Forget apples — doctors find eating this fruit daily can lower depression risk by 20%
A healthy gut helps you digest your food and absorb its nutrients, strengthens your immune system and reduces your risk of certain chronic diseases.
But not everyone realizes that having a happy belly also has a major impact on your mood since about 90% of your body's serotonin and over 50% of your dopamine — two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for making you feel good — are produced in your gut.
For this reason, scientists often call the gut 'the second brain.'
And while an apple a day may keep the doctor away, research shows an orange a day might keep the blues at bay.
Dr. Raaj Mehta, a physician and instructor at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues analyzed the data of over 30,000 women and found that those who consumed a lot of citrus were much less likely to develop depression than those who didn't.
Their findings were published late last year in the journal Microbiome.
'We found that eating one medium orange a day may lower the risk of developing depression by about 20%,' Mehta told the Harvard Gazette last month.
'And the effect seems to be specific to citrus. When we look at people's total fruit or vegetable consumption, or at other individual fruits such as apples or bananas, we don't see any relationship between intake and risk of depression.'
Using stool samples, researchers discovered eating more citrus was associated with increased levels of a beneficial gut bacterium called Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. prausnitzii), which is known for its anti-inflammatory properties but might also help serotonin and dopamine make their way to the brain.
A study published in 2022 found that eating fewer citrus fruits was clearly associated with a heightened risk of depression in patients with chronic health failure.
However, Mehta noted that it's 'hard to compare the effectiveness of citrus to traditional antidepressants…because we're talking about preventingdepression, and those drugs are usually used to treatdepression once a person is already experiencing it.'
The researchers also acknowledged that their study had certain limitations, as most of the participants were white, middle-aged women; additionally, while they controlled for several factors, there's still the possibility that their findings were correlational rather than causal.
Still, eating an orange — or lemon or grapefruit, if that's what you prefer — a day certainly can't hurt, and the study sheds light on the relationship between the gut and the brain, as well as the role these fruits play on it.
'I hope our results inspire other researchers to look into the link between diet and mental health,' Mehta said. 'I think people know intuitively that the foods we eat impact our mood. We even have a term for this: comfort foods, which make ourselves feel better in the short term.'
'There's such a huge unmet need for depression treatments, and eating citrus doesn't really have any major side effects,' he added, 'so it would be great to see how much this simple treatment can help.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
6 hours ago
- Associated Press
New Study: Wildfires Cause Months-Long Delays in Medical Care for At-Risk Californians
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., June 9, 2025 /3BL/ - A new study reveals how wildfires are particularly dangerous for Californians with significant health conditions, with one in five respondents reporting harm to their health from delays in medical care after the Oak Fire. Led by researchers from Harvard Medical School-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Direct Relief, and Mariposa County Health and Human Services Agency, the study focuses on the 2022 Oak Fire in rural Mariposa County—but its findings resonate statewide, as wildfires, evacuations, and public safety power shutoffs increase in frequency. 'Interruptions to health care access during and in the aftermath of disasters impact health long after the initial insult,' the authors write. The study appears in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (Cambridge University Press) and is available at The study 'underscores the worrisome disruptions in health care access faced by medically vulnerable populations across the US during disaster,' the paper says. 'That 1/5 missed routine appointments, and that the vast majority could not re-establish care for weeks or months deserves urgent attention.' Researchers surveyed Mariposa County residents who were enrolled in the Support and Aid For Everyone (SAFE) program - a county program that assists those with self-identified special needs during emergencies, and comprises largely older adults and those with chronic medical conditions and mobility needs. Among the respondents – with a median age of 78 years old, nearly ¾ of whom had mobility issues, and nearly half of whom needed help with activities of daily living – the study found major gaps in emergency readiness, access to information, and continued medical care: With over 230,000 Medicare beneficiaries in California relying on powered medical devices, the study raises red flags far beyond Mariposa County—from seniors in Fresno to immunocompromised residents in Los Angeles. Asked to identify the most trusted sources of reliable information about evacuations and fires, 77% pointed to county officials, compared to 57% for state officials and 23% for TV news. The Oak Fire information they found most useful was fire location and progress, road closures, risks to the household, shelter locations, and evacuation routes. As California enters another active fire season, the authors make the case that wildfire response must include protecting access to care for those who can't go without it. 