By Wendell Fowler
I must confess: I underestimated the radish as a contributor to my temple’s health. Sandi likes them and frequently brings a bunch home from the market, and if I remember, add them to our daily salad of dark, leafy greens, veggies, nuts and seeds, beans, apple cider vinegar with Mother and healthy oil. Otherwise, they’ll go bad from my neglect.
Red, round, crunchy and crisp, radishes are one of many nutritious root vegetables, belonging to the brassica family. Thought to have originated in China centuries ago, today, the pungent root it is one of the most widely cultivated crops throughout the world. In Chinese culture, radish was believed to create wholesome health. A Chinese proverb says, “Eating pungent radish and drinking hot tea, let the starved doctors beg on their knees.”
The low-calorie root is an excellent source of antioxidants, electrolytes, minerals, vitamins and dietary fiber. Fresh radishes are a good source of vitamin C, with as much C as a 10 oz. glass of OJ! C helps the temple scavenge harmful free radicals, prevent cancers, inflammation and boosts immunity; our department of defense. They are also a good source of calcium, potassium, folic acid, adequate levels of folates, vitamin B-6, riboflavin, thiamin and minerals such as iron, magnesium, copper and calcium.
Further, crunchy radishes contain detoxifying antioxidant agent’s zeaxanthin, lutein and beta-carotene. Radishes are very good detoxifies for the liver and stomach too. Radishes contain antioxidant sulforaphane with a proven role against prostate, breast, colon and ovarian cancers by its cancer-cell growth inhibition and cytotoxic effects on cancer cells.
It’s beyond my bandwidth why, over our lifetime, we weren’t taught more about the thousands upon thousands of health-sustaining plants created by the Great Spirit for civilization. Since ancient times, natural medicine has been the backbone of traditional healing around the globe. What happened: The Industrial Revolution? We’re so profoundly uprooted from earth’s apothecary that many haven’t seen plants, other than in the grocery.
Nature is the master craftsman of an infinite array of molecular entities: a generous resource for preventing and treating diseases. Long before chemicals were manufactured in labs, people used plants for medicine. Big Pharma knows this intimately as most plant-sourced drugs are “reinvented by scientists” or, as God intended, come organically from plants. There are thousands of phytonutrients derived from plants for use as drugs and medicines.
Pharma doesn’t want you to know nature provides, otherwise you won’t need their alchemy resulting in ghastly side effects. May all beings reconnect and be free from suffering and its causes.
