Rutin is a bioflavonoid, or plant pigment, found in certain fruits and vegetables.
Apples, in particular, are very high in rutin. But I’ll talk a little more about the best food sources of rutin later in this article.
Rutin helps your body produce collagen and utilise vitamin c, so it can be great for skin health, and it’s also a very powerful antioxidant.
One prominent piece of research also showed how useful Rutin was for preventing blood clots. Investigators at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre tested more than 5,000 compounds in a search for the most potent extra-cellular protein disulfide isomerase (or PDI) inhibitor.
They wanted to do this because they found that extra-cellular PDI occurs at a rapid rate in patients suffering from thrombosis (which is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel) and forms an integral part of the process – thus inhibiting PDI would reduce the clotting effect.
Out of the 5,000+ compounds tested, rutin was found to be the most potent PDI – and therefore, thrombosis – inhibitor.
Due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory characteristics, a 2001 study titled ‘Oxidative stress in rheumatoid arthritis leukocytes: suppression by rutin and other antioxidants and chelators’ found that rutin assisted in easing arthritic pain, and even showed improvement in joint function from the reduced inflammation that it delivered.
The international journal of Pharma and Biosciences also reported that rutin helps to reduce LDL cholesterol. Study participants were provided with 500mg of rutin daily and showed a marked reduction in plasma LDL cholesterol levels. Note that the study was focused on individuals who suffer from diabetes and with a history of hypertension – I couldn’t find a study on rutin’s cholesterol-reducing effects on healthy individuals.
In terms of the best food sources of rutin, unpeeled apples, buckwheat, asparagus, black and green teas, and figs all contain good levels of rutin and can be a great, natural way to boost your diet-source rutin levels.
But if you’re struggling to increase your rutin intake through your diet, then supplementation could be an option.
So there you have it – hopefully this post gave you a high-level overview of some of the scientific evidence behind the health benefits of rutin, and the best ways to incorporate it into your regular diet.