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Thread: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

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    OKRA - the All Around Medicine<http://okramedicine.blogspot.com/200...-medicine.html>
    [cid:image002.jpg@01CCD538.D6465480]<http://bp1.blogger.com/_-ZOzC9RfUMI/...600-h/okra.jpg>
    OKRA - the All Around Medicine

    Here are some facts on okra (from the research of Ms. Sylvia Zook, PH.D (nutrition), University of Illinois.
    Okra is a powerhouse of valuable nutrients, nearly half of which is soluble fiber in the form of gums and pectins. Soluble fiber helps to lower serum cholesterol, reducing the risk of heart disease. The other half is insoluble fiber which helps to keep the intestinal tract healthy, decreasing the risk of some forms of cancer, especially colo-rectal cancer. Nearly 10% of the recommended levels of vitamin B6 and folic acid is also present in a half cup of cooked okra. Okra is a rich source of many nutrients, including fiber, vitamin B6 and folic acid. I got the following numbers from the University of Illinois Extension Okra Page. Please check there for more details.

    Okra Nutrition (half-cup cooked okra))
    · Calories = 25
    · Dietary Fiber = 2 grams
    · Protein = 1.5 grams
    · Carbohydrates = 5.8 grams
    · Vitamin A = 460 IU
    · Vitamin C = 13 mg
    · Folic acid = 36.5 micrograms
    · Calcium = 50 mg
    · Iron = 0.4 mg
    · Potassium = 256 mg
    · Magnesium = 46 mg

    These numbers should be used as a guideline only, and if you are on a medically-restricted diet please consult your physician and/or dietician. Ms Sylvia W. Zook, Ph.D. (nutritionist) has very kindly provided the following thought-provoking comments on the many benefits of this versatile vegetable. They are well worth reading.

    1. The superior fiber found in okra helps to stabilize blood sugar as it curbs the rate at which sugar is absorbed from the intestinal tract.

    2. Okra's mucilage not only binds cholesterol but bile acid carrying toxins dumped into it by the filtering liver. But it doesn't stop there...

    3. Many alternative health practitioners believe all disease begins in the colon. The okra fiber, absorbing water and ensuring bulk in stools, helps prevent constipation. Fiber in general is helpful for this but okra is one of the best, along with ground flax seed and psyllium. Unlike harsh wheat bran, which can irritate or injure the intestinal tract, okra's mucilage soothes, and okra facilitates elimination more comfortably by its slippery characteristic many people abhor. In other words, this incredibly valuable vegetable not only binds excess cholesterol and toxins (in bile acids) which cause numerous health problems, if not evacuated, but also assures their easy passage from the the body. The veggie is completely non-toxic, non-habit forming (except for the many who greatly enjoy eating it), has no adverse side effects, is full of nutrients, and is economically within reach of most.

    4. Further contributing to the health of the intestinal tract, okra fiber (as well as flax and psyllium) has no equal among fibers for feeding the good bacteria (probiotics).

    5.To retain most of okra's nutrients and self-digesting enzymes, it should be cooked as little as possible, e.g. with low heat or lightly steamed.
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Well my dead mother,may she continue to R.I.P, used okra in a number of dishes. I know fried foods are bad for you but let me tell you she would used a cast iron skillet and fried it to a tender on the inside but crunchy outside finish that was pure pleasure for the taste buds.....Okra originally grown in Africa if not mistaken...

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Its important to use the prepare correctly, five Okra cut into small pieces and then boiling water, let it sit over night, drink for breakfast, doesn't taste very good but if you know your cholesterol is an issue worth it (I would like to try the fried method as well it does sound delicious).
    The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." --Niccolo Machiavelli,
    Italian philosopher, humanist and writer

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    You both just made me really hungry!!

    I have only had fried okra much like your mothers thurh4me but certainly not as good... Nothing compares to home cooking!

    Project B.B. I had no idea okra was such a super-food! Looks like I will be working it into my diet as much as possible. (Mostly raw, occasionally fried)
    It is ridiculously easy to grow too! At least it is around here.
    "One day at a time."

