We all know the old expression, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. While that may be somewhat true for your physical health, a new study has shown that oranges may be beneficial for your mental health. In fact, according to the study, eating one orange every day can potentially lower your depression risk by 20%! The researchers believe that this may be because the growth of a specific type of gut bacteria is stimulated by citrus. Known as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, these bacteria play a role in producing mood-elevating molecules such as dopamine and serotonin. Life-disrupting clinical depression affects around 15% of people at some point or another. With around 280 million individuals living with clinical depression around the world, finding potential treatments has become more crucial than ever.
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The Origins and Results of the Orange Study
The study was led by an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, Raaj Mehta. Raaj was reading through the available literature on depression when he came across a paper from 2016 that mentioned that citrus could potentially lower depression risk. Since they had access to a large dataset, they decided to delve deeper into this finding. The dataset was sourced from a study that started in 1989, called the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS2). The study focused on identifying various risk factors associated with women’s chronic diseases. Involving more than 100,000 participants, the women were asked to provide comprehensive information regarding their health, medication use, diet, and lifestyle. Their ultimate goal was to use the data to try and find evidence that the participants who consumed large quantities of citrus experienced less depression than those who didn’t.
The researchers used the results of DNA sequencing taken from participants’ stool samples to look for links between citrus consumption and various species of gut bacteria. The researchers found a link between citrus consumption and an abundance of 15 gut microbiome species. They also found that there was more F. prausnitzii in the guts of people who weren’t depressed. Furthermore, eating large quantities of citrus was linked to higher levels of the bacteria. Their study revealed that consuming a single orange every day potentially lowered depression risk by a significant 20%. Strangely, this relationship with depression risk was not observed in other foods and the effect appeared to be unique to citrus fruit. The same link was observed in another study involving male participants called the Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study.
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