One of the world's most popular snacks may be the secret to balanced heart health: Hummus

Friday, April 01, 2016 by: Jennifer Lea Reynolds
Tags: statins, hummus, cholesterol

---

(NaturalNews) If you've ever said no to eating hummus at a friend's house, or never tried making your own homemade recipe, you might want to reconsider for the sake of your heart health. Hummus, a mixture comprised primarily of mashed beans (typically chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans or bengal grams), lemon juice and olive oil, has been shown to have heart-healthy properties.

Let's take the issue of high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels, both of which are linked to compromised heart health.

Chickpeas in particular are associated with improving these levels. In fact, researchers intentionally put residents in Northern India on a high-fat diet in order to raise their cholesterol to levels that were comparable to that of the Western World, then had them consume chickpeas instead of some of the other grains that they were eating. The effect that chickpeas had on their cholesterol was incredible; within five months their levels went from around 206 mg/dL to about 160. Overall, cholesterol was diminished by more than 15 percent in most of the people involved in this study.

Chickpeas referred to as a 'superior' food, terrific for heart health

That specific study, entitled Hypocholesterolaemic Effect of Bengal Gram: a Long-term Study in Man, concluded that "... Bengal gram significantly lowers serum lipids in man." It explains that they provide a "sustained action during long-term administration," which demonstrates that it is "superior to many known hypocholesterolaemic substances."

Dr. Michael Greger is on board with these findings, emphasizing their importance in his video, Beans, Beans, They're Good for Your Heart. In it, he reinforces the benefits of legumes as they relate to heart health, saying that "those without legumes in their daily diet may be at quadruple the odds of suffering high blood pressure."

In that same video, he also notes that when a person adds two servings of lentils, chickpeas, split peas or beans to their diet on a daily basis, their cholesterol levels are often cut so much that people fall well below the range in which statin drugs are usually prescribed.

That's great news, because as Natural News readers are aware, statin drugs are extremely harmful to health.

Hummus or statin drugs? Only one truly helps your health ...

For example, Professor Ishak Mansi, a heart specialist at the University of Texas, engaged in a study which found that statin users are more than twice as likely to develop diabetes compared to those who do not use them. The findings, which also led to the discovery that their use makes people about 250 percent more likely to get diabetes, along with life-threatening complications such as eye or kidney damage, changed the way he thinks about statins. When it comes to people with heart disease, he says he's skeptical and "... concerned about the long term effects on the huge population of healthy people on these drugs who continue for many years."

Health Ranger Mike Adams is strongly against statin drugs, often writing about their damaging effects, and referring to them as "cellular poisons that accelerate aging and promote muscle fatigue, diabetes, memory loss and more." He reminds people of the many studies that have shown how they wreak havoc on the body, doing everything from altering stem cells, to causing memory loss, to a host of other health issues. Of course, development of these other issues – which was brought on by being on statin drugs in the first place – is exactly what Big Pharma wants. "Statin drugs, in effect, became 'gateway drugs' that led to expanding medication prescriptions for yet more high-profit drugs," Adams writes.

Do your best to avoid the progression of ill health that can arise when becoming trapped in the Big Pharma web. This means turning to healthy, organic foods that include eating plenty of beans such as chickpeas. You can easily make your own healthy hummus by blending chickpeas with olive oil, lemon juice and some garlic (or other spices of your choice).

Sources for this article include:

NutritionFacts.org

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov^[PDF]

NutritionFacts.org

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Science.NaturalNews.com