Benefit of dates for colon health | HealthScience

dates are one of the healthiest
sweeteners that's what we usually how
not to die cookbook you can blend them
with water and make date syrup or use
date sugar which is a whole food just
dried dates ground into powder and as
such is packed with nutrition ending up
with as much antioxidant powers
blackstrap molasses but without the
strong taste so not all brands are the
same for example Bob's Red Mill may have
twice the antioxidants compared to now
foods though they only tested one
package each okay so dates are healthy
compared to other sweeteners well that's
not saying much
due dates have any special medicinal
properties you'll see papers like this
in the medical literature touting the
therapeutic effects of date fruits and
the prevention of diseases
anti-inflammatory antioxidant anti-tumor
activity complete with figures like this
of the purported pharmacological
activities of date fruits in disease
control but what they don't say is some
of this may be based on studies like
this where they feed dates to rats that
sounds nice mmm
but then induce testicular ischemia by
twisting their left testicle clockwise
720 degrees so like two full rotations
to completely kink off the blood supply
so did the dates help who cares if the
dates helped we're talking about rat
testicles it's like when researchers
test the nut on nut effects of pecans
what relevance does that have so
ironically perhaps the strangest
assertion here that dates helps with
labor and delivery is actually supported
by randomized and double-blind
placebo-controlled trials as I've
covered before so let's keep an open
mind here what about the purported
anti-cancer effects researchers studied
the impact of dates on our good gut
flora in colon cancer cell proliferation
or gut harbors about ten thousand
billion microorganisms and it's
considered the most metabolically active
site in the human body all sorts of
crazy stuff has happened
down there and we can reward our good
gut flora by feeding them prebiotics
like dietary fiber and polyphenols are a
class of antioxidant phytonutrients and
dates have high levels of both
so let's blend up some dates with some
gut flora fecal slurries donated by
volunteers you've heard of green
smoothies and more like a brown smoothie
well what happened
both the whole date extract and just the
date polyphenols were able to
significantly increase the growth of
beneficial bacteria and then they also
assess the ability of mixtures to
inhibit the growth of colon cancer cells
in a petri dish even just a polyphenol
fraction cut cancer cell growth by more
than half than the whole date extract
nearly blocked cancer cell growth
completely together these data suggest
that consumption of dates may enhance
colon health by increasing beneficial
bacterial growth and inhibiting the
proliferation of colon cancer cells it
would have been nice if they actually
studied the effects of dates in the
actual colon never been such a study
until now the impact of date consumption
on gut flora growth and large intestinal
health a randomized controlled crossover
human interventional study volunteers
were randomized to either a control
group or seven dates a day for three
weeks and there were significant
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