Health Benefits of Oysters for Longevity and Vitality

Oysters are generally viewed as a healthy good. Across the internet, there is plenty of articles outlining the health benefits of oysters. According to WebMD, oysters contain all 9 amino acids, are packed with protein, all sorts of vitamins and essential minerals, and are low in calories and fat. This not only makes them amazing, nutritious foods to help replenish vitamins and minerals, but also great foods to include for weight loss and if you are working out.

 

The vitamin and mineral content in oysters can have significant benefits to most of your body. Calcium, zinc, iron, and copper all help promote bone health. Some vitamins, including C and E, are beneficial to your immune system with their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The boost to your immune system, along with other things, can help speed up healing and recovery.

 

Oysters as an Aphrodisiac

Known as nature’s Viagra, the oyster has long been romanticized as an aphrodisiac. Throughout history, well-known lovers from Casanova to Henry VIII, feasted regularly on trays of raw oysters.

 

It’s a long-standing belief that eating oysters, especially raw, will increase your libido. Is there fact behind the fiction? Oysters gained their reputation at a time of nutritionally deficient diets.

 

Their substantial nutritional benefits would have improved overall health, and in doing so, would have likely contributed to an increased sex drive. Oysters do contain dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps to govern brain activity and influence sexual desire in men and women. The passion produced from raw oysters, some have suggested, is linked to oysters being a food high in zinc, an essential mineral, recently described as a new super food.

 

In fact, oysters have some of the highest levels of zinc of any food. And zinc is one of the most important minerals we can consume. Zinc is beneficial to strengthening your immune system to help it protect you against all kinds of illnesses, inflammation, and infection. It is also used to help heal wounds. Since consuming vitamins and minerals from food is more beneficial than from supplements, oysters are a great start to increasing your intake of many essential nutrients!