Grape juice is a delicious and inexpensive alternative to orange or apple juice to have with your morning cereal. However, what you might not realize is that by drinking red or purple grape juice, you’re possibly ingesting one of the most heart-healthy beverages on the planet. Grape juice has tons of positive benefits for your body including benefiting your heart health, blood pressure and even slowing down your body’s aging process. Here you will find four main health benefits of grape juice:

Heart Health

Red wine has long been praised for its heart benefits, including its ability to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, reduce the incidence of blood clots, lower blood pressure and prevent damage to the blood vessels in the heart. While these are all great things, many people don’t like red wine or try to stay away from alcohol. Thankfully, studies have shown that grape juice, particularly juice from red or purple grapes, has most of the same heart benefits that red wine does.

In a study published in 2007, a group of 12 men and women with coronary heart disease were asked to drink 21 oz. of Concord grape juice every day for 14 days. Other changes to their diet weren’t necessary. After 14 days, all 12 participants showed better dilating blood vessels and lowered LDL levels. These results have been replicated many times over, and improved heart health can be seen by drinking just one glass of grape juice a day.

Lower Blood Pressure

In 2004, Korean scientist studied the effects of grape juice on blood pressure. A group of men with high blood pressure were asked to drink one and a half cups of grape juice daily for 8 weeks. After this time, all men showed a dramatic improvement in systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

Brain Power

Grape juice doesn’t just keep your heart healthy, it can actually improve the performance of your brain. The flavonoids, a type of antioxidant, in the grape are responsible for this. Antioxidants are almost like the vacuum cleaners of the body, working to clean up all the free-radicals that cells produce when they burn oxygen for energy. Scientists theorize that these flavonoids help keep the blood vessels in the brain clear of blockages and increase nitric oxide, which keeps the vessels clear as well and increases blood flow to the brain. The extra blood helps the brain function better, and studies in lab rats shows this might help with concentration, memory and other brain functions.

Health Benefits of Grape Juice And Anti-Aging

Grape juice contains another powerful antioxidant called polyphenol. Polyphenol is best known as an anti-aging component. In elderly rats, drinking grape juice has been proven to slow down a lot of the motor skill and memory issues that affect both rats and humans during the aging process. In humans, polyphenol has been shown to slow down Alzheimer’s disease progression, reduce the incidence of colon cancer and other cancers common in older people and improve reflexes and memory. These anti-aging health benefits of grape juice can be received by drinking as little as two glasses of grape juice a day. So if you’ve been drinking grape juice regularly since childhood, you might have already done more than enough to improve the quality of your older years.