Does an apple a day keep the Dr away?

Health - Does an apple a day keep the Doctor away?

Origin

Wales is the source of this commonplace English phrase. There's a fair chance that this little maxim originated there as the earliest known example of its use in print makes that claim. The February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine includes this:

"A Pembrokeshire proverb. Eat an apple on going to bed, And you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread."

A number of variants of the rhyme were in circulation around the turn of the 20th century. In 1913, Elizabeth Wright recorded a Devonian dialect version and also first known record of the version we use now, in Rustic Speech and Folk-lore:

"Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An' you'll make the doctor beg his bread; or as the more popular version runs: An apple a day Keeps the doctor away."

Apples have a good claim to promote health. They contain Vitamin C, which aid the immune system and phenols, which reduce cholesterol. They also reduce tooth decay by cleaning one's teeth and killing off bacteria. It has also been suggested by Cornell University researchers that the quercetin found in apples protects brain cells against neuro-degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's Disease.

Apples may be good for us but it wasn't their precise medicinal properties that were being exalted when this phrase was coined. In Old English the word apple was used to describe any round fruit that grew on a tree. Adam and Eve's forbidden fruit, which they ate in the Garden of Eden, is often described as an apple but, in the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, it is just called 'a fruit'.

As long as it is one of your five a day.

An article in the Daily Mail 8 June 2011

Don't ditch the peel: Apple peel contains ursolic acid that stops muscle wasting

An apple a day really could keep the doctor away – as long as you don’t throw away the peel.

The chemical behind the apple skin’s waxy shine is being credited with a host of health benefits from building muscle to keeping the  lid on weight.

Ursolic acid also keeps cholesterol and blood sugar under control, meaning an apple a day could do wonders for all-round health.

Researcher Christopher Adams said: ‘Ursolic acid is an interesting natural compound. It’s part of a normal diet as a component of apple peels.

‘They always say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away…’

The importance of apple peel was discovered after Dr Adams, a U.S. expert in how hormones affect the body, set out to find a drug that stops muscles from wasting, keeping pensioners strong as they age and cutting their risk of hard-to-heal fractures.

He said: ‘Muscle wasting is a frequent companion of illness and ageing.

‘It prolongs hospitalisation, delays recoveries and in some cases prevents people from going back home. It isn’t well understood and there’s no medicine for it.’

In order to remedy the situation, Dr Adams, of the University of Iowa, studied the genetic changes that occur when muscles waste or atrophy.

He checked a pool of 1,300 chemicals for one that would counter the changes – and hit on ursolic acid.

The researcher then supplemented a normal diet in mice with small amounts of the compound and subjected them to a battery of health tests. The creatures’ muscles got bigger and their grip became stronger.

The benefits didn’t end there. The mice fed the apple peel chemical had lower levels of cholesterol and other blood fats blamed for clogging up the arteries and damaging the heart, and had around a third less body fat.

It is thought that ursolic acid enhances the effects of insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1, two hormones key to muscle growth.

It is particularly concentrated in apple peel but is also found in cranberries and prunes and in basil, oregano and thyme.Dr Adams said: ‘We know that if you eat a balanced diet like mom told us to eat you get this material. People who eat junk food don’t get this.’

He added that the goal is to establish whether apple peel is as good for humans as it is for mice – and work out how many apples we might need to help make muscles bulge and waistlines shrink.

If large amounts of ursolic acid are required, it is likely that people will have to take it in concentrated form, either as a supplement or a drug.

Reporting his findings in the journal Cell Metabolism, Dr Adams said: ‘Given the current lack of therapies for muscle atrophy, we speculate that ursolic acid might be investigated as a potential therapy for illness-related and age-related muscle atrophy.’

Obesity and diabetes might also be in its grasp, he added.

Other recent research has credited an apple a day with keeping the undertaker away – at least in flies.

Fruit flies given an apple extract lived 10 per cent longer and found it easier to walk, climb and move about as they aged.

Researchers who questioned women about their diets found that those who regularly ate apples were around 20 per cent less likely to suffer heart attacks and stroke

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2000392/Apple-peel-helps-build-muscle-control-weight.html#ixzz1XvCLaUcA

An article from The Telegraph dated 12 April 2011

Apple pectin and compounds called polyphenols stimulate the breakdown of fats in the blood

It found that women on an 'apple diet' saw their cholesterol drop by almost a quarter in six months, while they also lost weight.

Dr Bahram Arjmandi, of the department of nutrition, food and exercise sciences at Florida University, described the results as "incredible"

In the study, 80 women aged 45 to 65 were asked to eat 75 grams of dried prunes a day for a year, and the other 80 were asked to eat the same amount of dried apple, in addition to their normal diets.

Blood samples were taken at the start of the study and at three, six and 12 months.

Dr Arjmandi said that "incredible changes in the apple-eating women happened by 6 months- they experienced a 23 per cent decrease in LDL cholesterol, which is known as the 'bad cholesterol'."

hey also had lower levels of bio-markers linked to heart disease, such as C-reactive protein.

They also shed on average 3.3lbs (1.5kg).

Dr Arjamandi, who presented the research at the Experimental Biology conference in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, concluded that there was some truth in the old adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away".

Apples have long been known to be a good source of fibre, but the study, funded by the US Department of Agriculture, added to evidence that they had additional health benefits which made them a "miracle fruit".

Dr Arjamandi said: "Everyone can benefit from consuming apples."

Previous studies have shown that apple pectin and compounds called polyphenols - also present in substances including blueberries, tea and dark chocolate - stimulate the breakdown of fats in the blood and reduce inflammation of vessel walls, which both reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.