Top Seven Quercetin Benefits That’ll Transform Your Health
NUTRITION
SUPPLEMENTS
Edward F. Group III
DC, NP
Do you feel like your immune and respiratory systems need some extra love? Well, look no further than the flavonoid quercetin. Quercetin is a naturally occurring antioxidant commonly found in fruits and vegetables, including dark berries, grapes, and dark leafy greens. Green tea and red wine also have notable amounts of quercetin.
This potent antioxidant boosts your immune system, supports respiratory health, and can help with your body’s natural response to allergens, histamines, and inflammation. Let’s dive into the top seven quercetin benefits that you need to know.
Benefits of Quercetin
1.Immune Health
Quercetin is critical for immune function because it acts as a zinc ionophore. Quercetin opens the Zinc channels on the surface of the cells, which allows zinc into the cells. The zinc is what stops viral replication but it can’t do its job without Quercetin opening the doors to let it in!. Also, as an anti-inflammatory, part of its role in immune health is to calm an over response to an infection, particularly in the lungs where it can affect breathing. Querecetin helps to lower cytokines which are triggered by infections.
2.Supports Normal Respiratory Health
When your respiratory system is irritated, redness and swelling can result from the release of histamines. Quercetin may be your newest go-to supplement because it has been shown to have an antihistamine effect. Quercetin influences intracellular enzymes and may help inhibit histamine release (Chirumbolo, 2010). This can often provide relief for watery eyes, runny nose, and swelling in the face. Quercetin may even help with photosensitivity, or extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun and other light sources (Weng, 2012).
3. Boosts Heart Health
Keeping your heart healthy starts with eating nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables containing high levels of flavonoids. Flavonoid compounds are found naturally in many fruits and vegetables and are high in antioxidants. It has been shown that the benefits of consuming flavonoids, especially quercetin, are two-fold in promoting overall cardiovascular health. First, it encourages blood flow (Perez-Vizcaino & Duarte, 2010). Secondly, quercetin’s antioxidant action protects against LDL cholesterol oxidation. This may be beneficial because oxidation causes LDL cholesterol to stick to artery walls (Egert, 2009).
4. Promotes Balanced Blood Pressure
Did you know nearly half of American adults have high blood pressure? Blood pressure can be a complex mix of mechanisms inside your body, working together hannoniously. In addition to supporting cardiovascular health, quercetin naturally promotes balanced blood pressure, which is vital to your overall health. Quercetin supplementation has been researched and shown to stabilize systolic, diastolic, and average arterial pressure (Edwards, 2007).
5. Offers Protection Against Stress
When your body is stressed, it produces cortisol, a.k.a. the stress honnone. Cortisol is a honnone that creates a “fightor-flight” response. Many situations can elevate cortisol levels, including lack of sleep and busy lifestyles. Although that is nonnal, when your stress levels are high and ongoing, cortisol can damage muscle tissue, leading to protein breakdown in the body. Quercetin can fight these effects during extended periods of stress because it suppresses the enzyme necessary for cortisol release (Cheng & Li. 2012).
6. May Benefit Upper-Respiratory Conditions
While more research is needed, there are promising results that quercetin may offer a bronchial dilating effect. Quercetin has been shown to inhibit an enzyme that breaks down signaling proteins, which produce swelling and airway narrowing. Quercetin causes a relaxation of the airway’s smooth muscle, suggesting it may offer therapeutic solutions for people suffering from upper-respiratory conditions (Townsend & Emala, 2013).
7. Offers Nutritional Support for Overall Health
Listen, putting good nutrition into your body is one of the best measures you can take to encourage good health. It’s not a guarantee, and some people will still get sick, but it’s a good foundation and fundamental path. Why should quercetin be part of your approach? Because research has shown that people who consume more fruits and vegetables have a lower risk of some diseases. Since quercetin is the most abundant dietary flavonoid, it’s a great option to include in your diet (Long, 2013) (Wang et al, 2013) (Kim et a/., 2013) (Del Follo-Martinez etal., 2013) (Hu, 2013).
Supplementing with Quercetin
Finding the right quercetin supplement can be tricky. Many companies use synthetic ingredients that aren’t absorbable and can’t offer the same level of protection your body needs. If you’re looking for a quercetin supplement, I suggest our latest Plant-Based Quercetin. It’s an enhanced formula that contains phytosome technology crafted using sunflower lecithin that delivers active quercetin into cells to support the body’s natural response to allergens and inflammation. You’ll get the most out of each capsule because our advanced technology increases your body’s ability to absorb active quercetin up to 20 times higher than standard quercetin.
