Health Benefits of Peppermint:
One of Nature's Top Antioxidant Foods

Most people are familiar with the flavor of peppermint — it's the plant that gives the candy of the same name its cool burst of flavor. What most people don't know, however, is that peppermint is an herb with a very high concentration of antioxidants. The health benefits of peppermint are primarily due to its antioxidant content.

Peppermint is an excellent source of antioxidants like vitamin C and beta carotene, which is converted to vitamin A in the body. Peppermint is also a very good source of fiber, iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper, vitamin B2 and omega 3 fats.

Herbs and Spices are some of the
Top Antioxidant Foods

It's a little-known fact that herbs (and spices) such as peppermint have far greater concentrations of antioxidants than any common fruit or vegetable source. Herbs 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 Health Benefits of Peppermint

The health benefits of peppermint include an ability to relieve symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, including indigestion, dyspepsia, and muscle spasms in your colon. These healing benefits of peppermint are apparently related to its natural muscle-relaxing properties, probably due to the menthol contained in peppermint.

Peppermint contains phytonutrients that have been shown to stop the growth of pancreatic, mammary, and liver tumors. Peppermint has also been shown to protect against cancer formation in the colon, skin, and lungs.

Essential oil of peppermint has also be found to inhibit the growth of many different bacteria and certain types of fungus as well.

Peppermint contains the substance rosmarinic acid, which has several actions that are beneficial in asthma. In addition to its antioxidant abilities in neutralizing free radicals, rosmarinic acid has been shown to reduce inflammation.

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

The health benefits of peppermint 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 peppermint 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 peppermint 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 Peppermint
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.

So if you want to get all of the health benefits of peppermint, 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 peppermint and peppermint extracts — 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 Peppermint at my iHerb.com store. You can also browse through Starwest's wide variety of herbs and spices at my Starwest Botanical Store at iHerb.

The health benefits of peppermint are also available in essential oil, capsules, tea and liquid extracts. You can find a great selection of peppermint products, as well as hundreds of other nutritional supplements and natural health products at iHerb.com. There's many reasons why iHerb is a great place to shop:

• Great Prices — 30% to 60% off most name-brand products
• Selection — over 16,000 products and 600 brand-names
• Same-Day Shipping — $4 Flat Rate, FREE on orders over $40
• International Shipping — as low as $4 on orders up to $80
• Live Customer-Care Service — on the phone or live chat
• Additional Discounts — extra 5% off for orders over $60
• Rewards Program — earn store credit for referring your friends!