Eating oranges a cure to obesity and heart problems, finds study

New Delhi : Eating oranges daily may help you fight obesity and combat heart problems, a new study has found.

The study published in the Journal of Lipid Research has claimed that equivalent to two and a half glasses of orange juice a day can reverse obesity and also keeps the heart diseases away.

A group of scientists at Western University did the study in which they a molecule in orange - nobiletin, which helps in drastically reducing obesity and reverse its negative side-effects.

Though, they did not explain why it acts in such a manner.

The tests were conducted on a mice who was put on a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet, that were also given nobiletin were noticeably leaner and had reduced levels of insulin resistance and blood fats compared to mice that were fed a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet alone.

“We went on to show that we can also intervene with nobiletin. We’ve shown that in mice that already have all the negative symptoms of obesity, we can use nobelitin to reverse those symptoms, and even start to regress plaque build-up in the arteries, known as atherosclerosis,” said a researcher Murray Huff.

He also clarified that his team is still working on the factors which help in nobiletin work in that manner.

The researchers hypothesized that the molecule was likely acting on the pathway that regulates how fat is handled in the body.

“This result told us that nobiletin is not acting on AMP Kinase, and is bypassing this major regulator of how fat is used in the body. What it still leaves us with is the question – how is nobiletin doing this?” said Huff.

From here the tests will be conducted on humans to understand if the same results are achieved on humans too.

“Obesity and its resulting metabolic syndromes are a huge burden to our health care system, and we have very few interventions that have been shown to work effectively,” said Huff. “We need to continue this emphasis on the discovery of new therapeutics.