Eating this fruit every day can reduce the risk of depression by 20%: Study

A healthy intestine helps you digest your own food and absorb its nutrients, strengthens your immune system and reduces your risk for some chronic illnesses.

But not everyone understands that having a happy belly also has a huge impact on your mood as about 90% of your body’s serotonin and over 50% of your dopamine – two important neurotransmitters responsible for making you feel good – produced in your gut.

For this reason, scientists often call the intestine the “second brain”.

And while an apple a day can keep the doctor away, research shows that an orange a day can keep blues in the breast.

Dr. Raaj Mehta, a doctor and instructor at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues analyzed the data of over 30,000 women and found that those who consumed many citrus were much less likely to develop depression than those who did not.

Their findings were published at the end of last year in Microbiome magazine.

“We found that eating a middle orange a day can reduce the risk of developing depression by about 20%,” Mehta told Harvard newspaper last month.

“And the effect seems to be specific to citrus fruits. When looking at the overall consumption of people’s fruits or vegetables, or other individual fruits such as apples or bananas, we do not see any relationship between taking and risk of depression.”

Using stool samples, researchers found that they ate more citrus fruits were associated with increased levels of a useful intestinal bacterium called faecalibacterium Prausnitzii (F. Prausnitzii), which is known for its anti-inflammatory properties, but can also help their dopamine and dopamine.

A study published in 2022 found that eating fewer citrus fruits was clearly associated with an increased risk of depression in patients with chronic health failure.

However, Mehta noted that it is “difficult to compare the effectiveness of citrus fruits with traditional antidepressants … because we are talking about prevention depression, and those medicines are usually used to treat Depression after a person is already experiencing it. “

Researchers also admitted that their study had certain restrictions, as most participants were white, middle -aged women; Moreover, as they check for several factors, there is still the possibility that their findings were correlational than causal.

Still, eating an orange – either lemon or grapefruit, if this is what you prefer – one day it certainly cannot hurt, and the study sheds light on the relationship between the intestines and the brain, as well as the role these fruits play on it.

“I hope our results inspire other scholars to look at the link between diet and mental health,” Mehta said. “I think people know intuitively that the foods we eat affect the mood. We even have a term for this: comfortable foods that make ourselves feel better in the short term.”

“There is such a great unfilled need for depression treatments, and eating citrusing has no really side effects,” he added, “so it would be good to see how much this simple treatment can help.”