The Popular Tropic Fruit That Can Lower Your Blood Glucose, Improve Sleep, And Prevent Heart Disease

Small health wins can add up, which is why it's a good practice to add nutrient-dense foods to your diet. The more nutritional value a food has, the more benefits it can offer you.

Fortunately, there's no shortage of versatile, functional foods to discover. And one that checks a lot of health boxes is passion fruit.

If you're new to passion fruit, you might be surprised at its compact size. But don't worry: It delivers plenty of health value. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the fragrant, sweet-sour, seedy pulp of just one average-sized passion fruit (about 18 grams) clocks in at 1.87 grams of fiber and 5.22 milligrams of magnesium — all for under 18 calories. In addition to those nutrients, passion fruit is filled with vitamins and compounds that give it antioxidant properties.

What do these nutritional elements mean? Essentially, this tropical fruit may be able to help you control your blood sugar, reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, and boost your sleep quality.

Let's look at the relationship between eating passion fruit and managing your blood sugar. Passion fruit falls low on the glycemic index (GI), as shown in a 2015 study in Food Science and Technology. This means that it's not likely to cause a sudden sugar surge after consumption. On the contrary, your blood sugar numbers should stabilize after eating low-GI foods like passion fruit.

If you're relying on foods to manage your blood sugars, but you crave sweets, passion fruit may be useful as part of a low-GI diet. Yes, the fruit has sugar, but its naturally occurring sugars can have blood sugar benefits because of its fiber content.

Can't find fresh passion fruit? The fruit's juice may also give you blood sugar management advantages, despite its low fiber content.

For example, findings from a 2024 study from Current Research in Physiology showed that when subjects drank passion fruit juice, their post-meal blood sugar levels significantly dropped compared to subjects who drank a placebo beverage. Subjects also saw an improvement in their ability to focus on certain tasks, which might give you another reason to try passion fruit juice alone or in a tropical passion fruit juice smoothie. The aforementioned study also reported a dip in the systolic blood pressure readings of subjects who consumed passion fruit juice, offering a window into the potential heart-friendliness of passion fruit and its natural byproducts.

What makes passion fruit good for your heart? In its raw form, passion fruit contains fiber, and fiber can be useful in lowering cholesterol and blood pressure. However, even passion fruit juice may possess cardioprotective capabilities because of its antioxidants. A 2019 article from Biomolecules recommended using antioxidants to benefit the heart and vascular system without the need for drugs. The article concluded that consuming antioxidants could be a valid therapy for treating cardiovascular conditions.

Even if you juice your passion fruit, you won't lose antioxidants in the finished product, as determined in a 2018 study that was outlined in Food Research International. The experiment demonstrated that passion fruit juice had antioxidant stability, bioavailability, and functionality.

Passion fruit may provide another benefit as well: improved sleep. As mentioned, passion fruit contains sizable amounts of magnesium. And magnesium may make it easier to fall asleep as well as allow you to sleep longer.

You can't depend on the magnesium in passion fruit to solve all your snoozing issues, though. In an interview with the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Naoki Umeda, an integrative medicine specialist, said that the studies around taking magnesium to support sleep aren't conclusive.

However, Dr. Umeda admits that "some people have found it helps them", so he's not opposed to the practice since magnesium "may help regulate neurotransmitters that are directly related to sleep." And that's a good excuse to try this tiny but mighty fruit.