An apple a day really could keep the doctor away – as long as you don’t throw away the peel.
The chemical behind the apple skin’s waxy shine has been credited with a host of health benefits from building muscle to keeping the lid on weight.
Ursolic acid also keeps cholesterol and blood sugar under control, meaning an apple a day could do wonders for all-round health.
Researcher Christopher Adams said: ‘Ursolic acid is an interesting natural compound. It’s part of a normal diet as a component of apple peels.
‘They always say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away…’
Dr Adams, a US expert in how hormones affect the body, set out to find a drug that stops muscles from wasting, keeping pensioners strong as they age and cutting their risk of painful falls and hard-to-heal fractures.
He said: ‘Muscle wasting is a frequent companion of illness and ageing.
‘It prolongs hospitalisation, delays recoveries and in some cases events people from going back home.
‘It isn’t well understood and there’s no medicine for it.’
In order to remedy the situation, Dr Adams, of the University of Iowa, studied the genetic changes that occur when muscles waste or atrophy.
Apples
He checked a pool of 1,300 chemicals for one that would counter the changes – and hit on ursolic acid.
The researcher then supplemented some mice’s normal diet with small amounts of the compound and subjected them to a battery of health tests.
The creature’s muscles got bigger and their grip became stronger.
And the benefits didn’t end there. The mice fed the apple peel chemical had lower levels of cholesterol and other blood fats blamed for clogging up the arteries and damaging the heart – and had around a third less body fat.
It is thought that ursolic acid enhances the effects of insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1, two hormones key to muscle growth.
Ursolic acid is particularly concentrated in apple peel but is also found in cranberries and prunes and in basil, oregano and thyme.
Dr Adams said: ‘We know that if you eat a balanced diet like mom told us to eat you get this material. People who eat junk food don’t get this.’
He added that this goal is to figure out if apple peel is as good for people as it is for mice – and work out how many apples people might need to help to make their muscles bulge and their waistlines shrink.
If large amounts of ursolic acid are required, it is likely that people will have to take it in concentrated form, either as a supplement or a drug.
Reporting his findings in the journal Cell Metabolism, Dr Adams said: ‘Given the current lack of therapies for muscle atrophy, we speculate that ursolic acid might be investigated as a potential therapy for illness-related and age-related muscle atrophy.’
Obesity and diabetes might also be in its grasp, he added.
Other recent research has credited apple a day with keeping the undertaker away – at least in flies.
Fruit flies given an apple extract live 10 per cent longer and found it easier to walk, climb and move about as they aged.
The apple extract also cut levels of various biochemicals found in older fruit flies and linked to age-related deterioration and approaching death.
And researchers who quizzed thousands of women about their diets found that those who regularly ate apples were around 20 per cent less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.
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Researchers have discovered that ursolic acid – a substance found in the peel – has natural body building qualities and could help people keep a toned, slender body.
It could even help with diabetes.
In experiments they discovered that it boosts muscle growth by up to 15 per cent and reduces body fat by more than a half.
It also has health giving properties – reducing blood sugar levels, cholesterol and harmful fatty acids, according to the new study.
Dr Christopher Adams, the study leader at the University of Iowa, said the substance could be especially useful in the elderly who naturally lose body muscle, known as atrophy.
“The old saying goes that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’,” he said.
“Muscle atrophy causes big problems. It’s also very common – it affects most people at some point in their lives, during illness or ageing. But, there’s no medicine for it.
“We studied muscle gene activity in people with atrophy and used that information to find chemicals that might block atrophy.
“One of those chemicals was especially interesting. It’s called ursolic acid and it’s particularly concentrated in apple peels.”
The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, showed that ursolic acid reduced muscle wasting in mice.
They believe the substance works by reprogramming genes that cause muscle wasting and fat build up.
“Interestingly, although ursolic acid increased muscle weight in mice, it did not increase total body weight, and further investigation showed that mice fed ursolic acid had less body fat than mice that were not fed the compound,” he said.
Now they plan to try it on humans to see if it has the same effect.