Athletes and sports people always choose bananas and they are their favorite fruit since they boost their electrolyte levels and their energy levels, but bananas are much more than just a sweet treat or simply a tasty additive to the morning smoothie.
Bananas are abundant in numerous nutrients, including vitamins, minerals and other beneficial ingredients.
Beside for preventing and treating different conditions and improving different body functions, bananas are also used for treating depression, boosting the function of the brain, promoting regularity and for calming the nerves down, and what is most importantly, they are completely natural.
If you look thoroughly the science literature on bananas, you will discover a host of little known benefits and advantages connected to this fruit and its consumption. It has a wide range of beneficial effects that varies from regulation of the blood pressure, healing a damaged gut, to relieving the symptoms of arthritis.
Bananas are even known to have ability to fight drug addictions, which easily puts bananas into the group of the most remarkable, widely available, and what is also important, cheap super fruits that mankind knows of.
Eating Bananas Can Help Relieve Depression And Improve One’s Mood:
Bananas are known to contain tryptophan, an ingredient also present in turkey meat, which helps in maintaining a calm and relaxed mood. Bananas also help in relieving the symptoms of depression.
They are helpful for this thanks to the presence of B vitamins, which when combined with tryptophan speed up its conversion into serotonin, which is known as the hormone of happiness. Thus, they improve the mood and the general state of feelings and the psychological well-being.
If you maintain high levels of vitamin B in your diet, you increase your chances to prevent depression, especially at an older age, says Emily Main in an article in the Rodale News. According to her, if you combine food high in vitamins of the B group with the added boost of supplements, you will stress their positive effect for fighting depression.
The Fiber in Bananas Helps Promote Regularity:
The same as numerous other whole fruits or vegetables, bananas are also a great source of soluble fiber. Fiber is one of the most necessary ingredients for keeping regularity. Do not forget to include bananas into your regular diet, so that you solve the problems like constipation and other intestine related and bowel related issues.
Thanks to the consumption of bananas, you can restore the normal bowel function, especially if you deal with diarrhea; it has been said in a report. The great amount of fiber this fruit contains has a positive impact on digestion as well.
Boost Your Brainpower With Bananas
Besides in vitamins from the B group, bananas are also rich in potassium, an electrolyte mineral, highly beneficial for the heart, the kidneys and other body organs and their normal functioning. The high levels of potassium are also necessary for the brain neurons and an insufficient level of these can lead to “brain fog” and many other problems with the cognition. Bananas are abundant in this highly beneficial and useful mineral.
In a research from 2013 published in the Journal of Neuroscience Letters was examined the supplementation of potassium and the levels of free radicals in the brain. This research’s topic was potassium and the memory, the SFGate says.
The results of the research showed that after twenty days of potassium supplementation, the amount of dangerous free radicals has become considerably reduced, reducing thus the amount of oxidative damage that has happened in the test subjects. This oxidative damage can cause a deceased brain function and the potassium negates this effect and thus prevents brain damage.
B Vitamins in Bananas Help Calm The Nervous System
Bananas contain five of the eight known B vitamins in great amounts. Those are thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pyridoxine (B6) and folate (B9). Not only are these vitamins the basic food source of the brain and the nervous system in general, but they also help the body in digesting and utilizing other nutrients. They also support the heart and its health, as well as the nerves and the muscles.
B vitamins also take part in the creation and maintaining of new cells. They are the fundamental part of numerous biochemical reactions in the organism; it has been said in a report on bananas by Joanne Marie for SFGate. Bananas contain sufficient quantities of these B vitamins, varying from 785 micrograms of niacin to 24 micrograms of folate in one banana of medium size.