Renovating Your Mind Gets Stoned On Drupes

By rkutchjm on June 16, 2013 • ( 0 )

Drupes are fruits with stone-like pits. Know as plums, nectarines and peaches, they are a juicy, sweet delicious grouping that have been shown to raise up their fists to fight against metabolic syndrome. These findings were concluded in a study published in 2012 by researchers at A&M University in Texas. Metabolic Syndrome is a combination of abnormal body measurements that raise the risk for diabetes and heart disease.

Those body measurements include high fasting sugar, high triglycerides, a large girth, hypertension and a low “good cholesterol” (HDL) number. A low good cholesterol is bad.

Let’s go through each issue that makes up Metabolic Syndrome.

Anywhere that sugar lurks outside cells is dangerous. Chronic high sugar levels will ultimately result in diabetes. As these glucose levels accumulate, damage occurs in every part of the body.

Triglyceride is a combination of 3 pieces of fat (tri-) with a sugar (-glyceride) backbone. The common example is the letter E. The backbone of the E is the sugar and the three pieces coming off of the E are the fatty acids (fats). This stuff starts accumulating in the fat zones of your body. We call it visceral fat. The more there is, especially in the abdomen, the higher the risk for heart attack and stroke.

The larger the girth, the more visceral fat. Higher waist size increases chances for heart attack or stoke.

Hypertension, is excessive blood pressure that courses through your circulatory system. When the heart contracts, they blood surges through the blood vessels at the highest speed. This is called the systolic pressure. In between heart contractions, the heart relaxes and the velocity of the blood slows down. This is called the diastolic pressure. Whenever the heart contracts, the blood smashes into the walls of your blood vessels. The higher the blood pressure, the harder it smashes and causes damage to the artery walls. The damage ultimately results in plaque formation and then blockage of the vessel. So the higher the blood pressure, the more damage to the inside of your blood vessels over a shorter period of time.

HDL (good cholesterol) is the only type of cholesterol carrier that you want to have a high number. HDL transports bad fats out of the arteries to the liver. The liver then breaks down the bad fat getting it out of the body. So a high number for HDL, is a protective measurement in lowering the risk of heart attacks, stroke and diabetes.

Fruits called drupes are protective against metabolic syndrome. They contain four different types of antioxidants that neutralize many of the components of metabolic syndrome. Plums, nectarines and peaches all contain these protective chemicals in varying amounts. When they are consumed regularly they work together to help protect us from diabetes, inflammation, obesity and the production of bad cholesterol (LDL).