One Superfood That’s Better than 99% of What You Eat

So today I want to talk about a super medicine that's a super medicine because it's actually a super food. Let's talk about pumpkins. So this is a pumpkin, Cucurbita Pepo, just a regular old pumpkin. And forever, people have been eating these amazing vegetables as a food source. But they also have some remarkable medicinal properties. And I want to talk about that a little bit. This is what I would call a functional food. So many of the things that we're ingesting in the modern diet are just empty calories. You know, they have very, very little benefit to our bodies. And I think it's time that we start realizing that if we don't give the body what it needs, the body can't do what it needs to do. And we talk all the time on this channel and in the Homegrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine about medicinal herbs, you know, medicinal plants that have phytochemistry that's anti-inflammatory or anxiolytic or antibacterial or immune stimulating. All these amazing specific actions that plants can have to stimulate and improve the function of our body's resources and responses. But we don't talk enough about foods and about nutrition. And pumpkin is a glorious example. This is actually been shown to have all kinds of medicinal benefits, but almost all of those medicinal benefits are because of the nutrition. Let's just give you an example. This plant, the pumpkin, you can eat the flesh of it, right? Or you can eat the seeds and they're both really nutritious, really good for you. And they provide a foundation to give your body the tools to do all the jobs that it needs to do. Let's talk about digestion. Okay. Pumpkin has a lot of fiber in it. And fiber is a phenomenal cleansing agent, a very natural organic way to clean out the bowels, you know, so it keeps your stools normal. It's great for constipation. It's also great for diverticulitis, which is when your body, because of chronic inflammation and the chronic ingestion of things that aren't food, makes little pouches, little cul-de-sacs in the wall of the intestine, little dead ends, where fecal matter gets in there and just ferments and gets all kinds of inflammation and pain. Well, pumpkin is great for cleaning that out. It's just this gentle, natural broom that sweeps things out and keeps things moving. So you don't have those kinds of issues. The fiber is also a fantastic food source for the microflora of your gut, the beneficial bacteria that are moderating immune function. They're aiding substantially in digestion. They're producing neurotransmitters like serotonin that make our brains feel like everything's going to be okay today, that modulate sleep cycles. You know, the pumpkin also contains tryptophan, which is an amino acid that also helps with serotonin production and melatonin production and modulating sleep cycles. So if you're having insomnia, eat pumpkin. And not because it's sedating and knocks you out, but because it makes your brain do what it's supposed to do or makes the bacteria produce neurotransmitters that have that same function to help make you sleep when you're supposed to sleep. Pumpkin also contains an enormous amount of carotenoids. And carotenoids are things like beta-carotene and lutein, and there's a lot of them. And pumpkin has a lot of them. And they do all kinds of things. They're really fantastically full of antioxidants that help disrupt free radical production and longevity. They just make it so that you don't have oxidative stress, which is so damaging and deteriorating the tissues all over your body. And that decreases inflammation, right? Decreases pain. Pumpkins also contain a lot of vitamins. They contain beta-carotene, which is also a carotenoid. But beta-carotene is the chemical that your body uses. It's the raw material to make vitamin A. And vitamin A is wildly important to eye health. And so it helps to slow down and prevent things like macular degeneration and other degenerative issues with your vision and with your eye health. It contains a lot of zinc. It contains a lot of vitamin C. What are they doing? Well, everything. I mean, a lot of your body functions are related to those kinds of vitamins and minerals, and especially repair and construction issues. Zinc and vitamin C are both critical to making collagen, which is what all your connective tissues are made of. All your ligaments and all your tendons and your skin and your cornea, all those things are made out of collagen. And so eating pumpkin helps your skin to be healthy. It helps your corneas to be healthy. It helps your tendons and ligaments to be healthy and strong. The pumpkin also helps protect your skin from ultraviolet radiation and ultraviolet radiation damage from the sunshine. It helps your eyes and your corneas not be damaged by ultraviolet radiation. So that's really important. And while we're talking about pumpkins, let's not forget the seeds. The seeds are amazingly good for you too. Lots of nutrients. One of the things that both the flesh and the seeds have, and the seeds are a little higher, is phytosterols. And phytosterols have some significant benefits. One is for decreasing prostate enlargement. They can help with benign prostatic hyperplasia. But they also have some documented value in preventing cancers, and particularly prostate cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer. There are colon cancer, a lot of them. And the flesh does that too, but the seeds are great. So, you know, eat the seeds too. The whole plant is a tremendous nutrition source. Pumpkin also can help with weight loss in a couple of ways. First of all, it has all that fiber, you know, and that's insoluble and soluble fiber. And we could get into the details of why that matters, but they're both really good for you. But the fiber is bulking. It makes you feel full, and that's good. The fiber also binds up some of the sugars and interferes with sugar absorption. So you're not getting as much of the simple sugars in your system, which you don't need. There's also chemistry in the pumpkin that helps to modulate insulin levels. So that can help prevent diabetes or help turn around type 2 diabetes a little bit if you're doing other things, dietary and otherwise. But things like insulin resistance can be impacted by eating pumpkin. What else? Magnesium. It's got a ton of magnesium. It's got a ton of potassium and phosphorus. Just really extraordinarily good. Magnesium is great for relaxing muscles and for improving normal contracture and relaxation of muscles. You know, I mean, you can contract, but you got to relax when you're done contracting, right? That's a system. And the calcium helps contraction and the magnesium helps relaxation. So it's great after a workout to decrease all the muscle tension and to help the healing it has anti-inflammatory properties. Again, because of nutritional constituents that can help after you've had a hard day at the gym, you know, just to help those muscles rebuild and repair and restore, which is why you're working out, right? Break them down and build them up, break them down and build them up. Pumpkin is fantastic for that. It decreases cholesterol. It has a significant impact on hypertension, high blood pressure. So, and like I said, all of these things, all of these functions are principally nutritional. And so, like I said, the pumpkin is a fantastic food and because it's a real food, a fantastic nourishing superhero for our bodies, it does all kinds of medicinal things. You know, we talk a lot about medicinal plants, you know, to cure this and fix that. And they're fantastic. But if you're taking a lot of medicinal plants, or if you're taking a lot of medications for a lot of different problems and you're not eating the things that your body needs to have, you're missing the boat. If you give the body what it needs, and this is a fantastic example of an astoundingly nutrient-rich resource that your body needs. If you're giving your body what it needs, it'll take good care of you. So, I would encourage you to get more pumpkin in your diet. You can eat things that are made with pumpkin, but you can also just take a scoop of pumpkin and put it in your smoothie in the morning. And that gives you all those vitamins, all those minerals. We didn't even talk about all the fatty acids that it has that are great for you, which also do all the things we talked about. They help immunity. They help, you know, decrease inflammation. They do all kinds of things. But putting that in your diet will decrease your appetite because you're full. It'll boost your vitamins, boost your healthy fats, boost minerals. Just really an extraordinarily beneficial dietary supplement. And I recommend it strongly. So, there you have it. A functional food. So much better for you than 99% of what you're eating, I promise. Have some pumpkin. We talk a lot about other properties of pumpkin. It has some interesting medicinal properties that are directly medicinal. Some anti-parasitic properties and some other things. And we talk about that in addition to all these other things in the Homegrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine and hundreds of other medicinal plants, too. Have a look at it at homegrownherbalist.net. It's a great community. It's a great program. You have lifetime enrollment and you can learn all kinds of things that can be a great blessing to you and your loved ones. I'm Dr. Patrick Jones from the Homegrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine. Thanks for listening. 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