How Does This Ayurvedic Food Improve Wellness?

CLINICAL AYURVEDIC REVIEW

Basil's warm and spicy aroma adds a passionate flare to any dish, bringing the heat of the Mediterranean sun to your table. Its bright green color and vigorous flavor is unmistakable in pesto. It adds verve to a home-made tomato sauce, and is a perky addition to any summertime salad.

Powerful Herbs in Your Spice Cabinet

Don't overlook the medicinal power of your spice cabinet! Like many common spices, Basil is a powerful healing herb. Each and every spice has unique healing properties. For this reason, in Ayurveda your spice cabinet is your medicine cabinet. Basil is the spice equivalent of a popular Ayurvedic herb called tulsi, but is a powerful herb in its own right.

Reduce Congestion & Breathe Freely

Whether dealing with a chronic lung condition or acute cold symptoms, basil can help cut through mucus and relieve congestion. It contains cinnamanic acid, which helps you breathe freely by enhancing circulation, breaking up and removing phlegm from your bronchial tubes.

Immune Boost

Basil is a good anti-bacterial herb with anti-inflammatory properties and a walloping punch of vitamin C. So, make a nice cup of basil tea when you feel a cold coming on! Alternatively, make a lemongrass soup heavily garnished with basil. By flushing the surface of your skin, sinuses, and lungs with blood that is rich with immune fighting cells, Basil can help you sweat out the bug! Like most members of the mint family, basil induces profuse sweating because of its aromatic qualities. In this case basil is also pungent and warming.

This concept of "sweating it out," is called releasing the exterior in chinese medicine. When your body realizes it's been exposed to a pathogen, your wei-qi, the part of your immune system responsible for defending your body through circulation and your skin, clamps down and closes your pores. Have you ever noticed that right before you get "really" sick, you get a neck ache, body aches, and a tight, cold chill throughout your body? You are feeling your wei-qi closing your pores and tightening up all the muscles in order to keep out "wind" pathogens.

In order to push the pathogen back out the way it came, Chinese Medicine, like Ayurveda, prescribes diaphoretic herbs to induce therapeutic sweating. As these herbs (like basil and ginger) begin to work, wei-qi relaxes and opens pores back up, you start to sweat, and your neck relaxes.

Use in Diabetes

The benefits of basil point strongly to one disease- diabetes. Basil has been shown to stabilize blood sugar, tonify the kidneys, reduces cholesterol, and aid in weight loss through it's diaphoretic action. Like all members of the mint family, basil is an effective nervine, so has a positive effect on neuropathy. It also sharpens your memory.

Basil for Heart Health

Basil is an excellent source of beta-carotene, a powerful anti-oxidant. Beta-carotene protects the cells that line your blood vessels from free radical damage. It also helps prevent free radicals from oxidizing cholesterol in the blood stream. Cholesterol only builds-up on your blood vessel walls to cause atherosclerosis after its been oxidized. So, incorporating lots of anti-oxidants into your diet can protect you from a heart attack or stroke, extreme end results of severe atherosclerosis. A cup of basil tea daily is excellent for heart health both by tonifying your heart and reducing cholesterol.

Basil is high in magnesium, the mineral responsible for relaxing muscles in your body, including your heart muscle. When your heart is relaxed, blood flow remains smooth and even to your heart, reducing the risk of irregular heart rhythms and stress induced high blood pressure. Basil also contains Omega 3 fatty acids, whose anti-inflammatory properties protect your heart.

Calms Inflammation for Pain Relief & Deep Healing

Basil offers relief from painful inflammation. A chemical in basil's volatile oil called eugenol has been shown to block activity of the same enzyme (cyclooxygenase) that aspirin and ibuprofen block in order to reduce painful inflammation. Basil also contains anti-inflammatory omega 3 fatty acids, while providing strong anti-oxidants in the form of beta-carotene.

Anti-oxidants, as mentioned in depth above, neutralize free radicals which are a contributing factor in disorders of chronic inflammation such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and asthma. A few fresh leaves of basil every day may help manage these disorders and other inflammatory conditions.

Buying & Preparation

Always choose fresh basil over dried where possible, as the dried herb quickly loses its flavor! Choose vibrant, deep green leaves free from dark spots or yellowing. It should look freshly picked. That said, it is nice to keep in your spice cabinet to sprinkle on chicken, beef, or give Italian flare to veggies. Choose organic if possible- irradiating basil greatly diminishes its levels of vitamin C and caratenoids.

Store fresh basil in the refrigerator wrapped in a slightly damp paper towel. Or simply place your bunch in a wide mouthed glass with an inch or two of water in the bottom. Basil comes in many varieties, such as Italian sweet basil. Purple basil, used in Asian countries, is more bitter. Other varieties include lemon basil, and the famous Ayurvedic herb Tulsi, also called Holy Basil.

Cooking Basil

Since the oils in basil are highly volatile, it is best to add the herb at the very end of cooking as a garnish. Basil loses it's flavor quickly when exposed to heat.

Basil is most famous as an ingredient in tomato sauce and classic pesto. It is nearly synonymous with Italian cooking. Basil's appeal reaches beyond the Mediterranean. Across the world it plays a prominent role in thai coconut curries and Vietnamese noodle soups. At home, try chopping fresh basil and sprinkling it on chicken.

You might not think of Basil as a dessert spice, yet it appears as a classy garnish atop exotic desserts like strawberry & balsamic ice cream, on a creme-brulee, or atop your favorite key lime pie. Basil can be a tasty bitter accent in sweet watermelon smoothies.
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