The risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was dramatically reduced for older people who drank fruit or vegetable juices regularly in a 10-year study, researchers report. The incidence of Alzheimer’s was 76 percent lower for those who drank juice three or more times a week than for those who drank juice less than once a week. It was 16 percent lower for those drinking juice once or twice a week, according to the report. It’s not the general kind of antioxidants in fruit juices that produce the benefit, said Dr. Qi Dai, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and lead author of the report. Rather, he attributed the effect to polyphenols, a particularly strong antioxidant. ‘That is why we chose to look at fruit and vegetable juice,’ Dai said. ‘They [polyphenols] are found in the outer sections of fruits and vegetables, only in the peel or skin. When you process the whole fruit, they go into the juice.’ Studies of the biochemistry of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on deposits of beta-amyloid proteins that form in the brain and the potential for antioxidants in the diet to prevent those deposits, Dai said. But studies […]