Far out-dating the fad that acai berries seem to have become, the history of acai berries is a rich a fruitful one, filled with bountiful transformations in personal healing for people throughout the centuries.

One of the primary sources of natural medicines for millenia has been the Amazon rain forest. Most of the medicines you find on the store shelves today, and most of the medicines you’ve been prescribed by your doctor, have at least one ingredient derived from a naturally occurring element found in the rainforests of the Amazon.

It should come as little surprise, then, that a fruit from there would have worthwhile medicinal properties that the Western world, once finding out about, would immediately go about finding a way to deliver to the general marketplace. We of course are speaking about the acai berry.

Acai berries have been used by the tribes people of the Amazon rain forests of Brazil for a wide variety of health and healing purposes, such as anti-aging, life-extension, and disease fighting abailities. While it is doubtful that weight loss was a priority for the Brazilian Amazon tribespeople, it is certainly an additional benefit of this remarkable fruit that we in the Western worldare only too happy to avail it of.

One particularly interesting folk tale from these Brazilian Amazonians tells of the ravages of over-population and under-nourishment to one village that had its leader declare bearing children to be illegal. But that was only until acai berries were discovered, after which the village leader gladly made childbearing legal once more.

To this day, people living in the rain forests of Brazil consume the acai berry as a regular part of their diet.  And people today use it primarily for the acai berry weight loss benefits.

Despite what you may hear from skeptics, cynics, and naysayers, acai berries have undergone considerable scientific study, and the research has already yielded significant results. And those results appear to back up many of the health and wellness claims being made by purveyors of acai berry supplements.

Of course the “original” researchers were the tribal medicine men and women of the Brazilian Amazon – such as the Uwishin of the Shuar people – who, centuries ago were the first to discover this fruit native to their home. They quickly discovered the many benefits of acai berries through regular use and observation, accumulating endless anecdotal evidence to verify their findings.

Today’s consumer is less comfortable with purely anecdotal evidence, however, preferring indisputable scientific evidence to support their health care choices. That’s why researchers like those at the Federal University Rio de Janiero and the University of Florida began studying acai berry for their alleged healing properties. What the former found is that acai berry extract can fight bacterial infections, and what the latter found is that acai berries caused more than 3/4 of leukemia cells in vitro to self-destruct.

A more recent report called “Biochemical and Technical Studies on Acai” published by Dr. Herve Rogez found several promising conclusions, including that a single serving of acai berries contains more than two times the daily recommended dose of Vitamin E and the total recommended daily dose of Calcium.

Other research, including from the USDA itself, conducted not on acai berries themselves but rather on a potent ingredient known to be found in acai berries, a type of antioxidant called anthocyanins, found incredible links between anthocyanins and anti-aging.

So now when you read how good acai berries are for your health, you now have some scientific research to back that up.