Cranberry, A Healthy Addition to Your Plate!

It's that time of year! Cranberries are in season! There's a good chance you'll sit down to some cranberry dishes or drinks during the holidays. Maybe this episode can be fodder for conversation? ("Yes, Uncle Frank, those pics are... something. That chicken nugget really does look like Elvis. A-hem, how about this cranberry sauce? Did you know... ") 

In this holiday minisode, Tina & Leah chat about the history, the culinary, and the medicinal uses of cranberries. So, what are you waiting for? Hit that play button! And remember to give us a 5-star review.  :)   (We appreciate it!)

26 ways to use a bag of cranberries (warning: not all of them are naturopath-approved)
The Cranberry Blitzen Mocktail Recipe (by Leah!)
The Festive Cranberry Shrub Leah mentions in the episode
Orange-cranberry, gluten-free biscotti recipe (by our former guest, Amy Rothenberg, ND)

More technical info on cranberries and their effects:
Sloan-Kettering review of cranberries as medicine
Review of phytochemicals in cranberries (proanthocyanidins and such)
Cranberries for Urinary Tract Infections(UTIs)- the latest Cochran Review (2023)
The mechanism  of UTI prevention

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro to the Cranberry Minisode
• 1:25 Cranberry shrub- not the plant, the drink!
• 2:57 Big words in the kitchen
• 3:20 Getting to know cranberry, some facts
• 6:00 Red pigment = the good stuff
• 6:49 Cranberries and urinary tract infections (UTIs)
• 9:19 Anti-cancer effects - in cancer cells
• 9:35 Other conditions cranberries are known to help
• 10:18 Cranberries may prevent biofilms
• 11:56 Cautions with cranberries (according to the medical literature)
• 14:17 The bacteria involved in cancer = oncobiome
• 15:33 Our favorite ways to eat (or not eat) cranberries
• 18:47 Wrap up - follow us!

Transcript

Intro to the Cranberry Minisode

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey Tina, hi Lea. This is the first of our three holiday mini soaps.

Speaker 2 0:05

Yeah, so you and I decided to do mini soaps because one a lot of people just don't listen very long during the holidays, as the statistics show. So we're going to take it easy and shorten the length of these episodes. And, yeah, have a little fun with them.

Speaker 1 0:19

And number two we don't want to work over the holidays.

Speaker 2 0:24

There is that.

Speaker 1 0:25

Yes.

Speaker 2 0:26

Short and sweet, that's right. Or, in this case, sour Tart, tart Tart. Are tart and sour synonymous?

Speaker 1 0:35

I don't know, I don't think so. I don't know, I don't think so. Sweet tarts, sweet and sour. I think it's different, but maybe not.

Speaker 2 0:46

We could look it up, we could look it up, or we could just ask a listener to expand on this topic. Somebody out there knows this more than we do clearly.

Speaker 1 0:54

Someone explained to us but have you eaten a raw cranberry before?

Speaker 2 0:58

Like not straight out of a bog, no Well, like straight out of a bag like a raw.

Speaker 1 1:03

Yes, I've never seen a cranberry bog Me either, but I've eaten them out of the bag like out of curiosity and they're. Yeah, I like something tart, but my memory of it was it was really not pleasant.

Cranberry shrub- not the plant, the drink!

Speaker 2 1:15

No, I don't think they're meant to be juiced per se, although I came across some information about bartenders creating the simple syrup with cranberry, because then it's sweet and sour at the same time.

Speaker 1 1:26

Oh, I make a shrub. Oh, maybe I'll post that. So, if you haven't figured it out, we're talking about cranberries for our first Minnesota. But yeah, I make a cranberry shrub and use that to make cocktails or mocktails.

Speaker 2 1:41

Now, you've talked about shrubs before, but for the uninitiated, what's a shrub?

Speaker 1 1:45

It's basically like a maceration, so like which is when, oh, stop it, stop it. You add sugar and it kind of breaks it down, like you know, like if you have like strawberries and you put sugar on it and then you'll leave it alone, it kind of starts to break down and get more like pie filling consistency. So that's, it's a maceration.

