Ripe Avocado is a delicious fruit that is packed with vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that can help keep you healthy in abundant & diverse ways:
Potassium
Potassium is critical for healthy functioning and most people do not get enough of it from their diet, primarily because they don’t consume enough plants, which are rich in potassium. Bananas are rich in potassium, but ounce for ounce, avocados have more.
Protect Your Eyes
Avocados have lutein and zeaxanthin, which absorb light waves that are harmful to your vision. People who eat lots of foods rich in these antioxidants are less likely to have age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in older adults.
Boost Your Mood
Avocados have significant amounts of folate. People who don't get enough of this B vitamin (B9) are more prone to depression and are less likely to respond well to antidepressants. This is because antidepressants are designed to regulate specific neurotransmitter systems—but upregulation of a system puts increased demand on manufacture and re-supply.
Folate is a key cofactor to enzymes involved in the metabolic recycling of common neurotransmitters. Additionally, Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase (MTHFR) is the rate-limiting enzyme in the methyl cycle; it is encoded by the MTHFR gene, for which there are known variants that show impaired enzyme efficiency.
Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase (MTHFR) Deficiency is the most common genetic cause of elevated serum levels of homocysteine. This is important given the incidence of cardiovascular disease, as well as the incidence of dementia, climbs dramatically with increasing serum homocysteine levels, especially above 6.
Healthy methylation metabolism is crucial for a number of functions including B vitamin activation, DNA & RNA metabolism, neurotransmitter metabolism, & epigenetic control of gene expression, to name but a few. Avocado and its folate (vit B9) content can be considered a methyl resupply support.
Optimize Metabolism-lose weight
Avocado has a worthwhile amount of fiber, the daily requirement for which a great many of us fail to get, unless we happen to love vegetables, are vegetarian, or perhaps vegan. Fiber helps us feel full, so we don’t overeat. Fiber also fuels our microbiome which regulates our macronutrient metabolism, our gastrointestinal integrity and our immune defense response; and although avocados are rich in fat, it's mainly healthy monounsaturated fat. Research suggest that monounsaturated fat in your diet helps trim your waistline which is great given waist circumference is known to predict insulin resistance, a common prelude to full-blown metabolic syndrome and diabetes and cardiovascular disease among other chronic diseases.
Energy Powerpacks
Avocados are packed with a variety of other B vitamins, too, including thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), and niacin (B3), which are necessary for your body to convert the food you eat into energy it can use. Vitamins serve as cofactors to important enzymatic reactions. Avocados are especially rich in niacin (B3), which helps fight inflammation in the body & protects your arteries by improving serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
Heart Healthy
Beta-sitosterol in avocados helps lower cholesterol absorption (probably through competitive inhibition, or competition for binding sites for absorption). Beta-sitosterol lowers triglycerides, and lowers blood pressure too, all of which are also…
Brain Healthy
Avocados give you a decent dose of vitamin E, which may help protect against Alzheimer's disease and slow decline in your memory and thinking skills. This likely has to do with vit E's antioxidant properties – its oxidoreductive capacity can heal cell damage caused over time by things like pollution and radiation from the sun. But vit E’s protective properties may have to do with other, as yet unidentified, properties of vit E.
ApoE4 carriers are at 3xs the risk, relative to the general population, for the cognitive decline that is Late Onset Alzheimer’s dementia; E4 carriers are also known to require increased antioxidant support, and profound dietary changes that result in reduced chronic inflammation, and these largely uninformed 75 million American ApoE4 carriers, we’re talking nearly one ¼th of our entire population, make up a huge proportion of Alzheimer’s patients—not because APOE4 is a highly penetrant gene, but because our Standard American Diet (SAD) virtually COMPLETES it (takes a 30% risk and transforms it into actual disease expression).
Skin Care Value
Antioxidants, like vitamin C, can help keep your skin looking youthful by smoothing out wrinkles. Avocado paste, rich in vit C, can be applied directly to the face as a paste-mask for antiaging effects, and avocado paste may also be applied to help heal a sunburn
Anti-Cancer Effects
Avocados have oleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid (also found in olive oil and nuts) Oleic acid has been demonstrated to slash the odds of breast cancer, according to a study of more than 4,000 women. And a compound in avocados called Avocatin B can kill leukemia cells, according to a lab study.
Improve Prostate Health
Beta-sitosterol, a phytonutrient, a plant sterol, may help relieve symptoms of an enlarged prostate. (It's part of a family of phytonutrients that help block your body from absorbing ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol—the mechanism is likely competitive inhibition of absorption. Avocados have more than four times as much beta-sitosterol as oranges, the next richest fruit source.
Avocados Help Absorb Fat Soluble Nutrients
Fat-soluble nutrients such as vitamins A, D, E, and K, and the antioxidant lycopene, and virtually innumerable other fat-soluble phytonutrients –are better absorbed when you eat them along with some fat—such as in avocado.
THIS MUCH Already Qualifies Avocado as a SUPERFRUIT indeed!