Food that calms you down: Almond milk

By Thomson200 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

I should probably call this a drink that calms you down, but I want to keep everything in the same series so I hope you’ll let me get away with this. In this post I will be talking about the calming properties of almond milk.

Now here’s the thing, I have never actually drunk almond milk, I have eaten almonds and I have drunk milk but I’ve never had almond milk. I have however heard a lot, and I mean a lot of good things about it from various sources, the sources being people, health magazines, television and the internet. This is why I decided to look it up and write about it. Whether you are someone who already loves and enjoys almond milk or are as clueless as I am, I hope you enjoy reading this post.

First off, what is almond milk?

To put it simply, almond milk is a plant extract or plant milk which has a creamy texture and a nutty taste. It doesn’t contain any cholesterol or lactose which is why a lot of health nuts and people who are lactose – intolerant take it; also, since it comes from a plant a lot of vegans take it as a substitute to normal milk. Almond milk can be bought pre-packaged at most stores and it can even be made at home using a blender, water and almonds (wait, is it really that easy? Damn it, now I don’t have an excuse).

Almond milk is known to contain a lot of essential vitamins and nutrients like vitamin C, vitamin B6, vitamin E, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, zinc and more

Now as to the benefits of almond milk, well let’s look at this article from lifehack.org titled, “11 Benefits of Almond Milk You Didn’t Know About” ( http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/benefits-almond-milk.html ) written by Krissy Brady. For the sake of convenience I will only put down the list of benefits, you can check out the article for yourself for details.

1. It is good for weight management
2. It keeps your heart healthy
3. It keeps your bones strong
4. It keeps your skin healthy
5. It hardly does anything to your blood sugar
6. It helps keep your muscles strong and helps you heal better
7. It helps with digestion
8. It contains NO lactose
9. It tastes better than cow’s milk (I think that’s subjective)
10. It doesn’t spoil easily
11. You can make it yourself

Now lets us look at this article from organicfacts.org titled, “Health Benefits of Almond Milk”. This article also goes into great detail about the benefits of almonds but again I will only cover some of the basics, if you want more details you can see the article for yourself. So here are the benefits according to this article.

1. Good for blood pressure
2. Good for your heart
3. Keeps your muscles strong
4. Good for your kidneys
5. Keeps your skin healthy
6. Keeps your eyesight good
7. Good for your bones
8. Has anti-cancer properties
9. Keeps your immune system strong
10. Is a substitute for breast milk

As you can see there are a lot of health benefits to almond milk, but how does that help in terms of stress and anxiety? Well here is my take on it, it comes back to the healthy body, healthy mind post I wrote long ago (put link here). By taking almond milk we are able to keep our body healthy and so by extension we keep our mind healthy, making it easier to cope with stressful situations and to recover from anxiety more easily.

So there you have it, almond milk is good for stress, indirectly. If you feel like it you can try some almond milk for yourself, who knows, you might like it. As for me since I don’t really have an excuse anymore, I’m going to start blending.