Dear Friends,
If you’re a coffee drinker, you may know that some research has linked coffee to better brain health. However, more recent studies indicate coffee berry fruit may have even more to offer.
Personally I’m a tea drinker – I love the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, but I’ve never been a fan of the taste – so I never gave much thought to the coffee fruit that yields the brew.
Most of us are familiar with the dark coffee bean, but that bean is surrounded by a beautiful, rich red fruit.
And, as we know from other brightly colored fruits and vegetables, that red fruit is packed with beneficial nutrients like polyphenols, which have strong antioxidant and health properties.
Sadly, the coffee berry fruit has been largely considered a waste product. The prized bean makes up about 20% of the the fruit. The remaining 80% is typically discarded.
About 10 years ago, an innovative company named FutureCeuticals started looking into how this “waste” could be upcycled into something useful.
Since coffee consumption is linked to better cognitive and brain health, researchers focused on the coffee berry’s impact on the brain.
They discovered something remarkable: taking just 100mg of whole coffee cherry fruit extract, can significantly stimulate the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
BDNF is a critical protein that supports memory, learning, and overall brain function. It also helps the brain recover from stress and supports emotional health.
Dr. John Ratey from Harvard Medical School has called BDNF “Miracle-Gro for the brain,” because it helps produce new brain cells and nurtures existing ones, allowing them to grow and thrive.
This coffee fruit extract is now known as NeuroFactor.
The makers of NeuroFactor published two studies that showed 100mg of the coffee fruit extract can significantly improve BDNF levels in the blood in adults aged 18 to 55. The increases in BDNF were meaningful, ranging from 91% to 143% in just 1 to 2 hours, on average.
The researchers were curious if any individual components of coffee were responsible for the BDNF increase, so they also tested freshly brewed coffee, caffeine from coffee and another component of coffee, chlorogenic acid.
Interestingly, none of these produced significant increases in BDNF.
The researchers also tested a high polyphenol grape seed extract to see how that fared, and again there was not a significant increase.
So there seems to be something about the composition of the whole coffee fruit in
NeuroFactor that makes it unique when it comes to promoting BDNF.
More recently, NeuroFactor has been the subject of two studies that investigated how it may help healthy adults aged 55 to 65 with certain aspects of cognitive function.
These were 28-day studies, and it was found that taking 100mg of NeuroFactor daily early in the day, helped improve elements of working memory – notably reaction time, which is the time it took users to perform specific cognitive tasks.
Significant improvements in reaction times were seen after 7 days of taking
NeuroFactor and continued for the duration of the 28-day study. All of this was compared to a placebo group.
In addition, to improving reaction time, the researchers noted that NeuroFactor users tended to be more accurate with less errors in competing cognitive tasks.
Both of these are indicators of working memory improvements, which can be valuable to all of us in our daily lives – whether at work, home or with family or friends.
As a result of these findings, NeuroFactor was recently named “Ingredient of the Year” in the cognitive function category by NutraIngredients, a leading industry publication.
If you’re concerned about caffeine content, Neurofactor has very little. A 100mg serving has less than 1mg of caffeine (compared to 2mg-5mg in a cup of decaf coffee).
You can experience the benefits of NeuroFactor in our TrueBerry7 Super Fruit Powder, which features 100mg of this powerful ingredient in each serving.
TrueBerry7 also contains other brain-supporting nutrients like Cognigrape from Sicily and Pomegranate P30 powder Spain – plus several other valuable super fruit extracts, which offer many other potential health benefits.
Stay safe and enjoy the weekend!
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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