Wild Blueberries: The "Elicited" Super-Polyphenol for Vascular Aging?

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#21

Its interesting… I go blueberry picking every summer at a farm in the Pacific Northwest and they use no pesticides or anything, the blueberries are great… it just seems that blueberries are a pretty resilient crop and doesn’t seem to have much need for pesticides.

Costco also has large blueberry (organic) bags, but when they introduced the wild blueberries it seemed like a good opportunity and the price was lower. It’s of course very hard to weigh the costs/benefits when you don’t have much information on the wild blueberries, so perhaps I’ll alternate them.

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#22

The majority of the issue is FMD and CVD risk, the 9-17% figure. Where’s the analysis for this? Postprandial FMD is not the same FMD, and it’s not outcome data. Dietary oils for instance can decrease postprandial FMD but has outcome data showing its associated benefits. (And we have other reasons to believe dietary oils to be healthy).

#23

It’s interesting… many of the references that that these queries point to are review papers… so you have to go down the rabbit hole of looking at each review paper and following the breadcrumb trail. It’s a pain in the ass. Unlike ChatGPT which hallucinates references quite commonly, I find that Google Gemini, when it makes a mistake, usually is just mis-identifying the link to the paper, so I have to search a bit more to find the correct link.

Part of the issue may also be that I am not just asking for a simple summary of the paper, I’m looking for actionable insights from the papers I analyze, so we have something we can actually do in response to a given paper. I don’t care about a paper if we can’t do anything with the information in any reasonable time frame.

Here is the backup for the 9 - 17% figure:

The specific research paper you are looking for is Rodriguez-Mateos et al. (2013), published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

This study is the primary source for the 1.5% acute improvement in Flow-Mediated Dilation (FMD) and provides the basis for the calculated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk reduction.

1. The Primary Paper (Acute FMD Improvement)

Citation: Rodriguez-Mateos, A., et al. (2013). “Intake and time dependence of blueberry flavonoid-induced improvements in vascular function: a randomized, controlled, double-blind, crossover intervention study with mechanistic insights into biological activity.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

  • The Findings: This study demonstrated a biphasic, dose-dependent increase in FMD.
  • Result: Consumption of wild blueberry powder resulted in an acute increase in FMD, peaking at approximately 1.5% (absolute percentage points) at 1–2 hours post-consumption.
  • Dose: The effect plateaued at 766 mg of total polyphenols (equivalent to ~240g or 1.5 cups of fresh wild blueberries).
  • Mechanism: The study linked these improvements directly to plasma concentrations of specific anthocyanin metabolites.

Source: PubMed: Intake and time dependence of blueberry flavonoid-induced improvements in vascular function

2. The “9-17% CVD Risk Reduction” Calculation

It is critical to distinguish between direct observation and prognostic extrapolation. The Rodriguez-Mateos study did not run for decades to observe a reduction in heart attacks. Instead, the 9-17% risk reduction is a calculated projection based on the 1.5% FMD improvement.

This projection relies on established meta-analyses of endothelial function, specifically:

  • Ras et al. (2013) / Inaba et al. (2010): These meta-analyses established that every 1% increase in FMD is associated with a 13% reduction (Confidence Interval typically 9%–17%) in the risk of future cardiovascular events.
  • The Logic: Since wild blueberries acutely increase FMD by ~1.5%, researchers extrapolate that sustained consumption could theoretically lower CVD risk by roughly 13-19% (often summarized conservatively as ~15% or the 9-17% range depending on the specific confidence interval cited).

Source: Matsuzawa Y, et al. (2015). Prognostic Value of Flow-Mediated Vasodilation in Brachial Artery and Fingertip Artery for Cardiovascular Events: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. (Confirming the prognostic value of FMD).

3. Supporting Research (Chronic/Sustained Effects)

While the 2013 paper established the acute 1.5% spike, subsequent research confirmed that this is not just a transient effect but translates to sustained baseline improvements.

Summary of Facts

Metric Finding Source
Acute FMD Increase ~1.5% (peak at 1-2 hours) Rodriguez-Mateos et al. (2013)
Chronic FMD Increase 0.86% - 1.0% (sustained baseline) Wood et al. (2023); Rodriguez-Mateos (2019)
CVD Risk Impact 13% reduction per 1% FMD increase (Range 9-17%) Extrapolated from Ras et al. (2013)
#24

The functional differences are likely negligible. That said, I prefer blueberries from further North, in keeping with the “stressed fruit” concept, so I’m sticking with TJ’s boreal berries. Obviously, compared to Costco and some other aggregated blueberries TJ’s is more expensive, but I don’t care (my philosophy is to never try to save on food and health even if the difference is tiny - can’t use any $ once I’m dead, so why save over getting my priorities straight). But rationally it likely is best to go with cheaper options in this case - I’m irrationally obsessive.

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#25

So a Super-Polyphenol that possibly causes an increase in FMD by 0.86% that’s associated with a ~10% reduction in CVD events.