Oranges are popular due to their natural sweetness, different types available and the diversity of uses. People consume them in juices and jams, eat them, use their peel to add a spicy flavor to cakes and desserts or burn it as an insect repellent.
Although it is particularly known for its vitamin C content, oranges contain other substances that can reduce inflammation and work against many other diseases such as depression.
Worldwide, depression is a great public health concern. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), he is the largest taxpayer to the non -fatal load of the disease, with more than 80 percent of this load represented in low and medium -sized countries.
According to a recent study, eating an orange every day can reduce the risk of a person from developing depression by 20 percent because citric fruit promotes the growth of bacteria called Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. Prausnitzii), which are intestinal -based microorganisms that affect the synthesis of serotonin and dopamine based on mood.
The study, led by Raaj Mehta, a Medicine Instructor at the Harvard Medicine Faculty and a doctor at the Massachusetts General Hospital, was based on the data set of the Health Study of Nurses II (NHS2). It began in 1989 with the intention of finding risk factors for great chronic diseases in women.
It involves more than 100,000 women, and approximately every two years provide researchers with detailed information about their lifestyle, diet, use of medicines and health.
The researchers had taken advantage of these data to seek evidence that the nurses who ate many citrus fruits had lower rates of future depression than those who did not.
In addition, a subset of participants in the NHS2 gave researchers several samples of their feces for a year. Using the DNA sequencing results of these stool samples, they searched for links between the intake of citrus and particular species of bacteria in the intestinal microbiome.
They discovered that eating average orange a day can reduce the risk of developing depression by approximately 20% and the effect seems to be specific to citrus.
When they look at the total consumption of fruits or vegetables of people, or other individual fruits such as apples or bananas, they do not see any relationship between their intake and risk of depression.
A unique part of the study is that a subset of participants in the NHS2 gave researchers several samples of their feces for a year.
Using the results of the DNA sequence of these stool samples, the researchers sought links between the intake of citrus and particular species of bacteria in the intestinal microbiome.
Since the NHS2 only included women and the study required that men confirm the findings, they sought a similar study called men's lifestyle validation study, where they also found that the growing levels of F. Prausnitzii were inversely correlated with depression risk scores. A kind of bacteria stood out: F. Prausnitzii was more abundant in people who were not depressed than in people who were, and eating many citrus fruits also associated with high levels of F. Prausnitzii.
The researchers said it is difficult to compare the effectiveness of citrus fruits with traditional antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, because we are talking about preventing depression, and those medications are generally used to treat depression once a person is already experiencing it.
However, in the future, they suggested more research to conclude than eating citrus fruits could be part of a strategy to manage depression that also involves these more traditional pharmaceutical products.
New research directed by the postdoctoral companion Annabel Matison of the healthy brain water center of UNSW Sydney (Cheba) published in the Journal of Affective Trasters also said that eating more fruit can reduce the risk of depression.
They examined the associations between the intake of fruits and vegetables and depression in adults 45 years or more. Participants came from multiple regions on six continents, including the United States, Sweden, Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia and Australia.
The researchers evaluated 7,801 community adults without depression and revealed a beneficial association between greater fruits and a lower risk of depression for nine years.
According to a different study of Edith Cowan University (ECU), those who consume more fruits and vegetables experience less stress than those that consume less. They discovered that those who consumed at least 470 grams of fruits and vegetables per day experienced 10% less stress than those who consumed less than 230 grams.
The study analyzed the relationship between stress levels and the consumption of fruits and vegetables in more than 8,600 Australians between the ages of 25 and 91 who participated in the study of diabetes, obesity and lifestyle of Australian diabetes of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute (AUSDIB).
As fruits and vegetables contain variable nutrients, it also seems likely that different types of fruits and vegetables can have different impacts on depression. The evidence of citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables associated with improved mental well -being is particularly strong.