Pumpkin seed oil and its benefits

Pumpkin has a very large use in culinary and can be prepared in many different ways. Its flesh is already known to be rich in a number of nutritions, but the seeds are also used a lot as the snacks. They are a source of very beneficial constituents, such as the vitamins (B, C, D and K), minerals (calcium, potassium and phosphorous), carbohydrates, unsaturated fatty acids and amino acids. It has rather unusual smell and taste because of that, one must get used to consuming it. But it is advisable to make this effort since this oil is very healthy.

Processing the oil

Because all of that, people have come up with the solution of extracting the oil from the pumpkin seeds, so that the all beneficial nutrients could be found in the essential form. It is rather of a reddish and green colour, and it is generally used for cooking, or as the addition to the salads. The problem is that it is very dense so sometimes it can be found in the stores in the somewhat diluted and weakened form. That is the result of adding the oil from sunflower to the pumpkin seed oil so that it could be more liquid and in that case the diluted form has not so many health benefits.

Anyway, the oil is usually drained from the seeds from the specie called the styrian pumpkin which is green and yellow from the outside and its seeds haven’t the outer covering (unlike the seeds of the other cultivated species). The characteristic of this specie of pumpkin of not having the shell makes the process of extracting much simpler and faster. First of all the seeds are exposed to a dry heat and after that squeezed so that the oil is drained from them. However it is also used in medicine especially as the ingredient of the homemade folk remedies for treating some conditions and various health problems.

The health benefits of the pumpkin seed oil

So, the effectiveness of using the oil from the seeds of pumpkin, is mostly popular concerning treating naturally the conditions associated with the bladder and the prostate. It actually means that this oil can lower the risk of getting the malignant tumor of the prostate and treat this condition by making the cancer to advance more slowly. It is good to point out that this oil reduces and thus maintains the normal amount the cholesterol in the blood.

Lately, this oil has been introduced into the world of aromatherapy as the main connective agent.