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    There is nothing wrong with high cholesterol, no need to lower it. Your body knows what it's doing.

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    I just love okra!

    Here is some good advise on how to cook okra (do read the comments for even more tips and recipes):

    http://marcsala.blogspot.com/2006/08...out-slime.html
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Quote Posted by Project_Buggy_Beach (here)
    Its important to use the prepare correctly, five Okra cut into small pieces and then boiling water, let it sit over night, drink for breakfast, doesn't taste very good but if you know your cholesterol is an issue worth it (I would like to try the fried method as well it does sound delicious).
    We here in our parts of Arkansas grow it just about in every home garden. Now fried is my favorite,not deep fried but skillet fried as I mentioned in earlier reply,but boiled in water ,cut up ,with diced tomatoes,corn,black eyed peas in can with a little salt and black pepper is another way we/I like it. Cook till boiling then turn on low and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes with some skillet baked corn bread.Very healthy and good.

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    I would like to recommend eating it pickled also, as the vinegar is also good for you, it becomes a double whammy for what could ail you
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Quote Posted by truth4me (here)
    Quote Posted by Project_Buggy_Beach (here)
    Its important to use the prepare correctly, five Okra cut into small pieces and then boiling water, let it sit over night, drink for breakfast, doesn't taste very good but if you know your cholesterol is an issue worth it (I would like to try the fried method as well it does sound delicious).
    We here in our parts of Arkansas grow it just about in every home garden. Now fried is my favorite,not deep fried but skillet fried as I mentioned in earlier reply,but boiled in water ,cut up ,with diced tomatoes,corn,black eyed peas in can with a little salt and black pepper is another way we/I like it. Cook till boiling then turn on low and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes with some skillet baked corn bread.Very healthy and good.
    A favorite way of mine too, its been made just like that here in these stomping grounds of Beaver Lake also....
    and skillet bread is hard to beat
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Here is some more information about the aspects of okra

    "Well, when cooked, okra can give us the following nutrition benefits: Protein, niacin, riboflavin, phosphorus, zinc, copper,potassium, Vitamins A, B6, C, and K, thiamine, magnesium, folate, calcium, and manganese.

    In addition, some studies say it is proven to be helpful in normalizing cholesterol and blood sugar levels, healing asthma due to the special Vitamin C in it (which is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory), removing atherosclerosis, and healing some cancers. If you’re worried about eye cataracts or acne and pimples, try okra–eat lots of it.


    http://docakilah.wordpress.com/2011/...-for-diabetes/
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Quote Posted by Eligos (here)
    There is nothing wrong with high cholesterol, no need to lower it. Your body knows what it's doing.


    actually i'll go a step further, the more cholesterol you have in a non - sugar rich diet the healthier you will be, guarenteed.
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Quote Posted by Eligos (here)
    There is nothing wrong with high cholesterol, no need to lower it. Your body knows what it's doing.
    I agree nice veggie though...

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    Quote Posted by TargeT (here)
    Quote Posted by Eligos (here)
    There is nothing wrong with high cholesterol, no need to lower it. Your body knows what it's doing.


    actually i'll go a step further, the more cholesterol you have in a non - sugar rich diet the healthier you will be, guarenteed.

    I've deleted sugar from my diet since end of December and I've lost 8kg since ... plus a few hcg drops too
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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Hmmmm . . . . I slice up onion, green pepper, green tomatoes and okra dip it in egg and milk and then roll in corn meal with a bit of flour and seasonings and then fry it bacon grease in an iron skillet . . . . . probably comes out a neutral healthy meal, but it tastes really good!!

    I agree about the cholesterol . . . few people understand that the gray matter in your brain is nourished by what is called ‘bad cholesterol’ it is one of the reasons brain diseases like Alzheimer’s shot up when doctors started pharmaceutically lowering cholesterol below 200

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    This is from the website SECOND OPINION. We need cholesterol, from natural fats.


    The Cholesterol Myth





    Part 1: Introduction
    The tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
    T H Huxley
    Over the past couple of decades there has been a growing concern about fats and cholesterol. Dieticians, nutritionists and doctors have been telling us that fat is a killer. Governments have introduced national policies based around its reduction. Eat less cholesterol, saturated fat and salt, eat more fibre-rich foods we are all told. The evidence is incontrovertible that if we do not, we are doomed to the West's greatest killer — heart disease. 

