Want To Boost Your Heart And Take Charge Of Your Cholesterol? Eat Persimmon

Dec 20, 2018 by apost team

Time and again, natural sources of nutrition show themselves to be the best. It turns out that a heart-healthy diet should include persimmons. Persimmons (genus Diospyros) have the shape of a tomato, the coloring of a pumpkin, and the nutritional density of a superfood. Recently, researchers took a long glance at this fruit for its applications for the health of the entire circulatory system.

Thanks to this interest, the clinical studies now corroborate the rumored benefits with hard data.

Let’s start with some relevant nutritional information and expand from that.

• Vitamins: A, C, E, K, B1, B2, and B6
• Trace Minerals: Potassium, Copper, Manganese, Magnesium, and Phosphorus
• Tannin-rich Dietary Fiber
• Polyphenols, Flavinoids, and other Antioxidants

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When you want to repair a house, you first need to clean it out. Remove the peeling wallpaper, tear up the carpets, and rip out the rotting wood. Persimmons help your body to clean out the gunk. If we were to get a bit more technical, this fruit fights atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is often considered to be a progressive condition, and it is the word that doctors use to say that your arteries are clogging.

The typical cause is damage to the endothelial lining (interior walls) via high blood pressure that puts too much force upon those walls. When damaged, the LDL cholesterol gets lodged within those wounded walls and creates plaque. It is all part of your body’s repair process. The trouble arises when the damage is continual. As the body keeps building these fatty LDL patches, it can eventually block the blood vessels and cause a heart attack. This is a very simplified explanation.

The abundant pectin in persimmons is a form of soluble fiber with lots of clinical studies backing up its benefits. When arteries are blocked, the affected myocardial cells reach a breaking point and initiate apoptosis. Apoptosis is essentially cell suicide which is reduced by an average of about 22% from eating 100 milligrams of persimmons per day. In addition, pectin can effectively prevent blood vessel blockages from happening in the first place. It isn’t a cure-all, but it can still do wonders.

LDL cholesterol isn’t inherently bad. It is an unbalanced ratio of blood, LDL, HDL, and triglycerides that causes the problem. Unfortunately, the typical diet and the frequency of eating lead to insulin resistance. When insulin resistance increases, the lipid profile begins to skew in an unfavorable direction. The triglycerides go up, the LDL cholesterol goes up, and the HDL cholesterol goes down.

Obviously, this isn’t a good situation. Thankfully, the tannin-rich fiber in persimmons can improve everything by lowering the LDL cholesterol and the triglycerides that are present in the bloodstream to a healthier ratio.

Doctors will often use a C-reactive protein test to check for inflammation. Inflammation, like LDL cholesterol, is a part of your body’s natural recovery toolset. Like LDL, when there is too much of it, it can cause additional damage. It is still being researched, but chronic inflammation is believed to be one of the major causes of heart disease.

Whether that ends up being true or not, it is important to keep that C-reactive protein number in check. Chronic inflammation is the root cause of many health problems, and the tannin contained in the fiber of persimmons suppresses the inflammatory response. While the link isn’t totally understood, doctors are generally convinced that oxidative stress is one of the main causes of cardiovascular disease.

In 2017, the Journal of Clinical Medicine published a compendium of data on this tentative link. It makes a clear case for the necessity of maintaining a consistent diet of antioxidants to combat the damage of the reactive oxygen species. This is a known source of chronic inflammation. Persimmons are dense with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrition. This means that persimmons can neutralize the inflammation by preventing one of its sources and reducing the inflammation that is already there.

In the latest issue of International Journal of Molecular Medicine, researchers revealed the fat-fighting power of the persimmon’s lotus leaves. It turns out that they are just as amazing as the fruit itself.

The researchers treated mice with an extract of the leaves, and recorded the following data:

• Reduces weight gain
• Reduces visceral fay (dangerous fat around organs)
• Reduces triglycerides
• Reduces LDL cholesterol
• Reduces glucose, insulin, and leptin
• Reduces the atherogenic index
• Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties

As you can see, this should be a part of a heart-focused diet. If you know anyone with heart issues, pass this along! Have you ever had persimmon? Let us know in the comment section below!

Our content is created to the best of our knowledge, yet it is of general nature and cannot in any way substitute an individual consultation by your doctor. Your health is important to us!