Speaker 2 2:05

Okay, and a maceration is basically when something just macerates. All right, let's get going. I'm Dr Tina Kaser and, as Lea likes to say, I'm the sciencey one and I'm Dr. Lea Sherman and I'm the cancer insider and we're two naturopathic doctors who practice integrative cancer care, but we're not your doctors. This is for education, entertainment and informational purposes only.

Speaker 1 2:30

Do not apply any of this information without first speaking to your doctor.

Speaker 2 2:35

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own.

Speaker 1 2:41

Welcome to the Cancer Pod.

Speaker 2 2:59

Okay, so Cranberry, it's you know. You realize that I'm supposed to be the one that that uses big words that you have to help out with. It's not your. Your like shrub basserration.

Speaker 1 3:10

Well, it's a cooking word, Okay, so I use big cooking words.

Speaker 2 3:14

It's also a medical term, but that's a whole nother story.

Getting to know cranberry, some facts

Speaker 1 3:16

I don't know about that. Okay, I don't want to know about that. I'm coughing. Hold on, I need a sip, all right, so I'm going to try to say the Latin name for cranberry, because I know people are just chomping at the bit, wanting to know what it is. It's vaccinium macrocarpone. Well, done. I don't know if I said that, I don't know if I said that right, but yeah, so that's the Latin name and it's a member of the Heather family.

Speaker 2 3:40

Like fields of Heather.

Speaker 1 3:42

Yeah, anyways, that's all I know about Heather. And yeah, it is grown in a lot of different climates and yeah, it grows in bogs.

Speaker 2 3:51

Yeah, I know that you looked up the history a little bit and I didn't look that up because I knew you were going to, so I thought I'll be a better audience for your story.

Speaker 1 3:58

For the history part. Yeah, so cranberry is pollinated by both bumble and honey bees and it's been used for over 12,000 years. Historically it was used in Pemekin by Native cultures. Pemekin is, I think of it as like a meat energy bar. It's just this caloric, dense meat Energy bar. It's like dried meat and dried fruit, right, dried meat, dried fruit and Tallow, mm-hmm. So I think of like the, like those modern-day epic bars which you probably aren't familiar with because you don't consume meat.

Speaker 2 4:33

So yeah, so pemmican is the original energy bar, mm-hmm back in the day.

Speaker 1 4:38

Yeah, because it was dried and so you could like carry it with you. And yes, so that's what cranberries not always, sometimes they would put through put the berries in if they have them. So that's what it's used in. It's also used as a dye, mm-hmm, cuz it's got that red color, and One cup of cranberries has the equivalent of 23 point five milligrams of vitamin C.

Speaker 2 5:02

Oh, okay, yeah okay, so you'd have to eat two, three cups. Just get your daily value met, depending if you're a man, a woman, a child, whatever yeah, but hopefully you're eating other things too, because that seems like a lot of cranberries.

Speaker 2 5:16

Well, that's interesting because NPR had a little blurb on their podcast about cranberries and they mentioned that when the first settlers came over in the 1600s they knew that they could cure a scurvy with cranberries and they thought that the sour taste opposed all that saltiness of the trip. That's what they said on the piece. So they did it because it worked, even though the justification for doing it was a little misguided.

Speaker 1 5:48

Right, we talked about that in the vitamin C episode, but I didn't realize they did that with the cranberries too. That's really interesting.

Red pigment = the good stuff

Speaker 2 5:54

I didn't either, until I was getting ready for this and I came across a little Eight minute mini pot of their own nice.

Speaker 1 6:01

So it's those pro anthocyanin. Didn't that Offer a lot of that antioxidant benefit that one can also get from eating any berries, really?

Speaker 2 6:12

Yeah, and the anthocyanins are the parts of the plant that often have the color. So this is the reds. There's various anthocyanins in cranberry and you know I always tell people if you want to do something that has a lot of health benefit, follow the color right and the more likely this plant is to stain a white t-shirt. That's kind of my, my number one way of saying is tablecloth or tablecloth or whatever's. You know a white napkin, anything. If it's going to stain it With natural pigment, it's probably very good for you.

