The health benefits of thyme include protection against food poisoning, improved mood and well-being, natural anti-fungal, decreasing inflammation and pain, boosting brain health, and enhancing respiratory function. Other advantages include improving digestive tract health and acting as a diuretic to balance the body's water and electrolyte balances.
What is thyme?
Thyme is a highly versatile herb that may be used in a variety of dishes, particularly those that originates from the Mediterranean. Thyme has a strong, distinctive odour that is slightly reminiscent of mint, and it may be used dried or fresh. Thyme is a nutritionally packed spice that outperforms many others and deserves to be included in your diet due to its nutritional profile and the presence of numerous phytochemicals beneficial to health.
Thyme comes in diverse forms and is all healthy for your meals. Are you curious as to what these advantages are? Let's have a look at them:
1. Protect You From Food Poisoning.
Food cooked with thyme has been found to last longer than food not prepared with thyme. More intriguing is the fact that thyme may actively fight bacteria that is ready to fester and cause food poisoning in food that is about to go bad. Food poisoning causes vomiting, diarrhoea, and even fever, which if not treated promptly, can lead to serious dehydration. Lack of access to adequate sanitation is a serious problem in African countries. This is especially essential if you eat fresh, uncooked foods like salad vegetables, which may be contaminated with salmonella without your knowledge. You may either use a thyme solution to rinse the raw ingredients or add it to the mix.
2. Thyme Is Good For Your Mood And Well-Being.
Thyme is made up of a variety of compounds, one of which is known as carvacrol. When eaten consistently for 7 days, this substance was proven to have favourable benefits on mood improvement. It accomplishes this by raising levels of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters involved in motivation, drive, and general mood regulation. Though the exact amounts that should be ingested are unknown, consuming a small bit of food every day is likely to be quite safe.
3. Thyme use may reduce the risk of cancer.
It is generally known that different essential oils have cancer-fighting qualities, but carvacrol is the component in thyme that does this. Carvacrol prevents both the multiplication occurrence and the migration growth of cancer cells to other regions of the body, which might help prevent cancer or tumour formation. One of the worst consequences for a cancer patient is the spread of cancer because it becomes tenfold more difficult to treat. Thyme can aid with favourable results if cancer is already established and can help reduce risk. When it comes to colon cancer, this impact appears to be very strong.
4.Thyme Has Antifungal Properties.
Thyme is not only efficient in killing germs, but it also works as an antifungal agent. Thyme can be used to treat the symptoms of candida infections, such as yeast infections, skin rashes, and oral thrush. Try to incorporate Thyme into your diet as much as possible, or take a drop or two of the essential oil thymol if you prefer. Maintaining a healthy fungal load benefits the health of your probiotic bacterial colonies, which benefits your immune system. Thyme can be prepared into a topical solution and applied topically to afflicted parts of the skin to aid in the treatment of fungal infections.
5. Relieves Pain And Inflammation.
For our brains to experience pain when we sustain an injury of any kind, chemical molecules must be involved. An enzyme called cyclooxygenase is one of the primary chemical mediators, facilitating localized inflammation in an attempt to isolate the source region. This, however, causes excruciating pain and is a common method by which pain medications operate.
Thyme can also reduce the pain and discomfort we feel by as much as 80% by suppressing the amount of this enzyme (abbreviated as COX).
Thyme can be eaten or made into a topical treatment and applied to the painful region. This mixture may also help with common aches and pains including muscle and joint discomfort.
6. It is beneficial to your brain's health.
Our brains, like any other part of the body, degrade and disintegrate as we age, even though numerous other variables are at work. One of them is oxidation, which may induce negative alterations in the brain at speeds that should only be experienced by the elderly. That's where thyme comes in; high in antioxidants, thyme can help you keep your brain healthy for a long time. In a study on rodents, individuals that were given a thyme supplement had a significantly healthier brain, similar to that of much younger mice. Thyme also appears to protect essential fats like omega-3, which are known to help us maintain mental health and cognitive function long into the old life.
7. Thyme Improves Respiratory Function.
Healthy lungs are crucial for overall health, as all cells in the body require ample oxygen. Thyme has long been used to assist normal lung function and alleviate the symptoms of respiratory deficiency bronchitis. Bronchitis is a lung ailment that causes inflammation of the bronchioles, which causes breathing to become shallow and laborious. Thyme has anti-inflammatory properties in the lungs, aids mucus thinning, and kills microorganisms that might be the source of an underlying illness. Thyme also has an antibacterial effect, so anyone suffering from respiratory problems should use it.
8. Supports the health of your digestive tract.
Our digestive tracts are often taken for granted, even though they constitute one of our body's major defence mechanisms. Fortunately, thyme is available to help our digestive tract in times of need. For starters, thymol, an essential oil contained in thyme, aids digestion and peristaltic muscle contractions, ensuring that food does not remain in the stomach for lengthy periods. It also relieves severe and uncomfortable stomach cramps and decreases bloating caused by malabsorption. To aid digestion, either consume more of it in your regular meals or use a drop or two of essential oils as needed.
9. Thyme Is A Diuretic.
Under normal circumstances, the body balances water and electrolyte levels to prevent us from retaining too much fluid or losing too much and becoming dehydrated. However, there are times when we require more diuresis—or urination—for example when we have high blood pressure or congestive heart failure. Maintaining kidney function also necessitates frequent diuresis, since retaining your urine for long periods increases your chance of acquiring kidney stones. Thyme is a moderate natural diuretic that helps to balance your fluid and electrolyte balances by gently encouraging the flow of urine. Diuresis might also help you lose weight.
10. Thyme adds taste to your meals.
Thyme gives your meal an extra layer of refreshing taste without overwhelming it. This herb goes well with roasted or braised meats like lamb, beef, or pig, as well as vegetables and seafood. Thyme spice may also be used in savoury baked products.
