Cranberry

The cranberry is a plant that indigenous to North America and growing wild from the area of Maine to North Carolina.  This plant is noted as a close relative of the common blueberry plant.  There are greatly some names for the cranberry.  Many American Indians call it by means of incorporating the term “bitter” and “noisy”. 

In the ancient times, cranberry is eaten mostly in pemmican, but some of the people also applied it for dye and medicine.  In fact, the Native Americans were noted to have used the cranberry as food and also for the treatment of bladder and kidney disorders.  As they introduced the cranberry to the white settlers in the year 1621, the settlers then renamed the plant to “crane berry” due to the plant’s pointy pink blossoms which look like a head of the Sandhill crane.  From then on, as the white settlers used it for their own use, the cranberry is then applied by subsequent physicians for treating bladder infections.

In the 1920s, many researchers have found out the taking cranberry in the form of juice makes the urine more acidic.  From that observation, they have speculated that cranberry really has the potential for treating bladder infection.  However, cranberry fell out of favor with the doctors after the World War II, but cranberry flourished once again and became so well-known during the 1960s, mainly as a self-treatment.

Recently, cranberry is widely applied for the same purpose, which is for bladder infections.  However, in contrast to the findings of the 1920s, many researchers now observed that the cranberry’s acidification of the urine does not really play a huge part in the treatment of bladder infections, instead the recent findings show that the cranberry juice has the ability to hinder bacteria from remaining to the bladder wall.  It was found out then that when the bacteria can’t stick to the bladder wall, they will be flushed out with the stream of urine. 

Since the cranberry juice has the potential for preventing the devotion of bacteria to the bladder, some of the preliminary studies suggest that the juice might also be beneficial for preventing the devotion of Helicobacteria pylori, which is a great ulcer-causing bacterium, to the stomach wall.  The juice is then found out to reduce the dangers of ulcers; however, there is still no exact evidence to support this potential benefit of the cranberry juice.

For further information, other preliminary investigations noted that the juice may also be beneficial for the treatment and prevention of the gum disease.  However, the sweeteners that usually added to the cranberry juice are not good for the teeth, so there are still some doubts with regards to this purpose.  Interestingly, it is also considered to be useful for decreasing the danger of heart disease as well as cancer.

With that multiple speculations and evidences for the potential of the cranberry, most of the experts suggest that the usual dosage of dry cranberry juice is exactly 300 to 400 mg twice a day.  However, the pure cranberry juice must also be applied for best results. 

Finally, there are still no known dangers of cranberry for adults, children, and pregnant or nursing women, but there are some beliefs that the juice may let the kidneys to emit certain drugs more rapidly which eventually decrease its effectiveness.