I love, love, love ginger.

I make my own juices at home three or four times a week and always add one or two hefty chunks of ginger.

I feel fine, but should I be concerned about so much ginger doing something to my intestinal tract?  One of my friends says I should be careful because since ginger is spicy, so much of it could cause ulcers.

– Jordan Yeats
(City withheld), FL

Ah, the “spicy foods cause ulcers” myth.

The vast majority of ulcers are actually caused by h. pylori bacteria.  Stress and spicy foods don’t play any role in ulcer formation.  They can, however, make existing ulcers more painful.

FYI: The h. pylori connection was first made by Australian doctors Barry Marshall and Robin Warren in the early 1980s — and garnered them the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine!

Ulcers aside, there is no need for you to be concerned about the amount of ginger you are eating (provided you don’t have certain health conditions such as gallbladder disease or taking cardiac or diabetes medication).

Healthy individuals can reap plenty of health benefits from fresh ginger!

Ginger is not only a powerful anti-inflammatory food (remember, cellular inflammation is the principal factor behind the development of most degenerative diseases), it has also been shown to significantly slow down the reproduction of tumor cells and be a powerful weapon against free radicals.

Ginger is so good at reducing inflammation that it is a wonderful natural remedy to help alleviate arthritis symptoms (as long as it is consumed consistently, of course).

Ginger is also an excellent source of curcumin, the antioxidant in turmeric that helps significantly reduce the risk for a variety of cancers.

Another bonus?  Ginger has been shown to help reduce blood platelet aggregation (thereby helping lower atherosclerosis risk).

1 Comment atherosclerosis, free radicals, ginger, phenolics, You Ask/I Answer

What exactly are free radicals, and how worried should I be about them?

I realize I have barely a kindergarten concept of them.

– @Beth_Pettit
Via Twitter

The concept of free radicals within the scope of health and nutrition can get super complicated, but here is an informative, simple-as-I-can-make-it “101″ crash course.

Free radicals are compounds with both positive and negative characteristics.

Their main positive function relates to our immune system.  Our body actually deploys free radicals when it detects a foreign substance in the body.

Without free radicals, our bodies would have a harder time combating most viruses and bacteria.

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends.

Free radicals have what is called a “free-floating electron”.  This makes free radicals very upset, since they want that electron to be paired off with another one.

In their quest to find another electron, they scour all over the place, damaging cells and DNA in the process.

DNA damage is particularly disturbing, as it is the chief cause behind degenerative diseases like cancer.

While our cells have some built-in protection against free radicals, there is only so much they can take before they basically become powerless.

What makes the issue of free radicals complicated is that there is no way to avoid them.  Most free radicals are byproducts of necessary metabolic processes (like digesting food and cell regeneration).

Of course, certain factors increase free radical content in our bodies.  These include:

• Air and water pollution
• Smoking
• Emotional stress
• Exposure to radiation
• Pesticides
• Excessive intakes of omega-6 fatty acids
• Aging

The best thing you can do to limit as much damage possible?  You guessed it — eat a healthy diet.

Consider this: most of the enzymes our body sends out to attack free radicals are created from nutrients like manganese, selenium, and zinc.

Diets low in these nutrients are unable to create as good of a defense against free radical damage as diets where these nutrients are consistently consumed in adequate amounts.

While vitamins C and E are well-known for their antioxidant (that’s code for “free-radical-neutralizing”) capacities, keep in mind that the thousands of phytonutrients in whole, unprocessed foods also help minimize cellular damage.

FYI: to read more about antioxidants, I HIGHLY recommend you read this post.

This is precisely why you want to be sure to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes — all those foods are packed with unique and exclusive compounds that provide plenty of assistance.

It is also crucial to eat whole foods that intrinsically contain these compounds (as opposed to supplements that isolate certain ones) since clinical research has clearly demonstrated that in order to work effectively, these compounds need to work in tandem.

As morbid as it sounds, free radicals are also the body’s way of guaranteeing eventual death.  A person in their eighties produces much higher amounts of free radicals than someone in their thirties.

No Comments antioxidants, cancer, free radicals, manganese, selenium, vitamin C, vitamin E, zinc

I often read about the smoke points of different  oils.

Does that have any nutritional importance?  Is a high or low smoke point the sign of a healthier oil?

– Tamara Ripple
(Location withheld)

Oil smoke points do not provide any nutritional information (i.e.: oils with higher smoke points are not necessarily the heart-healthiest, or vice versa), but they are important from an overall health perspective.

When any cooking oil begins to smoke, its fats deteriorate and become rancid.  In turn, all present antioxidants are deactivated and free radicals (compounds that are harmful to us at a cellular level) are formed.

If you accidentally heat an oil to the point where it smokes, discard it!  Do NOT cook with it.

No Comments antioxidants, free radicals, oils, smoke points, You Ask/I Answer