by A healthy intestine helps you to digest your food and record the nutrients, strengthen your immune system and reduces your risk of certain chronic diseases.
But not everyone realizes that having a happy belly also has a big impact on your mood, because about 90% of your body’s serotonin and more than 50% of your dopamine – two crucial neurotransmitters that are responsible for feeling your good – are produced in your belly.
For this reason, scientists often call the intestine ‘the second brain’.
And although an apple can keep the doctor away a day, research shows that an orange a day can keep the blues at bay.
Dr. Raaj Mehta, a doctor and instructor at the Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues analyzed the data of more than 30,000 women and discovered that those who consumed a lot of citrus were much less likely to develop depression than those who did not do it.
Their findings were published at the end of last year in the Microbiome magazine.
“We discovered that eating one medium orange per day can lower the risk of developing depression by around 20%,” Mehta told the Harvard Gazette last month.
“And the effect seems to be specific to citrus. When we look at the total fruit or vegetable consumption of people, or at other individual fruit such as apples or bananas, we see no relationship between intake and the risk of depression. “
With the help of relief samples, researchers discovered that the food was more citrus associated with raised levels of a useful intestinal bacterium called faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. prausnitzii), which is known for its ignition -in -braking properties, but can also help Serotonine and Dopamine.
A study published in 2022 showed that eating fewer citrus fruits was clearly associated with an increased risk of depression in patients with chronic health failure.
Mehta, however, noted that it is “difficult to compare the effectiveness of citrus with traditional antidepressants … because we are talking about preventing depression, and those drugs are usually used to treat Depression as soon as a person already experiences it. ‘
The researchers also acknowledged that their studies had certain limitations, because most participants were white women of middle -aged; Moreover, although they checked for various factors, there is still the possibility that their findings were correlational instead of causal.
Still, eating an orange – or lemon or grapefruit, if that is what you prefer – can certainly not hurt a day, and the study lights up the relationship between the intestine and the brain, as well as the role these fruits play on it.
“I hope that our results inspire other researchers to view the connection between food and mental health,” said Mehta. “I think people know intuitively that the food we eat influences our mood. We even have a term for this: comfort food, which makes us feel better in the short term. “
“There is such a huge unfulfilled need for depression treatments, and eating citrus does not really have big side effects,” he added, “so it would be great to see how much this simple treatment could help.”
