Cumin Health Benefits
Come From Antioxidants

Like most spices, cumin contains a very high concentration of antioxidant compounds that provide numerous health benefits. Cumin health benefits have been used to promote well-being and treat various diseases and disorders for thousands of years.

Cumin helps to enhance immunity. It increases your metabolism and improves the absorption of nutrients throughout your body. Cumin health benefits are extremely helpful in preventing and treating digestive disorders and other related problems.

Herbs and Spices are Some of the
Top Antioxidant Foods

It's a little-known fact that spices (and herbs) such as cumin have far greater concentrations of antioxidants than any common fruit or vegetable source. Spices also contain a particularly wide variety of antioxidants as well, making them one of the top antioxidant foods around.

Antioxidants are nutrient compounds found in virtually all plant foods (and also manufactured in your body). The primary job of antioxidants is to protect your cells against the oxidative stress caused by free radicals, considered to be the primary cause of the aging process.

Protecting yourself against free radicals with antioxidants is the most effective way to reduce the risk of many health problems associated with aging. The benefits of antioxidants include powerful protection against all types of degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease, and many more.

Antioxidants work together, synergistically, and each one has its own specific characteristics and benefits. One antioxidant may work in places in the body where another one can't go, and neutralize free radicals that other antioxidants miss. Therefore, getting the widest variety of antioxidants is just as important as how much of any one antioxidant you get. See my page on how do antioxidants work? to learn more about this.

Specific Cumin Health Benefits

Cumin health benefits are extremely helpful in preventing and treating digestive disorders and other related problems. Cumin contains a compound that stimulates your digestive system to secrete bile acids and pancreatic enzymes that aid the digestive process. The benefits of cumin enhance the liver's detoxification enzymes, and acts like a natural laxative that can help in treating constipation.

Cumin also increases your metabolism and improves the absorption of nutrients throughout your body. Many herbal practitioners consider cumin to be an excellent natural body tonic.

Cumin health benefits include help in treating respiratory disorders. Because cumin contains aromatic essential oils which act as disinfectants, it makes an effective decongestive for people suffering from respiratory problem, including asthma and bronchitis.

Cumin is a very good source of iron, a mineral that plays many vital roles in the body. Iron is particularly important for menstruating women, growing children and adolescents, who all have increased needs for iron, as do women who are pregnant or lactating.

Cumin health benefits help to enhance immunity. With its abundance of vitamin C, vitamin A and essential oils, cumin increases your ability to fight infections. Cumin also contains dietary fiber and has stimulating, anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.

To learn more about cumin health benefits, check out Organic Facts/Health Benefits of Cumin

An Easy Way to Get
the Health Benefits of Cumin
Every Day

Cumin health benefits are so numerous, ideally you'd want to have some every day. However, as with any herb or spice, you may find it impractical to include cumin in your meal plans that often. There's an easy way to accomplish this — by making yourself a fresh smoothie every day and adding some cumin and other spices to your recipe.

Fresh smoothies make for some of the most nutritious, delicious and easy-to-make meals you could imagine. They're a great way to get more of those "good for you" antioxidant-rich foods (that you may not get enough of) into your diet.

I personally use herbs such as basil, cilantro and parsley in my green smoothie recipes to give them more of the benefits of dark green leafy vegetables. Because they're so concentrated with antioxidants, you can use a much smaller amount than you would with other greens like kale or spinach, and they won't overwhelm the flavor of your smoothie recipe.

I don't stop there, either. I like to use other spices such as cinnamon, cloves, ginger, turmeric and others in my smoothie recipes, mostly for their added antioxidant benefits. Once they're blended in with all the other ingredients, you can't really distinguish any one particular taste. You just need to experiment a little to get the flavor just right for you.

To learn more about the art of making smoothies, skip on over to my page on how to make a smoothie the healthy way and learn all my tricks for making delicious and nutritious smoothies!

Recommendations for Cumin
and Other Herbs and Spices

Research indicates that a few spicy meals a week won't get you much of the antioxidant benefits of spices; you must consume larger quantities on a daily basis.

If you want to get all of the health benefits of cumin, you'll need more than the small bottles you see at the supermarket. Those won't go very far — and will cost much more by the pound than if you buy in bulk. Fortunately, I've got a wonderful online source for premium-quality organic cumin — Starwest Botanicals and iHerb.com.

Starwest Botanicals started as a small retail herb shop in 1975. Their primary objective, from the beginning, was to focus on quality — even building their own herb mill to ensure that goal.

Today, Starwest is one of the largest suppliers of organic herbs in the United States, with over a million pounds of herbs and spices in stock.

You can get the best price on Starwest Organic Cumin at my iHerb.com store. You can also browse through Starwest's wide array of herbs and spices at the Starwest Botanical Store at iHerb.

iHerb.com is a great place to shop for all your natural health products — just take a look at all the reasons why:

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