The more you eat citrus fruits like oranges and lemons you can help yourself be healthy as well as to prevent harmful effects of obesity-related to heart disease, liver disease and to diabetes. Citrus fruits contain a very large amount of antioxidants.
When humans consume a high-fat diet, they accumulate fat in their bodies. Fat cells produce excessive reactive oxygen species, which can damage cells in a process called oxidative stress.
This oxidative stress coupled with inflammation in obese individuals increases the risk of developing heart disease, liver disease, and diabetes, the researchers said.
“Our results indicate that in the future we can use citrus flavanones to prevent or delay chronic diseases caused by obesity in humans,” said Paula S. Ferreira, a graduate student at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) in Brazil.
However, “the study did not show any weight loss due to the citrus flavanones,” added lead researcher Thais B. Cesar from UNESP.
Even without losing weight, citrus fruits can help become healthier with lower oxidative stress, less liver damage and reduce risks of other obesity-related diseases, the researchers noted.
“The study also suggests that consuming citrus fruits probably could have beneficial effects for people who are not obese, but have diets rich in fats, putting them at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and abdominal obesity,” Ferreira explained.
For the study, the team conducted an experiment with 50 mice, treating them with flavanones found in oranges, limes, and lemons, or a high-fat diet.
They focused on flavanones such as hesperidin, eriocitrin, and eriodictyol. For a month, researchers gave groups either a standard diet, a high-fat diet, a high-fat diet plus hesperidin, a high-fat diet plus eriocitrin or a high-fat diet plus eriodictyol.
The group who consumed a high-fat diet without the flavanones showed an increase in the levels of cell-damage markers called thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) by 80 percent in the blood and 57 percent in the liver compared to mice on a standard diet.
But hesperidin, eriocitrin, and eriodictyol were found to decrease the TBARS levels in the liver by 50 percent, 57 percent, and 64 percent, respectively, compared with mice fed on a high-fat diet but not given flavanones.
Eriocitrin and eriodictyol also reduced TBARS levels in the blood by 48 percent and 47 percent, respectively, in these mice.
In addition, mice treated with hesperidin and eriodictyol had reduced fat accumulation and damage in the liver.
The findings were presented at the 252nd National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), held in Philadelphia, recently.
Via: http://indianexpress.com/