Cranberries and urinary tract infections (UTIs)

Speaker 1 6:45

Whatever the plant, bad for the laundry not good for the laundry. So what do we use cranberry for typically?

Speaker 2 6:52

I think it's biggest claim to fame is prevention of bladder infections, yeah, and to treat them to to a certain extent early on in the bladder infection, but certainly not later in a bladder infection. But from a naturopathic perspective we turn to cranberry, to at the first signs of a bladder infection, kind of thwart the infection from Getting worse and and you can, you can actually cure it if it's early on. If it's too late and it's a full-bletched bladder infection with pain and such in the bladder, then it's too late. You got to do something stronger.

Speaker 1 7:25

So what most people will say? Oh, drink cranberry juice because it Acidifies the urine. And it does acidify the urine, but that's not the mechanism. And it was so cool I remember learning this in school because I used to think that too back in the day like, oh, it acidifies your urine, that's why you drink cranberry juice. But it's not.

Speaker 2 7:44

No, no, it actually the number one cause of bladder infections is Infection by E Coli. Like 80% of urinary tract infections are due to E Coli. And what cranberry does, is it? I call it a slippery slide. It creates a slippery slide of your urethra, so the little buggers can't adhere.

Speaker 1 8:06

Pillai, the Pillai. I just think it's like so cute, even though it's not. The Pillai can't adhere.

Speaker 2 8:13

Yeah, so basically the bacteria gets washed away in your urine and you pee it out because it needs to adhere to the lining of your urethra, which is the exit between your bladder and the world, and the lining of your bladder itself as well. So cranberry has a components that prevent the adhesion of bacteria, especially E Coli. Now, that's the vast majority, but if your infection is due to another organism, it may or may not work. It works really well for E Coli, pretty well for staff, and there are some organisms that cause bladder infections that it will not work for.

Speaker 1 8:46

So just keep that in mind and that Property is also in other berries. I know blueberries have it too.

Speaker 2 8:52

I think it's, is it the concentration is higher in the cranberries, I believe? The anti adhesion. As far as acidifying the urine, a lot of things acidify the urine, so I mean it's in keeping with knowing one urine is slightly acid generally and a lot of things acidify the urine, including some irritants like coffee can acidify the urine.

Anti-cancer effects - in cancer cells

Other conditions cranberries are known to help

Speaker 1 9:14

Yeah, so that's why it's not really, that's not the medical property. There were some studies showing that in cancer cells of prostate liver, lung, some other cancers as well, a bunch of different cancers that there is an anti-cancer effect of cranberry. But again, that's in vitro, that's in cancer cells, that's not in a human. It also has that effect with stomach ulcers in terms of reducing H pylori, which is implicated in gastric cancer.

Speaker 2 9:47

Yeah, the same effect, meaning it stops the adhesion of the H pylori.

Speaker 1 9:51

It stops the adhesion. Yeah, I'm kind of going back and forth sorry, oh, sorry. And then I saw some stuff on the internet about how cranberry can be helpful with gum disease. I'm thinking it might also be due to those anti-adhesion properties, gum disease cavities, things that are caused by mouth bacteria, and then I guess it's also helpful for reducing atherosclerosis.

Cranberries may prevent biofilms

Speaker 2 10:16

Yeah, and I wonder if all of these are similar in that it prevents biofilm formation.

Speaker 1 10:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2 10:26

Right, and so, whether it's atherosclerosis or it's dental disease, or it's a UTI or it's an infection in the stomach, basically what happens is bacteria create a little colony and then they protect themselves from your immune system, and they do this by creating a biofilm. And so we know that some of the anthocyanins and other polyphenols are biofilm disruptors, and there's a very good chance, given how many commonalities there are between the conditions that cranberry treats, there's a really good chance that it's a biofilm buster. Some components in there are particularly good at that. So biofilms are not a good thing. We don't want them to happen in our bodies. We really want to make sure that the bad bacteria don't get to create a wall around themselves. So that's probably one of the ways that all of these colors and phytochemicals in the plants are giving us some immune benefit and the grand scheme just on a general basis.

