Rich Collection of Spices – Are they Good or Bad for Your Health?

Have you ever heard your science friend talking about the health benefits of spices? Well, if you have, then you need to know that they are right. Spices have been proven to be a great source of essential nutrients that help our body function properly. With the right amount added to your meals, you can enjoy a ton of health benefits that you didn’t believe were possible before.

Most people question whether spices are good or bad for your health. We mean, looking at a powder, what would you expect? But our expectations are wrong because these powdered ingredients do much more than just added flavor to our meals.

Today in this article, we will discuss some of the significant health benefits that spices have to offer to our bodies. These benefits are backed up by research carried out by renowned universities around the globe, so they will, for sure, persuade you to use more spices in your meals.

Best Health Benefits of Spices

More than a hundred different spices are used by individuals around the globe to add flavor and texture to their meals. Studies haven’t been carried out on all of these spices, but it is believed that they all come with several health benefits to offer.

Some commonly used spices have been tested out significantly and prove to be a great source of natural vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Here is how some of them help offer major health benefits.

Cinnamon – Lower Blood Sugar

Cinnamon does much more than add that pleasant musky aroma to your food. Extracted from the cinnamon tree’s bark, this splendid spice has proven to help with high blood sugar levels. Doctors often recommend individuals suffering from type 2 diabetes to add a pinch of cinnamon to their drinks to benefit from it.

The thing about cinnamon is that it adds a sweet taste to your food items without adding sugar to it, which is hard to process for diabetic individuals. Other than that, it also helps in reducing your cholesterol level, which is also a result of high blood sugar. So adding it to your controlled diet plan can be an addition to a healthy lifestyle.

Turmeric – Fight Inflammation

Turmeric is an Indian spice commonly used in almost all their dishes, which is trending as present as one of the superfoods in the market in terms of the number of health benefits it offers to our bodies. The benefits of turmeric are endless. The major benefit of turmeric is its ability to help fight inflammation, which is the reason for discomfort and major illnesses in most cases.

Curcumin is a compound that is found in turmeric in abundance. Studies carried out by Johns Hopkins suggest that a combination of a chemotherapy drug and curcumin was more effective in shrinking drug-resistant tumors as compared to the usage of chemotherapy alone.

Other studies suggest that curcumin helps fight inflammation in the brain, which is the leading cause of multiple neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. It has also helped individuals fight against mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Ginger – Relieve Nausea

Have you ever heard your grandma tell you to drink ginger tea when feeling nausea? If yes, then you will be surprised to find out that she is right. Ginger is a tropical plant that has been widely used worldwide by our ancestors for centuries to treat stomach upset, diarrhea, and nausea.

Studies suggest that ginger helps calm pregnancy-related nausea, vomiting caused due to chemotherapy, motion sickness, and an upset stomach. The good thing is that ginger products are widely available in all supermarkets. You can get ginger tea, lollipops, candies, or regular dried powder to add to your meals.

Garlic – Boost Heart Health

Most of you out there are well-aware of the usage of garlic in our everyday meals—a small bulb-shaped spice with a pungent smell that isn’t appealing at all. But at the same time, the number of health benefits that little bulb has to offer overrides the smell that one has to bear when adding to your meal.

As we grow older, our arteries tend to get filled up with fatty acids. The overuse of fats in our diets supported by other factors such as smoothing, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure contribute to the deposition of fats in our blood vessels. Over time these deposits create a major blockage in our arteries, which leads to heart diseases.

Studies carried out by health departments at different universities suggest that garlic helps protect you from heart diseases. The compounds found in garlic help add flexibility to your blood vessels to the deposits, move down to the cells instead of staying in place and causing a blockage. You can add it to several savory dishes to increase its intake.

Healthy Ways to Consume Spices

Spices have several surprising health benefits to offer to our bodies. With their rich antioxidant content and other useful compounds, they assist our bodies in carrying out their everyday functions effectively. But the major question is, how should you consume these spices to get the most benefits out of them?

The first thought that comes to mind is by using it to add flavor to our meals. It sounds like a great idea and works in most cases, but the problem is that most of us add spices to our food while cooking. In most cases, the direct heat, such as during grilling or frying, removes or lowers the autoxidizing power and renders them less useful for our bodies. Therefore it is best to practice microwave cooking with spices because it helps enhance the antioxidant levels.

If you are not much of an eater but still wish to add the health benefits offered by spices to your diet, supplements are the way to go. Certain strictly regulated and tested commercial supplements are packed with the same benefits as spices. But we recommend that you always consult your doctor before using any supplements because there is no way of knowing which might be inside the pill.

Takeaways

Spices tend to offer several health benefits to human bodies. But that doesn’t mean that you should start consuming them in excess to prevent all the diseases and become healthy. That is not how it works. Excess of everything is bad, so you need to consume them in a controlled manner to benefit the most from it.