Nutrition
The most whole foods packed with antioxidants
Are the apparently amazing benefits of amla – dried Indian gooseberries – too good to be true?
Regarding Amla, also known as the Indian gooseberry, it has been said that “medicinal plants are the gift of nature to humans to promote a disease-free healthy life. “The fruit has also been described as” the Ayurvedic miracle “. You hear a lot of this larger-than-life talk about amla in Indian medical journals. who can to forget the review article titled, “Amla … a miracle berry in the treatment and prevention of cancer”? Amla is so revered that you can find serious scholars at reputable academic institutions making such statements in reputable peer-reviewed medical journals: “Every part of the [Indian gooseberry] plant has its unique therapeutic property for the treatment of almost all diseases. It can be for humanity accepted as a single ball ”- emphasis not added – against diseases. All right.
I first met amla in a famous article, the saw in the total antioxidant content of thousands of different foods. I made a number of videos about it a long time ago. To my surprise, amla was, on average, the number one most antioxidant-packed whole food diet on the planet. Powdered dried Indian gooseberries beat For comparison: Cloves, the former heavyweight champion, have up to a hundred times or more antioxidants than blueberries.
So here is this fruit that “enjoy a sacred position in Ayurveda “, the ancient medical system in India – so sacred in fact that it was mythologically referred to as” the first tree that was created in the universe “. For thousands of years – before we even knew what an antioxidant was – humans have revered this plant, which happens to turn out to be the most antioxidant-filled fruit on earth. You got my attention, but I still had to see it put to the test.
Indigenous tribal healers used amla to treat Diabetes, so the researchers decided to give it a try too. “Effect of Amla fruits (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.) On the blood sugar and lipid profile [cholesterol levels] of normal subjects and type 2 diabetics “was the study that was originally bowling me over. In fact, it was the subject of one of my very first NutritionFacts videos over five years ago, where I talked about the mind-boggling effects of this five cents powdered fruit – just five cents – compared to a diabetes drug. But what about the cholesterol effects?
As I discuss in my video The best food for high cholesterol, if you to take healthy people, and give them a placebo sugar pill, not much happens to their cholesterol. Ideally, we want our total cholesterol to be below 150. This is where the normal control group came in, a pretty healthy group. The average cholesterol in the United States is over 200. This is where diabetics started this study. And if you give placebo pills to diabetics, not much will happen to them either. But what if you give people about half a teaspoon of amla powder every day? Not just any extract or something, just dried Indian gooseberries – just a fruit powder. As you can see in mine at 3:05 p.m. Video, There is In three weeks, cholesterol levels dropped by about 35 to 40 percent. Absolutely amazing! That’s the result we can see about six months after taking statin medication.
What interests us most, however, is LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, which ideally kills off for under 70 years. As you can see in mine at 3:36 Video, the placebo would have No effect on LDL, but again only about half a teaspoon of amla, which would cost you about 5 cents a day, got significant results. Boom!
These results blew my socks off. You are just amazing! This is why I was so excited to dive back into the Amla literature after all these years to see if these results were confirmed – that is, repeated elsewhere. So I typed “amla” into PubMed and flipped through all of the articles on using amla to reduce Methane in cow fart and speed the growth of chickens. And hey! What about amla ice cream? After all, amla is filled with fiber and phytonutrients, whereas ice cream is not. Indeed, amla incorporated into ice increases antioxidant activity, although I wouldn’t recommend it for lowering cholesterol.
In connection? A comparative clinical study of Amla head to head against the cholesterol-lowering statin drug simvastatin, which is sold as Zocor.
I’m so excited to come back to this after all these years. You may also be interested in my original series, which also has tips on how to find amla:
What else is super packed in antioxidants? See Antioxidant power of plant foods compared to animal foods and Antioxidant content of 3,139 foods.
Look forward to the exciting conclusion in my next video Amla vs. drugs for cholesterol, inflammation, and blood thinning.
No matter how well it works, having a sufficiently healthy diet can essentially eliminate your risk of heart disease. See my overview video How not to die of heart disease. But if your cholesterol is still too high after you’ve done everything right, amla can help.
In health,
Michael Greger, MD
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