatures and Chili Peppers Help Burn Fat

What do low temperatures and chili peppers have in common? They both could help burn fat, a new study shows.

Exposure to cold and consumption of chemicals found in chili peppers both appear to increase the number and activity of so-called brown fat cells, which burn energy, rather than store it as typical "white" fat cells do, said Takeshi Yoneshiro, a researcher at Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan.

The study is the first to show that brown fat activity can be induced in people who appeared to have very few or no brown fat cells, said Dr. Clifford Rosen, a professor of medicine at Tufts University who wasn't involved in the study. Participants in the study who were exposed to cold also had less "bad" white fat at the end of the experiments.

Cold burns fat

Brown fat cells are currently a subject of intense research as a target for anti-obesity drugs, said Dr. Soren Snitker, a medical researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the study.

In the new study, researchers exposed eight people with little or no brown fat cells to moderately low temperatures of 63 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours daily, over the course of six weeks. Compared with the control subjects, who went about their normal lives, the cold-exposed people had about 5 percent less body fat at the end of the study, and also burned more energy when exposed to cold, according to the study. The researchers also looked at people who ate capsinoids, which are normally found in chili peppers, for six weeks, and found they also burned more energy than the control group when exposed to cold, but didn't lose any more white fat than the control group.

Yoneshiro said the experiment might not have continued for long enough to see white-fat-burning effects of the compounds. A previous study that lasted 12 weeks found the capsinoid ingestion led to significant body fat decreases in mildly obese people.

The new results help explain the results from a recent study co-authored by Snitker, which found that people who ate capsinoids had increased levels of fat breakdown, and smaller waists after a six-week period, compared with people who took placebos.

The brown and the beige

It was once thought that brown fat, also known as brown adipose tissue (BAT), was present only in babies. But three research groups independently discovered in 2009 that brown fat exists in adults, concentrated in the upper chest and neck of some adults, Rosen said. It appears reddish-brown because it contains many mitochondria, cellular factories that release energy, Rosen said. In 2012, scientists found yet another type of BAT called "beige fat," which is a subset of brown fat but is formed from white fat cells. Rosen said that the "brown fat" cells induced by cold and capsinoids are indeed likely beige fat, because they don't show up on scans used to detect concentrated regions of brown fat cells.

"The most interesting thing about this study from a treatment point of view is the capsinoids," said Jan Nedergaard, a physiologist at Stockholm University in Sweden who wasn't involved in the study. Reduction of fat from cold exposure was expected, he said, but "as everybody realizes, that's a difficult thing to put into practice."

Drug development?

The study is exciting because it suggests chemicals that induce brown fat could be used to fight obesity, although they'd probably work better at keeping healthy people from becoming fat, rather than making obese people skinny, Nedergaard said. "Everybody would like to take a fat person and make him slim, but that demands a high-burning capacity that BAT probably doesn't have."

Capsinoids appear to induce brown fat in the same way as cold, by "capturing" the same cellular system that the body's nervous system uses to increase heat production, Yoneshiro said. Drug developers want to use similar drugs to activate this system, but capsinoids themselves probably won't be used because they already exist in nature and thus cannot be patented, a major way that pharmaceutical companies make money, Nedergaard said.

Capsinoids come from "sweet" chili peppers that don't taste hot, but produce some of the same physiological effects — for example, producing sweat, Nedergaard said.

Musical Training Has Positive, Long-Term Effects on Brain Function

Studies by researcher Nina Kraus have shown that lifelong musical training is associated with the ability to hear and understand sounds in a noisy environment, even as we age. But what about people who have had limited musical training — four or five years of piano or guitar lessons as a child, for example? A recent study by Kraus's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University suggests that even limited exposure to music may help inoculate us from some types of age-related declines in brain functioning. The study found that four to 14 years of musical training early in life is associated with faster neural timing in response to speech. Test subjects listened to a synthesized speech sound ("the syllable "da") by itself - without any other competing noise - and also amid other, background noises. She found that the group of test subjects who had had some musical training responded neurally to the syllable both in quiet and in noise more quickly than did the groups of test subjects without musical training. This result is relevant especially to older people, who often show difficulty processing fast-changing speech elements - consonant to vowel transitions, for example.

Other studies by Kraus have shown that musical training correlates to a better ability to pick out key sounds, such as spoken words, in noisy environments (see video), and a better ability to recognize the emotional content of sound.

Kraus is the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology at Northwestern University. Much of her research is supported by the National Science Foundation.