Oranges for Health and Nutrition

When we smell oranges, several things may come to our mind. For those who live in a temperate climate, where it snows during winter, the smell of oranges may remind them of winter holidays. So the sight and smell of an orange may arouse recollections of Christmas-time, snow, cold, spending good times with the dear ones, and so on.

But let's see the benefits of oranges for our health. For instance, apart from being extremely tasteful, homemade orange juice can be a great help in preserving one's good health.

Oranges are excellent weapons against flu and viral infections. The first instinct when you have cold is to rush to the pharmacy and buy a whole bag of pills. But it may be better to change directions, and head for supermarkets or fruit markets instead. Buying oranges can really help.

If taken in large amounts, oranges can help you get rid of fever, headaches, fatigue and lightheadedness. They are also anti-infectious, they improve the immune system due to they being rich in vitamin C and they also significantly reduce the symptoms of viral affections.

One glass of orange juice taken each day can help prevent the formation of kidney stones. Or if the kidney stones are already there, they help the patients get better. Oxalates are practically dissolved into the citric acid contained by oranges. If you suffer from gallstones, the doctors recommend you to drink at least one half glass of orange juice everyday.

Oranges are also excellent against constipation and indigestion. One of the beneficial effects of oranges is that they can shorten bowel transit time. They can also stimulate the activity of the enzymes at the intestine level thus preventing constipation.

Also because it is a strong digestion catalyst, orange has quite a strong effect on stimulating gastrointestinal secretions and thus the danger of indigestion is eliminated.

Oranges are also quite efficient in the treatment of heart diseases. Because orange juice helps produce the good type of cholesterol, i.e. - HDL, but it also helps reduce the bad type of cholesterol, i.e. - LDL, it is extremely efficient in the treatment and prevention of heart diseases.

Due to its high content of natural folic acid, the regular intake of oranges can reduce the appearance of cardiac arrhythmia, of arteriosclerosis and cardiac ischemia. Three or four oranges taken each day offer our organism a huge quantity of the necessary vitamins.

Even if these fruits are not so rich in vitamins A or in the complex of B vitamins, it has been demonstrated that the nutrients found in oranges are more easily absorbed by the organism as compared to vegetables. Because of that, a daily intake of oranges can successfully fight anemia, asthenia or lack of energy.

Everybody knows that Mediterranean food is healthy and those who use such a diet have less chances of breast, lung, pancreas, and colon or rectum cancer. Because citric fruit are some of the most important ingredients of the Mediterranean diet, researchers have made a series of discoveries according to which oranges contain numerous anti-cancer substances.

Moreover, it has been established that in case of people who take a lot of oranges or lemons, there is a much lower number of stomach cancer, esophagus or mouth cancer.

Oranges are also very good headache fighters. If we drink at least one liter of orange decoct everyday, we will notice an improvement in the brain's blood circulation, acting on the central nervous system directly and this may reduce the sensation of pain.

There are also some precautions that need to be taken into account when using oranges as treatment. For instance, we must be very careful if we used a treatment based on orange peel because this peel may have been chemically treated for a better preservation or simply for enriching their color.

Chemical substances found on orange peels are normally sticky and they leave reddish-orange traces on napkins, and as far as preservatives are concerned, they leave yellowish-gray traces. Also, if you suffer from rheumatism, the orange intake is not really recommended because the acid nature of the orange juice can increase the symptoms of arthritis.