Orange juice has a host of positive, useful, and important nutrients in it. Not just vitamin C.
One of the great ingredients in orange juice is a group of nutrients called flavonoids.
In one of the flavonoids that we are going to talk about in this newsletter is naringenin.
Naringenin is estrogenic.
This is why I do not generally recommend large quantities of naringenin consumption.
This is why I do not recommend grapefruit juice in particular. Because grapefruit juice is loaded with naringenin.
But naringenin is also useful if you’re recovering from diabetes, or from chemotherapy, or from other insults to your body.
Naringenin can assist the healing process, and this is shown very well in the study that involves rats, diabetes, and testicles.
Remember, naringenin has an important role in helping you if you have diabetes, or are going through chemotherapy, or if you have some other major medical condition…I wouldn’t go out of my way to consume large amounts unless I was in one of these categories.
With that;
Let me talk about this study that involved rats, diabetes and testicles
In this study, they gave rats diabetes.
Diabetes normally causes testicle damage.
So in addition, they treated some of the rats with naringenin, and some without.
They showed that the rats treated with naringenin recovered a lot of their testicle function.
These results suggest that naringenin is a food supplement potentially beneficial in reducing testicular damage in diabetic …by decreasing the oxidative stress related to programmed cell death
The rats were treated with naringenin did a lot better. The testosterone was higher, their testicles are more functional, their sperm is better quality.
The naringenin didn’t have any effect on rats testicles, where the rats were not diabetic.
Presumably, naringenin would maintain testicle health in the face of a huge traumatic insult such as diabetes, chemotherapy etc.
Where can you get naringenin
You can get high amounts of naringenin from grapefruits.
Or if you want to get “normal” (low) amounts of naringenin, you can get from orange juice.
A good source of naringenin is orange juice.
And also, you can get lowish amounts from tomato paste. In one study, cook tomato paste raised levels of naringenin in the blood of people who consumed food cook with tomato paste.
I have found that there are a lot of benefits to orange juice.
It is a mix of many compounds that can be helpful.
Naringenin is one, and it is present in low quantities that are part of the mix and won’t cause estrogenic problems.
There are many other studies showing benefits of naringenin once you keep in mind that it can help you restore health if your health is gravely compromised, or in low quantities can be helpful in maintaining health.
Citations
Food values of naringenin
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v62/n9/fig_tab/1602827t2.html
Tomato paste cooked can raise naringenin levels in the blood
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/132/11/3349.long
Naringenin attenuates testicle damage in diabetic rats
http://www.zsf.jcu.cz/jab_old/11_3/roy.pdf
Click for more information on Food values of naringenin, for Medicine information, or for information about Naringenin.