Oranges are favored because of their inherent sweetness, the wide variety available, and the numerous ways they can be used. People enjoy them in beverages and jams, savor them as whole fruits, utilize their peels to impart a zesty taste in baked goods and sweets, or even employ them as a natural repellent for insects when burned.
While oranges are notably recognized for their high vitamin C content, they also include compounds that could help decrease inflammation and combat various ailments such as depression.
Depression is a significant global public health issue. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that it constitutes the highest share of non-fatal diseases worldwide, with over 80 percent of this impact occurring in less economically developed nations.
A new study suggests that consuming one orange daily could decrease the likelihood of experiencing depression by up to 20%. This effect is attributed to oranges fostering the proliferation of a specific type of gut bacteria known as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. These microbes play a crucial role in producing neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which contribute to emotional well-being.
The research, headed by Raaj Mehta, who serves as an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and works as a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, relied on the dataset from the Nurses' Health Study II (NHS2). This study commenced in 1989 with the aim of identifying risk factors associated with significant chronic conditions among women.
It involves more than 100,000 women, and roughly every two years they provide researchers with detailed information about their lifestyle, diet, medication use, and health.
Connected Stories Do you feel mentally drained? Here’s what you should know about postpartum depression High earnings correlate with increased life satisfaction yet also come with higher levels of stressThe researchers had leveraged these data to look for evidence that nurses who ate a lot of citrus had lower rates of future depression than those who did not.
Additionally, some participants in the NHS2 provided researchers with multiple stool samples throughout a one-year period. By analyzing the DNA sequencing data obtained from these stool specimens, scientists sought correlations between the consumption of citrus fruits and specific types of bacteria within the gut microbiota.
They discovered that consuming one medium-sized orange daily could potentially decrease the likelihood of developing depression by approximately 20%, with this protective effect appearing to be particularly relevant for citrus fruits.
When examining individuals' overall fruit or vegetable consumption, or looking specifically at single types like apples or bananas, they find no correlation between these intakes and the likelihood of experiencing depression.
A distinctive aspect of this research is that a subgroup of participants from NHS2 provided multiple stool samples to the researchers throughout one year.
Using DNA sequencing results from these stool samples, researchers looked for links between citrus intake and particular species of bacteria in the gut microbiome.
Since the NHS2 only included women and the study required men to confirm the findings, they looked to a similar study called the Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study, where they also found that increasing levels of F. prausnitzii were inversely correlated with depression risk scores. One species of bacteria stood out—F. prausnitzii was more abundant in people who were not depressed than in people who were, and eating a lot of citrus was also associated with high levels of F. prausnitzii.
The researchers said it is hard to compare the effectiveness of citrus to traditional antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, because we are talking about preventing depression, and those drugs are usually used to treat depression once a person is already experiencing it.
However, in the future, they suggested more research to be able to conclude that eating citrus could perhaps be part of a strategy for managing depression that also involves these more traditional pharmaceuticals.
New research led by postdoctoral fellow Annabel Matison from UNSW Sydney’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) published in the Journal of Affective Disorders also said eating more fruit may reduce the risk of depression.
They examined the associations between fruit and vegetable intake and depression in adults 45 years and older. The participants came from multiple regions across six continents, including the United States, Sweden, Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia and Australia.
The researchers assessed 7,801 community-based adults without depression and revealed a beneficial association between higher fruit intake and lower risk of depression over nine years.
According to a different study from Edith Cowan University (ECU), those who consume more fruits and vegetables experience less stress than those who consume less. They found that those who consumed at least 470 grammes of fruits and vegetables per day experienced 10% less stress than those who consumed less than 230 grammes.
The study looked at the relationship between stress levels and fruit and vegetable consumption in over 8,600 Australians between the ages of 25 and 91 who were taking part in the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute’s Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle (AusDiab) Study.
As fruits and vegetables contain varying nutrients, it also seems likely that different types of fruits and vegetables may have differing impacts on the risk of depression. The evidence for citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables being associated with improved mental well-being is particularly strong.
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