Useful Health Tips (with comments from Dr JB Lim)

"Health Benefits of Consuming Dates"

1) Dates are free from cholesterol and contain very low fat. Dates are rich in vitamins and minerals.
2) They are rich source of protein, dietary fiber and rich in vitamin B1, B2, B3 and B5 along with vitamin A1 and C.
3) It helps improve the digestive system as it contains soluble and insoluble fibers and different kinds of amino acids.
4) Dates are great energy boosters as they contain natural sugars like glucose, sucrose and fructose. To get more advantage add dates to milk and make it a very nutritious snack.
5) Dates are very low in calories and are extremely suitable for health conscious people.
6) Dates are rich in potassium and reduced in sodium. This helps regulate a healthy nervous system. Researchers have revealed the fact that potassium intake up to a certain extent can reduce risk of stroke.
7) Dates also help in lowering of the LDL cholesterol.
8) Dates have high iron content and are very useful in treating anemia. The patients can eat many dates for better advantages.
9) Dates also have fluorine that slows down the process of tooth decay.
10) It helps people suffering from constipation. Soak dates overnight and take it along with water to have added advantage.
11) Dates help in weight gain and are beneficial for those who suffer from over slimming problem.
12) Dates are excellent for alcoholic intoxication. Cures abdominal cancer.
13) It also helps in improving eye sight and helps in curing night blindness as well.

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"The best thing is that it does not have any side effect on the body and is completely natural as well as it works better than medicine."

(Courtesy of forwarded mail from Khor Kean Kar)

The blogger is most grateful to Great Sifu Dr JB Lim for his comments on this post as follows: 
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Tuesday, 30 October, 2012 11:23 PM

From: lim juboo

Thank you for the article.

It has been shown generally tropical fruits have the highest antioxidants contents such as vitamin C, phenolic compounds and anthocyanins than most other western or temperate fruits and vegetable.

The reason for this is obvious. In the tropics most plants (other than indoor ornamental plants) have to remain almost all day during the daylight. Hence they are subjected high intensity and prolonged ultraviolet radiation compared to the very mild sun radiation colder climates.

Tropical fruits

As such these tropical plants, and their fruits and vegetables have to protect themselves first with hundreds, if not thousands of molecular antioxidants ranging from flavonoids, Vitamin B2, E and C, beta carotene, polyphenols, catechins. However all these antioxidants are of low molecular weights which can be absorbed and bio-available to the human body?

But plants do not synthesize antioxidants for human and other animals to use. They produce most of them, thousands of them of various high molecular weights (30,000 and above) for their own use to protect themselves from highly damaging free radicals of the sun (ultraviolet rays), leaving only less than one percent of low molecular weights (200-400) like Vitamin C, E, B 2, carotene, catechin, polyphenols, flavonoids for us.

In short, plants do not produce antioxidants to protect us. They produce them to defend themselves first, leaving only small amount for us.

However, fortunately our body can produce the high molecular antioxidants like superoxide dismutases (SOD), catalase, glutathione peroxidase (GSHP).

Unfortunately as we get older, our liver ability to induce these high molecular endogenous (within the body) antioxidants decline greatly.

Thus we can only depend on low molecular antioxidants from fruits and vegetables especially the highly coloured varieties such as red and white guava, star fruits, and dragon fruits.

Western fruits



Thus there is no need to consume the western fruits given in the article when our tropical variety gives us better protection against cancers and most degenerative diseases of modern lifestyles.

Jb lim