Want to Thin Your Blood? Eat More Apples!

. . . rutin in apples is a better blood-thinner than any medication We have always maintained that food is our best medicine. There’s one catch, however: it has to be real food, not the phony “food-like substances” that pass for food in today’s supermarkets. A couple of weeks ago, we reported that an Ohio State University study found eating an apple a day reduced LDL oxidation by 40% in just four weeks. Now here’s another benefit from eating apples: they’re high in rutin. What’s rutin? It’s a polyphenol, a close cousin of quercetin (like the quercetin in Cell Repair Formula), with some of quercetin’s properties. Like quercetin, rutin is an antioxidant with anti-inflammatory and anti-allergy ability, and it increases intracellular levels of vitamin C. And now a new study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation has found that rutin works better than any of the anti-clotting drugs (like Coumadin) at blood thinning. Unlike any known medication, it prevents clots in both arteries AND veins. At this point investigators don’t know how much rutin one should take as a blood-thinning therapy, but you can’t lose by including apples in your diet. Just make sure to get real apples. That means avoiding supermarket apples; the average supermarket apple is about ten months old, and much of the nutrition is gone. Get your apples unwaxed and as fresh as possible. Apples in the northern hemisphere are best from late summer until early winter. Antioxidant polyphenols in apples are formed in response to pests as a natural pesticide, so organic apples will have far more of these valuable compounds. Plus you won’t be getting the synthetic pesticides. In addition to apples, rutin can be found in considerable amounts in buckwheat, onions, citrus and tea.

Ohio State University Research and Innovation Communications. Study:  An apple a day lowers level of blood chemical linked to hardening of the arteries.  October 2, 2012.  Accessed online February 10, 2013 at https://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/appleaday.htm.

Jasuja R. Portein disulfide isomerase inhibitors constitute a new class of antithrombotic agents. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. June 2012; 122(6):2014-2113.