Tag Archives: lower cholesterol

Cinnamon has antioxidant superpowers

21 Jun
Who knew that cinnamon can lower your cholesterol and prevent diabetes

Who knew that cinnamon can lower your cholesterol and prevent diabetes

I absolutely love cinnamon, so when I found this article about its amazing superpowers I obviously just had to tell you about it.  But firstly – what exactly is it?

Cinnamon is the rolled, pressed and dried up inner bark from Cassia trees, which are native to Sri Lanka but cultivated in South America, Vietnam, India, Madagascar and Egypt. The superpower benefits of cinnamon might be news to me but cinnamon and cinnamon extract have been popular ‘medicines’ for thousands of years. 

Sought after and used by ancient civilisations, including the Chinese and the Egyptians, cinnamon was listed as one of the 350 ‘medicinal plants’ by Hippocrates.  According to the book, New Healing Herbs by Michael Castleman, cinnamon is commonly used as treatment for nausea and indigestion and also has antibiotic qualities.  But those benefits are old news.  This article below is written by Joyce Schneider, a health writer from New York, whom I follow on Twitter. 

Cinnamon has 5 times as many antioxidants as ½ cup of bluberries or a cup of pomegranate juice. 

Some of our best medicines are in our kitchen cabinet, not the bathroom cabinet. Recent, surprising studies show that some herbs and spices are antioxidant powerhouses — and that cinnamon is the second highest. (Cloves are the first, but are harder to work into our daily diet).

Here is a list of the top ten antioxidant spices. All these substances have something wonderful in common: their shared anti-inflammatory power is commonly described as helping arthritis sufferers and people with other types of pain. But the bigger picture of antioxidants’ anti-inflammatory power is their ability to reduce inflammation of the inner lining of the arteries and neutralize LDL (bad cholesterol)’s ability to deposit cholesterol, thus preventing atherosclerosis.  

You can read the rest of the article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fatty avocados can make you thinner

18 Jan

Very high fat content is the reason my serious calorie counting friends wouldn’t touch an avocado with a proverbial barge pole. And on the surface, they are right. However, if you look a bit closer… 

Avocados can increase your metabolism

Avocados can increase your metabolism

the avocado is a rich and vital source of essential minerals, vitamins and mono unsaturated fats that actually lower your cholesterol level, keep your immune system strong and your skin supple, lower your blood pressure, stimulate your metabolism and improve your liver function. The overall benefits of including avocados in your daily diet are numerous and weight loss is only one of them. Also, if you do happen to be on a diet, the high fat content of a single avocado can make you feel more full, more quickly, and hence, potentially prevent you from eating more than you need. 

An avocado has one of the highest contents of B6 in any known food, which we need to keep our blood, teeth, gums and nervous systems in top notch condition. With three times as much B6 as a banana, which is widely promoted as the ‘good mood’ food, perhaps we should call the avocado the ‘best-ever mood’ food.

It is also very high in Potassium, essential for keeping blood pressure in check.  In fact, in 1987,  the results of a two year study run jointly by the Schools of Medicine of the University of California San Diego and Cambridge University in England, showed a 40% reduction in stroke risk following an increase in daily consumption of 400mg of Potassium, equal to about half an avocado.

Avocados are also rich in fibre, another important factor in keeping our digestive systems happy and our weight under control. And because, unlike many other vegetables high in nutrients, we eat avocados raw, all those lovely vital nutrients enter our systems more efficiently and unaltered from their natural state, ensuring we get maximum benefit.

Tags: , , , , ,