Eating dates can reduce cancer, diabetes and heart disease risk, without toxic drug side effects

Thursday, March 03, 2016 by: Harold Shaw
Tags: dates, health benefits, disease prevention

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(NaturalNews) What comes to mind when you hear about staple foods? Corn, wheat, bread, potatoes, maybe even yams ... ? The list goes on, but regardless of how many items you come up with, dates are not likely to appear on your list. The date palm – the tree which produces the date fruit – has been around for over 50 million years, but has always required a specific climate to grow and provide us with its sweet and healthy delight. If you have Middle-Eastern roots, dates might be familiar enough to you to be called a staple food.

Though dates might be fairly new to our culture, it's worth becoming familiar with them because just a handful of dates a day provides the human body with immense health benefits, as they help calm down inflammation, digest cholesterol and glucose, all while detoxifying the entire system.

Anti-inflammatory properties

Dates contain a high amount of magnesium, a mineral which is quite rare in the average diet, but which is crucial to our immune system. When you're magnesium deficient, your body cannot adequately deal with inflammation, which means that your natural defense system will be hyperactive. Provided with a regular intake of magnesium, the organism starts to calm down. As most Natural News readers are likely already aware, a multitude of diseases are accelerated by inflammation.

When you include dates in your diet, you effectively reduce your risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, arthritis and even Alzheimer's. If this isn't enough, this Middle-Eastern miracle also contains potassium, another vital mineral that has been proven beyond doubt to reduce stroke risk and promote brain function. Who would have thought that something so delicious could be so beneficial?

Small but mighty

If you eat just 100 grams, or roughly 3 and a half ounces of dates, you're offering your body one third of its necessary daily intake of fiber. Why is fiber important? Well, for a healthy organism, fiber is indispensable. Especially in a diet that is rich in cholesterol, fat and sugar, fiber is a veritable life-saver, because it slows the absorption of sugar and cholesterol in the bloodstream. What's more, the fiber that dates contain is insoluble. This takes longer to digest, thus contributing to a feeling of fullness or satiety.

Through their contribution to digestion, these petite treats help us prevent obesity, as well as lowering the level of cholesterol and sugar in the bloodstream. The latter also has an impact on insulin, since your body won't feel the need to produce it in excess. However, the benefits of fiber don't stop there. Dates also work well further down the digestive tract, successfully preventing colorectal cancer. Their slow digestion means that the gastrointestinal system has more time to fully complete the decomposition process, as well as eliminate the resulting residue.

Detoxes the body

Last, but certainly not least, this invaluable component of a Middle-Eastern diet works wonders when it comes to detoxification. The colon is one of the most important parts of our body, since its function pertains to waste management, yet its health is underestimated and neglected by many. In order to prevent colon cancer and the host of diseases that start in the colon, an adequate intake of fiber is required for detoxification purposes.

Dates might not be the cheapest thing on the shelf, but they are certainly among the healthiest. We have still to fully include them in our regular diets, but, by the rules of market dynamics, the more of them we eat, the cheaper they will become. With no artificial sugars, no side-effects and literally zero fat, the numerous health benefits of dates are overwhelming when compared to pharmacy drugs or similar forms of medication. They sure are one delicious price to pay for a strong body.

Sources include:

1MHealthTips.com

LiveScience.com

MyFoodDiary.com