According to a study conducted by Boston University in the United States, eating cherries or drinking their juice after a two-day break reduces the risk of joint pain by 35%.
According to an estimate, millions of people in the United States suffer from joint pain. Uric acid crystals form in the joints, which causes severe pain and swelling. It is treated in various ways, but once it is over, the pain reappears. Therefore, medical experts and people suffering from this disease are looking for alternative treatments.
Cherries are considered to have uric acid and swelling-reducing properties. For this study, experts selected 633 people suffering from joint pain and monitored their routines for a year. They answered questions about the onset of joint pain, symptoms and treatment and also told whether they used cherries or their juice and for how long.
Experts once described cherry consumption as equivalent to eating 10 to 12 cherries or drinking half a cup of cherry juice. Analyzing the patients’ responses, they found that 35 percent of the patients who consumed cherries ate fresh cherries, 2 percent drank their juice, and 5 percent consumed both (cherries and cherry drink).
In addition, they also recorded 1,247 cases of joint pain over a period of one year, of which 192 patients had pain in the big toe joint.
They compared cherry consumption with the incidence of joint pain, and according to the results, patients who ate cherries for two days had a 35 percent lower risk of developing an attack of joint pain than those who did not eat cherries. Experts say that the risk of joint pain is reduced by high consumption of cherries (consumption three times in two days), but there is no additional benefit from consuming cherries in larger quantities. Although these figures are quite encouraging, experts say that patients suffering from joint pain should continue their usual treatment along with its use and not abandon it.
According to experts, the use of cherries along with regular medications increases the effectiveness of the drugs because the antioxidant compounds present in it can be a natural means of inhibiting enzymes that are inhibited by other anti-inflammatory drugs.
