Orange Juice May Lower Stroke Risk

Perhaps you haven’t heard of flavanones, but chances are you’ve been loading up on them for years, thanks to the orange or grapefruit juice that most of us drink regularly. Flavanones are flavanoids that are found in many citrus fruits. Now, resasearchers at Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia in England are convinced that flavanones can lower our risk of stroke. HealthDay reports that the researchers studied 14 years of data on nearly 70,000 women who reported their details on fruit and vegetable consumption. What did they find? While all flavonoids did not appear to reduce stroke risk, flavanones did. In fact, women who ate the most flavanones had a 19 percent lower risk of blood-clot related stroke than those who ate the least. Where does the fruit juice come in? The investigators found that 95 percent of the flavanones consumed came from citrus fruit and juice, mostly orange and grapefruit. Those consuming the most citrus fruits and juice had a 10 percent reduced risk of stroke compared with those eating none. Read an abstract of the study here.