But is the evidence so clear? Despite the certainty implied by the propaganda, the debate continues in the medical journals, behind the scenes. Is diet a killer? Apart from those with a very rare disease, has cholesterol got anything to do with heart disease — or any other disease? And even if it has, will a change of diet be beneficial? 

Like all debates, this one about cholesterol has two sides. The Cholesterol Myth explores the evidence on which present healthy eating' dietary recommendations are based. 

Much of the evidence used in the cholesterol debate is complex. Nevertheless, with so much of only one side of the debate having been published and your having been subjected to so much that is misleading, I will try to explain the other side in as much detail as this paper allows.
    * * * * * *
    THE B. M. A. AND THE GOVERNMENT RECOMMEND THAT THE BRITISH PEOPLE SHOULD DRINK EIGHTY PERCENT MORE MILK, EAT FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT MORE EGGS, FORTY PERCENT MORE BUTTER AND THIRTY PERCENT MORE MEAT.
    On the basis of research in the 1920s and 1930s by Sir John Boyd Orr and others, that was the advice given to the British people in 1938. The Government introduced free school milk — full cream, that is — and later we 'went to work on an egg'. As a consequence, child deaths from diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough fell dramatically — well before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunisation. Rickets, called 'the English Disease' because it was so wide-spread, and other deficiency diseases were relegated to the past. Other factors helped, but most important of all was the better nutrition that gave children a higher resistance. The recommendations above shaped our diet for nearly fifty years and helped to give us a mean life expectancy that is now among the highest in the world. Sixty years in 1930, our mean life expectancy had climbed to seventy years by 1960 and to seventy-five years by 1990. Now we are told they are shortening our lives — killing us with coronary heart disease. Why the sudden change? To discover that, we need to know something of the history of coronary heart disease and how the strategy to combat it evolved.
    Coronary heart disease
    There are many diseases that affect the heart but the one that the 'healthy eating' strategies seek to prevent is Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), more correctly called ischaemic heart disease (IHD). CHD is a condition where the coronary arteries that supply blood to nourish the heart muscle are narrowed by a build-up of material on their walls (an atheroma) to such an extent that they become blocked. This cuts off the blood supply to part of the heart muscle, and we have a heart attack. The narrowing also encourages the clotting of blood and, in consequence, it is possible for a clot to cause a heart attack long before the atheroma is large enough to do so. The material generally blamed for the build-up is cholesterol and the 'healthy eating' advice given to the public to reduce the incidence of CHD is aimed simply at reducing the levels of cholesterol in the blood.
    Cholesterol
    Because of the propaganda, you can be forgiven for thinking that cholesterol is a harmful alien substance that should be avoided at all costs. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Cholesterol is an essential component in the body. It is found in all the cells of the body, particularly in the brain and nerve cells. Body cells are continually dying and new ones being made. Cholesterol is a major building block from which cell walls are made. Cholesterol is also used to make a number of other important substances: hormones (including the sex hormones), bile acids and, in conjunction with sunlight on the skin, vitamin D 3 . The body uses large quantities of cholesterol every day and the substance is so important that, with the exception of brain cells, every body cell has the ability to make it. 

Cholesterol may be ingested in animal products, but less than twenty percent of your body's cholesterol needs will be supplied in this way. Your body then makes up the difference. If you eat less cholesterol, your body merely compensates by making more. Although the media and food companies still warn against cholesterol in diet, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the level of cholesterol in your blood is affected very little by the amount of cholesterol you eat.
    Cholesterol and CHD
    For reasons still unknown, coronary heart disease suddenly took off during the 1920s throughout the industrialised world. By the 1940s it was becoming the major cause of premature death. And nobody knew why. 

