Table 4.

Health benefits of polyphenols in lentils.

Health Benefits	Mechanism of Action	Ref.
Prevention and management of diabetes	Improves blood glucose, lipid and lipoprotein metabolism.	[73,74]
Anti-diabetic	Reduces fasting blood sugar (FBS), glycemic load and glycemic index in streptozocin (STZ)-induced diabetic animals.	[75,76,90,91]
Reduced diabetic complications	Regulates starch digestibility, glycemic load and glycemic index.	[78]
Anti-obesity	Controls post-prandial glucose and fat digestion.	[83]
Reduction of CVDs	Reduces the total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and pathological manifestation of cardio-morphometric analysis.	[86]
Reduce the glycemic index and hyperlipidemic effects in diabetic animal model	Increases the high density lipoprotein (HDL) levels and reduces blood glucose levels.	[76]
Chemo-preventive on colorectal carcinogenesis	Reduces the number of dysplastic lesions and neoplasms in the colon of rats.	[88,89]
Antioxidant	Reduces the formation of reactive oxygen species.	[79,80,92,93,94,95,96,97,98]
Reduction of CVDs	Reduces blood pressure by inhibiting angiotensin I-converting enzyme.	[84]
Reduced risk of hypertension and coronary artery disease	Antihyperlipidemic, hypohomocysteinemic, anti-cholesterolemic effects.	[85]
Chemo-preventive, anticancer	Uptake of carcinogens, activation or formation, detoxification, binding to DNA and fidelity of DNA repair.	[88,99]
Gut motility and potential role in diabetic patients	Prevents the impairment of metabolic control in diabetic rats.	[1]
Oxidative Stress-Induced Hepatotoxicity	Lentil phenolic extract protects liver cells against oxidative stress, partly by inducing cellular antioxidant system; thus, it has hepatoprotective effects	[100]