12/12/2018 / By RJ Jhonson
Metabolic syndrome is a serious and dangerous health issue. A particular study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food discusses how the extract of blue maize, a variety of corn grown in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, can help attenuate the condition’s symptoms.
A person with metabolic syndrome suffers from several metabolic disorders at the same time. Metabolic syndrome is usually a combination of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. These health conditions are dangerous by themselves – collectively, they increase one’s risk of dying prematurely either through coronary heart disease or a stroke.
Proper management is key to living with the condition. Although regular exercise and changes to one’s diet are a great help, these steps may not be enough. Some people may require supplements to manage their symptoms. However, owing to the sheer precariousness of metabolic syndrome, just about any supplement won’t do. A lot of studies are, therefore, focused on finding natural means to attenuate its symptoms.
Plants that have been traditionally used as a medicinal treatment for one of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome or those that have been established in previous research to have beneficial effects are a popular subject for researchers. Some of the inquiries on blue maize’s anti-diabetic effects have been promising so far, so its potential as a treatment for metabolic syndrome is quite considerable.
For the study, the researchers fed rats with either a high-sucrose diet or a high-cholesterol-high-sucrose diet for 12 weeks. These diets increased the animals’ systolic blood pressure, serum triglycerides, and abdominal adipose tissue while decreasing their high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels.
Over the course of four weeks, the researchers administered blue maize extract to the animals. They noted that this treatment caused an increase in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels while decreasing systolic blood pressure, serum triglycerides, total cholesterol, and epididymal adipose tissue weight.
Because of these findings, they concluded that blue maize may be a promising nutritional treatment for metabolic syndrome.
At the end of the day, blue maize is just regular corn. It does, however, have a much higher anthocyanin content than yellow corn. This is the plant pigment that gives it – and purple corn – its characteristic deep blue color. Blue maize is known for a number of health benefits, including:
Learn about the other benefits of blue corn by going to Veggie.news.
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blood sugar, blue corn, blue maize, diabetes, food as medicine, food cures, high blood pressure, hyperglycemia, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, natural medicine, obesity
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