Picture yourself eating a nice juicy watermelon, while sitting in your lawn chair, near the edge of the pool with the sun beating down on your head. I know that that is one of my favorite things to do. Well did you know that while you are enjoying baking in the sun with our nice juicy watermelon it is also helping quench the inflammation that contributes to things like asthma, atherosclerosis, diabetes, colon cancer, and arthritis? Wow, I didn’t know that watermelons could do all of that neat stuff!

Watermelon is packed with vitamin C and a lot of vitamin A. Watermelon also contains the potent antioxidant, lycopene. Antioxidants like such go throughout your body neutralizing free radicals, that can cause a lot of damage to your body. They can oxidize cholesterol, forcing it to stick to blood vessel walls where it’s possible that it will lead to a heart attack or stroke. Free radicals can cause airways to clamp down and close leading to an asthma attack. They can cause things that lead to osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, and cause damage to the cells lining the colon making them cancer cells. Did you know that Vitamin C can help prevent all of those?

Watermelon provides 24.3% of the daily value of vitamin C, and 11.1% of the daily value of vitamin A. Watermelon also contains a fair amount of vitamin B which helps the energy for production. A full cup of watermelon contains only 48 calories! Did you know that there is no other fruit that is as high in water content and is as low in calories than watermelon, and it delivers more nutrients with each calorie!

Lycopene is also in high amounts in watermelon. Lycopene has been studied for its antioxidant and cancer preventing properties. Lycopene has been studied in humans and has been found to be protective against a list of cancers and more have been added on. Some examples of these cancers are: prostate cancer, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancers.

If that doesn’t give you enough reasons to choose a slice of watermelon versus a bag of crackers on a hot summer day, then read this. Lycopene has the ability to protect cells and other structures in the human body from damage in the oxygen level, and that has been linkedinto a human research center to help prevent heart disease. Protecting of the DNA inside of the white blood cells has also been thought to be an antioxidant role of lycopene.


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