When it comes to fruit, I tend to be a seasonal eater. For instance, oranges are a frequent lunch accompaniment during the winter months; while a handful of strawberries combined with a wedge or two of cantaloupe and honeydew makes a delicious morning breakfast triumvirate in the summertime.

This tendency of mine also applies to vegetables. Because of this tendency, I tend to have more of certain foods that accompany those vegetables. And it’s not ranch dressing for cucumber slices or peanut butter for celery stalks. The certain food I speak of is apple cider vinegar for my chilled cucumbers in the summer or as a subtle dressing to my steamed cauliflower. But because of the natural health world’s belief in apple cider vinegar and its health benefits, I’d be wise to start implementing it into my diet with a bit more frequency than just the summer. And so should you.

Apple cider vinegar is more than just a sweet, yet tangy accompaniment to vegetables. It’s also been found to be an effective treatment in getting rid of warts and treating lice in some studies. Others find it a useful cleansing agent for common household cleaning. But apple cider vinegar’s usefulness goes far beyond wart removal kitchen tidying. It also helps the body by cleansing the joints of what are called uric acid crystals. The kidneys are charged with eliminating these crystals from the body, which form as a result of the waste products our body naturally produces. Sometimes, though, the body is overwrought with these acid crystals, and wind up accumulating in the joints. Debilitating diseases like arthritis, bursitis and gout aren’t far away once this happens.

Thanks to the healing properties found in apple cider vinegar, just one to two tablespoons mixed with honey in a glass of water can help heal creaky joints, perhaps preventing arthritis from forming if taken regularly.

There have been other promising findings regarding apple cider vinegar and its positive effect on the body. For instance, a 2007 study found that people with Type II diabetes lowered their blood sugar levels between 4 and 6 percent in the mornings after taking two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar the night before. Other studies have found apple cider vinegar to be an effective treatment in lowering cholesterol, in the ongoing battle of the bulge, and as an elixir in lowering blood pressure.

While these results certainly seem promising, the results of many of these studies were couched with words like “may be beneficial,” which leaves health professionals questioning whether the apple cider vinegar is the catalyst or something else that accompanied the apple cider vinegar. Still other studies were performed on rats, not on people, leaving additional questions on whether the results can be translated to the human race.

The long and short of it is that more research needs to be done before any scientific studies are released that give definitive credit to apple cider vinegar being a legitimate health promoter. But we in the natural health world believe there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that consuming moderate amounts of apple cider vinegar (i.e. one to two tablespoons) every day is a great way to increase the health of our inner (with regards to the flushing out of uric acid crystals and the general tastiness of apple cider vinegar) and outer selves (apple cider vinegar is believed to be a useful agent in giving one’s skin and hair a healthy glow).