Speaker 1 11:23

And cranberry juice can tend to be super high in sugar because of the fact that it is really tart. But now that I think of it even though I've had raw cranberries and they're pretty gross the unsweetened cranberry juice I don't think is horrible and you can mix it with unsweetened soda water like a lime soda water.

Cautions with cranberries (according to the medical literature)

Speaker 2 11:40

Make yourself a little spritzer and if dental issues are not your issue, you can also put it in a shot glass and do it the old fashioned way that medicines were taken, which is you just shoot them back. You don't have to taste them much. Well, there you go.

Speaker 1 11:56

There are cautions for cranberry. The first one I thought was interesting there was a case of somebody who experienced nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after drinking three cups a day of cranberry juice. But that was a case study. There also was a case study that it lowered the drug tacrolimus, which is an immunosuppressant.

Speaker 2 12:17

A necessary immune suppressant that people take when they have an organ transplant.

Speaker 1 12:21

Yeah, super important medication, but when I looked in up to date and Medscape, there was no mention of that as being an interaction, so check with your doctor. Cranberry juice has oxalates, and so it can contribute to kidney stones, which is not a good thing, but it's kidney stones.

Speaker 2 12:38

I'm just going to interject here Kidney stones. The most common cause or variety of kidney stone is calcium oxalate, and so the oxalate, if that is higher, as you excrete it, and if you're taking calcium or you're excreting a lot of calcium at the same time and you're prone to these stones, they may precipitate out in the urine in the kidney. And that's how a kidney stone forms. It's basically too much of the two components, calcium and oxalate, and they bind to each other and then they saturate in the kidney and then boom, they fall out, they precipitate out.

Speaker 1 13:12

And they cause a lot of pain.

Speaker 2 13:14

And they are very painful.

Speaker 1 13:16

It's possible that it does interact with medications that are metabolized through the cytochrome P450 and the UGT drug pathways. And then the last one is I mean, it's kind of the given as to drug interactions. Can I guess, Please guess?

Speaker 2 13:37

Warfarin.

Speaker 1 13:38

Yeah, yeah, warfarin, or it's known as cumatin. Yeah, so that is. It's kind of a given, and fortunately not a lot of people are being prescribed that, because there are other medications that can thin blood.

The bacteria involved in cancer = oncobiome

Speaker 2 13:53

Yeah, and so, like so many berries, cranberry has, like we mentioned, the polyphenols or anthocyanins. It also has quercetin, which sometimes people take in a supplement, but quercetin is in there and alligic acid, and alligic acid is something that, within cancer care, we look at as possibly having some anti-cancer effects. So you know, when I mentioned the biofemma, in the back of my mind I'm also thinking about cancer, because there is something called an oncobiome. So there are certain bacteria and, more specifically, colonies of bacteria, so not just one, there's not like one bacteria, but there's several populations together that form some colonies that are different in the cancer than nearby normal tissue, and so there's an association between these oncobacteria and cancer and we can only say it's associated. We can't say it's causative because we can't, we don't know.

Speaker 2 14:54

It's kind of a chicken and an egg thing right now. So someday we'll know better, but I would not be surprised to know that there's certain colonies that form that then lead to cancer, whether it's in the breast or the kidney or the ovary or the pancreas, wherever we're talking. So this whole disruption of biofilms is, I think, integral to general wellness and prevention of all diseases. Cardiovascular cancer, you name it even dementias. So some dementias are thought to be caused by different organisms, so score one for cranberries.

Our favorite ways to eat (or not eat) cranberries

Speaker 1 15:26

Absolutely so, yeah, so help yourself to another serving of cranberry sauce this holiday season. What's your favorite way to eat cranberries?

Speaker 2 15:37

What did you call it? Emaseration?

