Aronia reduces cellulite

A capful of super-berry Aronia juice a day can reduce not too serious types of cellulite. Serbian researchers discovered this when they gave Aronia juice to nearly thirty adult women.

Cellulite

Cellulite occurs when fat in the subcutaneous layers develops a grainy structure. This can happen when the compartments of which fat tissue is composed – researchers call this subcutaneous tissue fascicles – become enlarged.

Cellulite can also happen when the collagen structures surrounding the subcutaneous tissue fascicles lose their suppleness or shrink. A popular theory is that both these processes are a consequence of the capillaries just under the surface of the skin clogging up.

Below left is a diagram of healthy skin; below right is skin with cellulite.

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Study

If you give people anthocyanins from berries or other fruit, their capillaries become suppler, wider and they start to function better. So it may just be the case that supplementation with super-berry Aronia melanocarpa reduces cellulite. This was the reasoning of researchers at the University of Belgrade. So they got together 29 women aged 25-48 with grade-2 cellulite and gave them 100 ml aronia juice every day for 90 days. They used a product manufactured by Conimex, which is available in Serbian supermarkets.

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Before and after supplementation the researchers scanned the subjects’ subcutaneous structure. They observed that Aronia made the subcutaneous tissue fascicles smaller [right column of the table below].

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Conclusion

“Results obtained in this study showed marked potential of anthocyanin-rich chokeberry juice to improve the morphology of skin and subcutaneous tissue in the regions affected by cellulite under in vivo conditions”, the researchers conclude. “These findings add new evidence in the dossier of beneficial effects of anthocyanins and postulate a new research strategy for both prevention and treatment of cellulite.”

Dietary supplementation with polyphenol-rich chokeberry juice improves skin morphology in cellulite.

Abstract

The aim of our study was to investigate possible beneficial effects of organic chokeberry juice (OCJ) consumption in the treatment of cellulite. Twenty-nine women aged 25-48 with a cellulite grade 2 according to the Nurnberger-Muller scale were included. Anthropometric and biochemical parameters were measured. Skin structure was analyzed by ultrasonography. All subjects consumed 100?mL of OCJ per day, during 90 days. Measurements of investigated parameters were performed at 0, 45, and 90 days of the study. A marked reduction in the subcutaneous tissue thickness was observed in all subjects, with the average reduction of 1.9?mm. The length of subcutaneous tissue fascicles (ScTFL) was reduced in 97% (28 out of 29) of subjects, with the average value of 1.18?mm. After 45 days of chokeberry juice consumption, reduction of edema was observed in 55.2% of the subjects with edema at the baseline, while at the endpoint of the study, edemas were not observed in any of the subjects involved in the study. OCJ could have beneficial effects on the cellulite condition, including the length of ScTFL, subcutaneous tissue, and dermis thickness as well as on edema reduction.

PMID: 24433076 [PubMed – in process]

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24433076

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