13/06/2015
THE DATE AND ITS USES AS DESCRIBED IN THE QUR'AN
"The pains of labour drove her to the trunk of a date-palm. She [Maryam] said, "Oh if only I had died before this time and was something discarded and forgotten!" A voice called out to her from under her, "Do not grieve! Your Lord has placed a small stream at your feet. Shake the trunk of the palm towards you and fresh, ripe dates will drop down onto you. Eat and drink and delight your eyes…" (Qur'an, 19:23-26)
There is considerable wisdom in the way that Allah recommends Maryam to eat this fruit. The date is an excellent choice of food for the pregnant women and for those who have just given birth. This is a widely accepted scientific fact. Maryam was inspired to understand this point, in order to make her own labour easier. The date has one of the highest sugar levels, 60-65%, of all fruits. Doctors recommend that pregnant women be given foods containing fruit sugar on the day they give birth. The aim behind this is to energise and revitalise the mother's weakened body and at the same time to stimulate the milk hormones and increase the levels of mother's milk essential to the new-born baby.
Eating Dates While Nearing Your Due Date
A small but impressive study showed the following:
69 women ate at six dates per day for 4 weeks prior to their estimated delivery date. 45 women ate no dates. The women who ate the dates every day had the benefit of a more ripe cervix on the big day. Check this out:
The mean cervical dilation for the women who ate dates was 3.52 centimeters while the non-date eating women had a mean cervical dilation of only 2.02 centimeters.
The date group was able to maintain membrane integrity. In the US delivery room, that equates to less intervention and much less pressure. Approximately 83 women who ate dates entered labor with intact membranes while only 60% of the women who did not consume dates had intact membranes at the start of labor.
96% of women who consumed dates enjoyed the benefit of spontaneous labor, while only 47% of the date-free women shared that benefit.
The use of medication like oxytocin to induce labor was significantly lower in the women who ate dates. Only 28% of the women who ate dates were given this kind of labor “help” while 47% of the women who didn’t eat dates were able to avoid the use of medicines like oxytocin.
The latent phase of the first stage of labor was also reduced by eating dates. Date eating mamas enjoyed only laboring in this stage for a mean of 510 minutes compared to 906 minutes for the mamas that did not consume this fruit.
The study called for a randomized controlled trial given these impressive differences claiming that it appeared as though simply eating six of these tasty fruits from the date palm tree could significantly reduce the need for induction and augmentation of labor.
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