Berry-Vegetable Nectar May Help to Diminish Hospital Visits and Service Reliefs in Conscripts during the High Risk Period of Upper Respiratory Tract Infections.
Berries are rich in antioxidants such as vitamin C and phytophenols. Experiments have shown that phytophenols may possess antioxidant, anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antiviral activities. Phytophenols can counteract upper respiratory tract infections by the destruction of microbes, and preventing their adhesion to mucous membranes. Furthermore, phytophenols may be beneficial for health by promoting the innate immunity. Moreover, vegetarians have lowered incidence of inflammatory processes.
URTI-risk is highest during cold seasons and especially during winter months. The URTI-risk also increases when peoples are gathering or interact with each other. This occurs when new conscripts start their military service. Moreover, exhaustive exercise may increase the URTI-risk, and during open window phase of weaker resistance, viruses and bacteria may be more infective, thus increasing infection risk.10 Thus, the physical demands of the military service may increase URTI-risk. Among Finnish conscripts URTI is most important reason for service reliefs and hospital visits during military service.
Our earlier infection frequency crossover study among small group of young cross-country skiers showed that phytophenol rich berry-vegetable nectar had a health promoting potential: total URTI-days diminished during intervention as compared to control period. Previously we have also observed that quercetin content of samples correlated strongly with the inhibition of the bacterial cultures while using agar diffusion assay. We hypothesized that phytophenols may help to decrease morbidity and/or alleviate the symptoms in a large number of peoples during URTI epidemics.
Adv Food Technol Nutr Sci Open J. 2015; 1(3): 67-72. doi:10.17140/AFTNSOJ-1-111
