Beans and Legumes for your Health

Vegetarians have long relied on legumes--dried beans and peas--as a nutritious source of nonanimal protein. Meat eater or not, you'd be wise to do the same; lentils, chickpeas, and other beans have everything to offer the health-conscious eater.

Fibrous Wonders
Legumes could double as cholesterol-lowering pills; they're high in soluble fiber, which helps trap cholesterol and remove it from the body, in turn reducing your risk of heart disease. In a recent study, men who were given a diet containing 4 ounces of pinto and navy beans daily reduced their total cholesterol by an average of 19 percent, and their LDL cholesterol by 24 percent.

Foods with high fiber content also help keep blood sugar levels stable, which helps control diabetes. Soluble fiber helps lead insulin into individual cells and out of the bloodstream, where it can cause problems. Eating just one-half cup of beans a day has been shown to significantly improve blood sugar control.

All that fiber, along with plentiful complex carbohydrates, also make legumes a great choice for anyone who wants steady, slow-burning energy. (The best fiber choices include: black-eyed peas, kidney beans, chickpeas, lima beans, and black beans.) And beans give you a full feeling that makes you unlikely to overdo it on other, less healthy foods.

Anticancer Compounds
Beans contain compounds--lignans, saponins, isoflavones, phytic acid, and protease inhibitors--that have been shown to help prevent cancer. Protease inhibitors, for example, can stop normal cells from becoming cancerous in the early stages of cancer. And isoflavones help de-activate potent estrogens that can lead to breast cancer.

Healthy Protein
Like meat, beans are loaded with protein; unlike meat, they're not loaded with fat and calories.

Beans contain incomplete rather than complete protein. That means the protein is missing some of the ingredients to make it usable in your body. No problem--just do what vegetarians have been doing for centuries: combine beans with a starch such as rice that provides a complementary protein. But although beans and starches make a natural combination, you don't have to have them together in order to obtain complete protein; as long as you get two complementary proteins during the course of the day, you'll be fine.

Canned beans are just as nutritious as dried beans and will do just as much to help lower cholesterol. But if you use the canned kind, be sure to rinse them well first; they're packed in sodium-laden liquid.

Many people think that if certain foods are good, a lot is better.
This is not always the case, and high doses of certain food are actually toxic.

Read about the healthy food, research the vitamins and minerals and check with your health care provider if you are unsure about how much to eat and how much may be too much.

The best way to get the daily requirement of 13 essential vitamins is to eat a balanced diet that contains a variety of foods and take a "Standardized" (quality) multivitamin supplement.

Coenzyme Q10 is used by cells to produce energy needed for cell growth and maintenance. It is also used by the body as an antioxidant.

Policosanol Over 15 double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials have been published to date, documenting policosanol efficacy, safety, and tolerability. Policosanol has also been subject to several unpublished, open label studies. Clinical studies demonstrate that policosanol, in combination with a healthy diet and moderate exercise, is safe and beneficial for healthy adult men and women concerned about maintaining a normal range of existing cholesterol levels, and for whom their physician has determined that dietary supplementation rather than medical treatment is appropriate.