Dr. Edward Group, ND, DC, Texas Chiropractic College graduate, renowned natural health expert, bestselling author, speaker and public figure, aims to educate the entire planet on the root cause of disease. As the founder and CEO of Global Healing, still family owned for 25 years. Learn more about his 'work at globalhealing.com and globalhealinginstitute.org
References
1. Chirumbolo S. (2010). The role of quercetin, flavonols and llavones in modulating inflammatory cell function. Inflammation & Allergy Drug Targets, 9(4), 263-285. https://doi.org/10.2174/187152810793358741
2. Weng, Z., Zhang, B., Asadi, S., Sismanopoulos, N., Butcher, A., Fu, X., Katsarou-Katsari, A., Antoniou, C., & Theoharides, T. C. (2012). Quercetin is more effective than cromolyn in blocking human mast cell cytokine release and inhibits contact dermatitis and photosensitivity in humans. PloS One, 7(3), e33805. https://doi.org/10.1371/ioumal.pone.0033805
3. Perez-Vizcaino, F., & Duarte, J. (2010). Flavonols and cardiovascular disease. Molecular Aspects of Medicine, 31(6), 478-494. https://doi.Org/10.1016/i.mam.2010.09.002
4. Egert, S., Bosy-Westphal, A., Seiberl, J., Kiirbitz, C., Settler, U., Plachta-Danielzik, S., Wagner, A. E., Frank, J., Schrezenmeir, J., Rimbach, G., Wolffram, S., & Muller, M. J. (2009). Quercetin reduces systolic blood pressure and plasma oxidised low-density lipoprotein concentrations in overweight subjects with a high-cardiovascular disease risk phenotype: a double-blinded, placebo-controlled cross-over study. The British Journal of Nutrition, 102(7), 1065-1074. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114509359127
5. Edwards, R. L., Lyon, T., Litwin, S. E., Rabovsky, A., Symons, J. D., & Jalili, T. (2007). Quercetin reduces blood pressure in hypertensive subjects. The Journal of Nutrition, 137(11), 2405-2411.
https://doi.org/10.1093/in/137.ll.2405
6. Cheng, L. C., & Li, L. A. (2012). Flavonoids exhibit diverse effects on CYP11B1 expression and cortisol synthesis. Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 258(3), 343-350. https://doi.Org/10.1016/i.taap.201Lll.017
7. Townsend, E. A., & Emala, C. W., Sr (2013). Quercetin acutely relaxes airway smooth muscle and potentiates fS-agonist-induced relaxation via dual phosphodiesterase inhibition of PLC(3 and PDE4. American Journal of Physiology. Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, 305(5), L396-L403. https://doi.org/10.1152/aiplung.00125.2013
8. Long, Q., Xiel, Y., Huang, Y., Wu, Q., Zhang, H., Xiong, S., Liu, Y., Chen, L., Wei, Y., Zhao, X., & Gong, C. (2013). Induction of apoptosis and inhibition of angiogenesis by PEGylated liposomal quercetin in both cisplatin-sensitive and cisplatin-resistant ovarian cancers. Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology, 9(6), 965-975. https://doi.org/10.1166/ibn.2013.1596
9. Wang, G., Song, L., Wang, H., & Xing, N. (2013). Quercetin synergizes with 2-methoxyestradiol inhibiting cell growth and inducing apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells. Oncology Reports, 30(1), 357-363. https://doi.org/10.3892/or.2013.2469
10. Kim, H., Seo, E. M., Shanna, A. R., Ganbold, B., Park, J., Sharma, G., Kang, Y. H., Song, D. K., Lee, S. S., & Nam, J. S. (2013). Regulation of Wnt signaling activity for growth suppression induced by quercetin in 4T1 murine mammary cancer cells. International Journal of Oncology, 43(4), 1319-1325. https://doi.org/10.3892/iio.2013.2036
11. Del Follo-Martinez, A., Baneijee, N., Li, X., Safe, S., & Mertens-Talcott, S. (2013). Resveratrol and quercetin in combination have anticancer activity in colon cancer cells and repress oncogenic microRNA-27a. Nutrition and Cancer, 65(3), 494-504. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163558L2012.725194
12. Hu, Y., Wang, S., Wu, X., Zhang, J., Chen, R., Chen, M., & Wang, Y. (2013). Chinese herbal medicine-derived compounds for cancer therapy: a focus on hepatocellular carcinoma. Journal of Ethnophannacology, 149(3), 601-612. https://doi.org/10,1016/j.jep.2013,07,030
