Eating Grapes Benefits Your Muscle Health, According To This Study
Grapes are great for wine and snacking, but these juicy little powerhouses can also help keep your muscles in tip-top shape.
For both men and women, long-term consumption of grapes has major benefits to their muscle health, according to a new study from Western New England University (WNE).
The research has suggested that a diet including grapes can modify gene expression in muscle, which potentially helps maintain muscle mass and function.
Every year, around 30 million tons of grapes are consumed. They are easily accessible to the average person. Aside from offering nutrition, grapes have been proven to affect heart, kidney, eye, skin, and gastrointestinal health.
When grapes are eaten daily, muscle gene expression is altered significantly, with a more pronounced effect in females.
As a result, male and female muscle traits are brought closer together at a metabolic level. In addition, genes linked to lean muscle mass increased, while those associated with muscle degeneration decreased, indicating that muscle function had improved.
The findings have implications for sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss. Between 10 and 16 percent of older individuals experience sarcopenia.
They highlight how regular grape consumption may complement traditional strategies for maintaining muscle, like exercise and high-protein diets.
“This study provides compelling evidence that grapes have the potential to enhance muscle health at the genetic level,” said Dr. John Pezzuto, a senior investigator of the study and a professor of pharmacy and health sciences at Western New England University.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
“Given their safety profile and widespread availability, it will be exciting to explore how quickly these changes can be observed in human trials.”
Grapes are rich in phytochemicals. They exhibit potential properties that prevent disease through nutrigenomic mechanisms instead of direct chemical interactions.
Nutrigenomics is a field of study that explores the effect of nutrients on gene expression and how genetic variation influences dietary responses.
The research team investigated the effect of two servings of grapes per day on genetic expression patterns in the muscles of males and females.
To their surprise, male and female muscles greatly converged into a single phenotype when the subjects were given the grape diet.
In today’s fast-paced world, convenience and taste reign supreme when it comes to making dietary choices. But this study reveals how important nutrition is for long-term health and aging populations.
It just goes to show that grapes promote wellness and vitality, serving as a lesser-known ally in the battle against age-related muscle deterioration.
The researchers plan to look into the mechanisms responsible for these changes and the timeline for their effects more in-depth.
Overall, eating grapes on a regular basis could be a new approach to maintaining muscle health that benefits people across all age groups.
The details of the full study were published in the journal Foods.
More About:News
Read This Next