In 1950 an American doctor, John Gofman, hypothesised that blood cholesterol was to blame. This was supported in 1951 when pathologists were sent to Korea to learn about war wounds by dissecting the bodies of dead soldiers. To their surprise they discovered unexpected evidence of coronary heart disease: unexpected for they knew that death from heart disease was extremely rare under middle age and these men averaged only twenty-two years of age. So the pathologists performed detailed dissections on the hearts of the next 300 corpses. In thirty-five percent they found deposits of fibrous, fatty material sticking to the artery walls. A further forty-one percent had fully formed lesions, and in three percent of the soldiers these lesions were sufficiently large that they blocked at least one coronary artery. Thus, over three-quarters of all the men examined showed evidence of serious coronary heart disease — and they were barely out of their teens. 

Doctors now had a problem. As there are no symptoms with the partial blockage of the coronary arteries, how could they tell, without resorting to surgery, who was in danger? They had to find what was different in those with the disease and those free of it. 

To cut a long story short, they found cholesterol in the material that builds up on artery walls and causes them to become blocked; people who died of heart disease often had high levels of cholesterol in their blood; and those who suffered the rare hereditary disease, familial hypercholesterolaemia (hereditary high blood cholesterol), also suffered a higher incidence of CHD. And so, not unnaturally perhaps, cholesterol and heart disease became linked. 

But there are a number of significant points that the cholesterol theory overlooks. For example, there is a marked difference between the build-up found in those with familial hypercholesterolaemia and those with coronary heart disease: hypercholesterolaemia causes large deposits at the mouths of the coronary arteries, often leaving the arteries themselves unblocked, and so does not reproduce the type of obstruction found in coronary heart disease. People with myxoedema or nephrosis also have high blood cholesterol levels — yet in them, there is no increase in the incidence of CHD. Neither is raised blood cholesterol a predictor of CHD in people over sixty. It has also long been known that simple events, such as putting a cuff around the arm prior to taking a blood sample, or fear of the needle, can result in raised cholesterol values. And, even where these are avoided, large fluctuations are known with peak to nadir variations of as much as twenty-three percent. Lastly, cholesterol is only one of the constituents of an atheroma and, if you think about it, cholesterol is so necessary and so widespread in the body, it would have been surprising if it had not been found. Nevertheless the lowering of blood cholesterol became the sole objective in the fight against CHD; and the two principal methods used to achieve this are with diet and drugs.
    References:
    J W Gofman, et al. The role of lipids and lipoproteins in atherosclerosis . Science. 1950; 111: 166. 
J P Strong, H C McGill jr. The natural history of coronary atherosclerosis. Am J Pathol. 1962; 40: 37. 
W F Enos, R H Holmes, J Beyer. Coronary disease among United States soldiers killed in action in Korea. Preliminary report. JAMA 1953; 152: 1090.


    Part 2: Fats and Heart Disease


    See also www.Cholesterol-and-Health.org.uk, an easy to read website about this whole topic from what cholesterol is, why you need it, and how it is made in the body, to what happens if you take cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins.

    Last updated 18 September 2000




    When doctors won't tell . . . 
Of all the online nutritional information, nutritional facts, medical and dietary sites there are to choose from, in an article entitled "How to ease the pain" The Sunday Times magazine, Culture, published a list of just five websites it considered reliable and informative.
This site was one of that five.



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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    About okra... if you boil it in plain water, it becomes 'slick' -- add a splash of vinegar to the water to prevent that.

    It's also great added to dishes with tomato. I like a tomato based soup with sliced okra as one of the veggies.

    Think Gumbo.

    I planted it in the garden one year, and some of the seeds dropped out onto the ground at season's end ... those little seeds came up next year, so it's very easy to grow.

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    Default Re: Okra The Cholesterol Lowering Miracle

    Quote Posted by TargeT (here)
    Quote Posted by Eligos (here)
    There is nothing wrong with high cholesterol, no need to lower it. Your body knows what it's doing.


    actually i'll go a step further, the more cholesterol you have in a non - sugar rich diet the healthier you will be, guarenteed.
    As the Three Stooges said, "I'll third that".

    And celery, three stalks a day, can lower your blood pressure by 14 points. If a pharmaceutical drug could do that you'd see million dollar commericals on TV touting the miracle. But stoney silence on Mother Nature's remedies!

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