'Preparedness must focus not only on response to disasters, but on preempting health care disruptions at home—through improved outreach and communication, access to back-up power and supplies, and pathways to efficiently reinstate health services,' they write. Media Contacts: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Katie Brace, [email protected] Direct Relief: Paul Sherer, [email protected] Mariposa County Health and Human Services Agency: Kazzy Cunningham, [email protected]
Boston Globe
7 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Ozempic, the internet, GPS: Here are 5 things New England researchers helped develop with federal funding
Here are some of the most impactful, federally-funded scientific breakthroughs that have come out of New England. Advertisement Weight loss drugs Often referred to by the well-known brand names In the 1980s, Joel Habener and Svetlana Mojsov, both at Massachusetts General Hospital at the time, were among the first to Advertisement 'When they were discovering these things, I'm sure they didn't realize that if we fast forwarded 45 to 50 years, these would be the most talked about [medications],' said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, obesity specialist and associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. The US Food and Drug Administration 'What happened here in the '70s and '80s is translating into what we're seeing in 2025,' Stanford said. 'They were developed within the academic setting with The internet Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology played a significant role in the creation of the internet through a project called John Guttag, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at MIT, emphasized that while the internet itself was not invented in a single place, 'MIT's fingerprints were all over it.' 'A lot of it was also done by MIT graduates in other places,' he said. 'There were a lot of things that didn't happen at MIT but were clearly influenced by people from MIT.' ARPAnet, which stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, was the direct precursor to and is the basis of today's internet, said Guttag. A computer scientist affiliated with MIT and later Harvard, J.C.R. Licklider, was key in the internet's development. In 1960, he authored a paper outlining his vision of using computer networks for communication, laying the groundwork for ARPAnet, which was first used in 1969. Advertisement 'The Defense Department, immensely wisely, picked a few targets and funded them to do something pretty dramatic over a long period of time,' Guttag said. Pacemakers and defibrillators Defibrillators, medical devices that deliver an electric shock to the heart to restore a normal heart rhythm, are near universally found in malls, offices, and schools these days, saving countless lives. Between 1950 and 1960, Dr. Paul Zoll, a cardiologist at Beth Israel Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, Cohen said the development of the external defibrillator was a 'pioneering' discovery 'to help humanity.' 'That's the whole purpose of medical investigation, medical research — it's always ongoing and improving," Cohen said. Black hole imaging In New England, a researcher built one of the algorithms to piece together the first image of a black hole. That image was The Advertisement In 2022, a team led by scientists at the These images are helping scientists discover crucial details about astrophysics, including the ability to test theories about how gas behaves around black holes. 'Black holes are natural laboratories where we can test Einstein's theory of gravity in ways we can't anywhere else in the cosmos,' said Doelman. 'We can see black holes for the first time in ways we would have not thought possible even a decade ago.' Navigation systems During World War II, MIT researchers helped develop the first widely-used electronic navigation system, known as 'It was a very important moment in both MIT's history and the history of federal funding of science and technology,' said David Mindell, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and the history of engineering and manufacturing at MIT. He said the system played a Many researchers who worked on the project went on to become key to GPS development, Mindell said. 'Federal funding for these ecosystems has been enormously important over a long time period,' he said, adding that GPS alone probably 'generated more economic value' over a 40-year period than the entire budgets of the government agencies that helped launch the navigational system. Advertisement Emily Spatz can be reached at
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
Homeless are 27 times more likely to visit emergency room for heat illness, study shows
Last summer, Taylor Weckstein was driving around rural New Mexico in a van delivering medical care to the homeless in the sweltering heat. The Harvard Medical School graduate came across people with severe dehydration, kidney disease, and third-degree burns from being seared by the pavement, she recalled. 'Honestly, it was pretty horrific,' she said.
