Enlightening: Beyond Sweetness, Why You Should Eat Oranges Everyday
An associate professor and a researcher from the University of Sydney, Bamini Gopinath has revealed that taking an orange a day could keep away bad eyesight.
Medical costs most times, cannot be qualified as ‘child’s play’ as such. Therefore, when there is a cheaper alternative, to sound health, it mustn’t be ignored.
The importance of fruits intake cannot be quantified either hence, the excitement of discovering which fruit does what for the body.
According to the epidemiologist who has been actively involved in developing and conducting numerous population health studies, people who regularly eat one orange per day slash their chances of developing macular degeneration by more than 60%.
Macular Degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss which is affecting more than 10 million people– even more than cataracts and glaucoma combined.
This incurable disease which is said to be a painless eye condition leads to the gradual loss of vision, and it is the most common cause of sight loss amongst the elderly.
Researchers at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Australia interviewed more than 2,000 adults of over 50-years-old and followed them over a period of 15-year period.
It was found out that those who said they ate at least an orange a day, had more than a 60% reduced risk of developing late macular degeneration when compared with those who did not.
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Professor Bamini Gopinath says,
“Essentially we found that people who eat at least one serve of orange every day have a reduced risk of developing macular degeneration compared with people who never eat oranges. The data shows that flavonoids found in oranges appear to help protect against the disease.”
“Our research is different because we focused on the relationship between flavonoids and macular degeneration. Flavonoids are powerful antioxidants found in almost all fruits and vegetables, and they have important anti-inflammatory benefits for the immune system,” the prof. said.
Previous studies focused on the effects common nutrients such as vitamins C, E and A have on the eyes whereas professor Gopinath’s study took a different approach.
About 600,000 people in the UK currently have sight loss caused by the incurable disease and about 70,000 new cases are diagnosed every year, equivalent to nearly 200 per day.
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Age is the strongest known risk factor and the disease is more likely to occur after the age of 50. The research team looked at everyday foods such as tea, apples, red wine and oranges but the round fruit was the only food source linked to protecting the eyes against this disease, she said.
“Significantly, the data did not show a relationship between other food sources protecting the eyes against the disease.”
The research, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, began in 1992 and is one of the world’s largest epidemiology studies, measuring diet and lifestyle factors against health outcomes and a range of chronic diseases.