Speaker 1 15:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:40

I think that would be my favorite, like just this cranberries reduced, slightly boiled on the stovetop. I'm not a huge fan of the taste of cranberries myself. I really am not. If I had to do it medicinally, I probably would pop a pill because I'm not too keen on the taste.

Speaker 1 15:55

The juice is actually more effective than the pills, according to the studies that I reviewed. But yes, there are capsules and tablets that are available. I like because I like tart, not enough to eat them raw. But I make a cranberry sauce that is it's got sugar and cinnamon, Because I'm allergic to orange. I use like a little shot of whiskey, like well, bourbon, Then I cook it, Then you have the flavor of the bourbon, but then the alcohol kind of mostly cooks out. Yeah, so that's how I do my cranberry sauce.

Speaker 2 16:31

Yeah, I have to say it's funny that we're doing this and talking about its general purpose across so many disease states, because I don't really think of it, except for bladder infections, like from a clinical standpoint. It doesn't occur to me, when someone says they have cardiovascular risk, to think of cranberries. Maybe I should.

Speaker 1 16:47

Yeah, I think of it for cardiovascular just because it's red, right, and a lot of things that are red are really supportive. I know that's kind of cheesy in old school, but I stick by that rule that a lot of foods that are red, naturally red, are heart supportive, whether it's your actual heart or your energetic heart. Look at me getting all woo in the holiday season. Even the green, I guess, is your heart chakra right.

Speaker 2 17:15

Anywho, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question.

Speaker 1 17:19

We might cut that out. So yes, I can put a recipe for the shrub in the notes.

Speaker 2 17:26

Yep, we can link to the NPR little piece that has apparently some recipe that happens every year. I don't know, I'll link to it. It's pretty entertaining.

Speaker 1 17:36

So my mom used to do that cranberry mold that also had jello and it turned out to be like pink and it was in the kind of like the brass ring mold thing. Yeah, that's what we used to have for our holiday meal, but I like making my own recipe. I don't do the stuff out of the can, that's what I grew up with.

Speaker 2 17:55

I'd put the stuff out of the can and then you slice it and you use the can to make a straight line each time. I didn't like that stuff and maybe that's what set me off on deciding in the back of my brain that I don't really I'm not keen on cranberries, but a lot of other people liked it and I will say it still stains a white napkin or a shirt, so it must have some it's medicine, it must have some value.

Speaker 1 18:16

It's medicine, tina Right, think of all that medicine that you didn't have.

Speaker 2 18:20

over the years I was a picky eater.

Speaker 1 18:22

Yeah, I didn't eat the canned stuff either. It wasn't until I had the homemade stuff that I was like, oh, this is pretty good, so anything else, anything else you want to add? Hmm.

Wrap up - follow us!

Speaker 2 18:31

I don't think so. I have some other links I'll put in our notes on more technical stuff, on bladder infections and that whole adhesion story and components in the cranberry. So if you're interested, click on those. And other than that I can't think of anything cranberry related.

Speaker 1 18:47

So as usual, leave us a rating, write a review, hit that subscriber follow button.

Speaker 2 18:53

Yeah, and we're on all the social and that all but all the major social media outlets that you might be on Instagram and Facebook and threads. See, I was getting there, I was getting there. We just did our LinkedIn thing. So we're being all professional now with the grownups on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 19:10

Now we're grownups and you could always buy us a coffee. I know it is the holiday season, somebody's tight, but you know that's out there. And then be sure, be sure, be sure, be sure to stick around, because in a couple weeks we're going to be dropping another Minnesota and after that another one. It's our, it's our holiday gift to you.

Speaker 2 19:35

That's right. Topics all have to do with the holidays too.

Speaker 1 19:38

So on that note, I'm Dr Leah Sherman and I'm Dr Tina Kaser. And this is the cancer pod until next time. Thanks for listening to the cancer pod. Remember to subscribe, review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and, as always, this is not medical advice. These are our opinions. Talk to your doctor before changing anything related to your treatment plan. The cancer pod is hosted by me, dr Leah Sherman, and by Dr Tina Kaser. Music is by Kevin McLeod. See you next time.