AN apple a day may keep the doctor away, but a banana a day may keep high blood pressure (known in medical parlance as hypertension) at bay. This is good news, as Filipinos suffering from hypertension are increasing in number, and most of them are walking time bombs that can explode anytime with serious hitches.
“Two in every 10 Filipino adults, 20 years and over, are hypertensive,” reports the Food and Nutrition Research Institute.
About half of 12.6 million Filipinos with hypertension are not aware of their condition until they begin to suffer illnesses that have associated complications with high blood pressure. “Hypertension per se does not kill, but the complications are the ones that disable and kill a hypertensive,” said Dr. Rafael Castillo, a cardiologist at the Manila Doctors’ Hospital.
One best way to lower blood pressure is by eating bananas, which are an excellent dietary source of potassium.
“Small bananas contain 362 milligrams of potassium, while medium bananas have 422 milligrams of the mineral,” the web site livestrong.com states. “Large bananas provide 487 milligrams of potassium, more than 10 percent of the daily recommended amount of 4,700 milligrams for healthy adults.”
Bananas, therefore, are good against hypertension. “We know that potassium lessens the harmful effects of sodium,” said Dana Greene, an American registered dietitian. “The more potassium you take in, the more sodium you excrete through urine.”
Sodium is present in salt, which most Filipino food contains. “When you eat too much salt, your body holds extra water to ‘wash’ the salt from your body,” the ClevelandClinic.org says. “In some people, this may cause blood pressure to rise. The added water puts stress on your heart and blood vessels.”
According to Greene, “potassium eases tension in your blood-vessel walls, which helps reduce blood pressure.”
A major study reveals that diets loaded with potassium-rich bananas may be able to cut the risk of strokes by one third. Scientists feel that many people can be protected against strokes and heart attacks by minimizing sodium (common salt) intake and by consuming plenty of potassium-rich foods of which banana is one.
If you are having trouble with stress, potassium-rich banana can help you. Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates the body’s water balance. When you are stressed, your metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing your potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack.
Banana, grown mostly in Mindanao, particularly Davao region, is one of the most healthful fruits the world has known. Alexander the Great was so fascinated by the virtues of this fruit that he described it as “the heavenly fruit that tasted like nectar sweetened in honey.”
“In one form or another, raw or cooked, more bananas are consumed daily than perhaps any other fruit in the world.” That’s what the book, Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture, states.
Aside from potassium, the fruit is also fully packed with magnesium. As such, it is good if you have a problem with sleeping. According to Michael Breus, author of The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan: Lose Weight Through Better Sleep, magnesium helps relax muscles and nerves, and promotes healthy circulation and digestion.
Not only that, banana also contains the sleep-inducing amino acid tryptophan, which ultimately turns into serotonin and melatonin in the brain. “Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that promotes relaxation; melatonin is a hormone that promotes sleepiness,” explains Angela Haupt in an article that appeared in US News and World Report. “It takes about an hour for tryptophan to reach the brain, so plan your snack accordingly.”
Health experts claim that banana is low in protein, free of fats but high in energy. A fully ripe banana has 20 to 25 percent sugar. It has significant amounts of B vitamins, especially B1 and B6. B1 is a brain tonic, whereas B6 relieves, in particular, uncomfortable symptoms of the premenstrual tension syndrome like irritability, headaches, tender breasts and water retention.
Aside from coconut, banana can be considered as “the tree of life.” Dondon Carlo P. Lejano, in an article which appeared in the quarterly publication of Bureau of Agricultural Research, wrote: “Aside from being eaten fresh, the ripe fruit can also be processed into jam, candies and purees. On the other hand, the unripe bananas may be processed into starch and chips. Banana extracts can also be processed into wine, catsup and vinegar.”
Banana hearts are used as a vegetable in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine, either raw or steamed with dips or cooked in soups, curries and fried foods. The flavor resembles that of artichoke. As with artichokes, both the fleshy part of the bracts and the heart are edible.
In popular culture and commerce, “banana” usually refers to soft, sweet “dessert” bananas that are usually eaten raw. The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called plantains, and are generally used in cooking rather than eaten raw. The word banana is derived from the Arabic word “finger.”
Where did bananas originally come from? Bananas originally came from the Malesian area, where wild ancestors can still be found in the forests. Inhabitants of that region discovered that some of the plants had edible fruits and could be propagated by suckers. Selection by man has, over millennia, profoundly altered the properties of the wild species in the humid tropics.
J.A. Samson’s Tropical Fruits gives more insights of the fruit’s history: “Malayan sailors probably took bananas to Madagascar about the fifth century AD, and they spread to the east coast and mainland of Africa from there; plantains arrived much later. Both forms were already known on the west coast of Africa when the Portuguese arrived in the 14th century. Later, banana was introduced into the western hemisphere and into other parts of the world.”
It was Southeast Asian farmers who first domesticated bananas. Recent archaeological evidence at Kuk Swamp in the Western Highlands province of Papua New Guinea suggests that banana cultivation there goes back to at least 5000 BC, and possibly to 8000 BC. It is likely that other species were later and independently domesticated elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is the region of primary diversity of the banana.
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