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For more than 2500 years, wolfberries (Lycium barbarum, or more popularly known as Goji berries) have been used as a natural remedy in many Asian countries, especially for “nourishing the kidney and the liver”. In recent years, beverages containing Goji fruit extracts or juice gained tremendous popularity throughout the world. Although Goji soft drinks were shown to have high antioxidant activity in test tube systems and even animal models, little is about their actual effect on the human antioxidant defense system.
When ingested by healthy elderly test subjects (120 ml per day) for 30 days, a standardized Goji fruit juice (GoChi, provided by FreeLife International, USA) has been found to boost the antioxidant defense but at the same time also lowered the oxidative stress-induced damage of lipids, i.e. fat molecules which are vital for the proper functioning of the human body. However, other blood parameters such as cholesterol or glucose levels appeared to be unaffected by the Goji fruit juice consumption.
Taken together, this placebo-controlled study by Amagase and colleagues indicates that Goji fruit juice “increased antioxidant efficacies in humans by stimulating endogenous factors and suggest that continued use beyond 30 days might help prevent or reduce free radical-related conditions.”.
For more details, you may want to check out the article published recently in the journal Nutrition Research (doi:10.1016/j.nutres.2008.11.005).
Photo: Wolfberries, Wikipedia
