Below via the link is an article by David Edelberg, MD from Whole Health Chicago, Integrative, Functional and Alternative Medicine. Please read the full article. It really well researched and written.
Below is a part of that above article.
The Carrot and Your Longevity
Well, not only the carrot. The sweet potato, too, and also the squash, greens (collard, turnip, and mustard), apples, green beans, cantaloupe, broccoli, and tomatoes, a colorful list you can etch into your brain and learn more about by clicking here.
Carotenoids are a group of antioxidants synthesized by plants, and they circulate through your body after you’ve eaten the fruits and veggies containing them. You’ve likely heard of alpha and beta carotene, lycopene, and lutein. You might not know zeaxanthin, astaxanthin, and the mysterious sounding beta-cryptoxanthin.
Any competent nutritionist will be happy to bend your ear on how oxidative damage to DNA plays an important role in why we age and get chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease and cancer, and how as a result we die younger than we’d hoped. She’ll tell you that antioxidants, especially by means of healthful eating and judicious use of nutritional supplements, can play a starring role in disease prevention.
And then, as she offers to share her carrots (nutritionists are all svelte carrot-munchers), she’ll snow you with the data of an extremely important study published last month in the Archives of Internal Medicine proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that, other than swearing off drunk driving, eating your vegetables is the single greatest protection against premature death.
In this government-funded study, epidemiologists followed 15,318 adults over age 20, tracking chronic disease and death against blood levels of the most potent carotenoid, alpha carotene. They began the study in 1988 and collected data on this huge group through 2006.
With all the data finally analyzed, the results were clear: higher blood levels of alpha carotene matched lower levels of death from all causes–heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory illness. Conversely, lower alpha carotene levels meant significantly higher death rates.
More references on carrots:
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