What if just one lifestyle change could help you avoid getting cancer or diabetes or heart disease or high blood pressure? This one change could cut your risk of chronic disease and add years to your life. Well the simple solution to so many of these problems is to eat a healthy diet. In other words, one centered around whole plant Foods, welcome to the nutrition facts podcast. I'm your host. Dr. Michael Greger.
Today, we discover some of the health benefits of eating onions.
Onions, are potentially a good source of antioxidants, though. Interestingly. The antioxidants are concentrated in the outer layers immediately, under the papery peel. Unfortunately, most consumers discard, these most nutrient Rich outermost layers, thus losing a valuable part. Here's some numbers more than 10, times more antioxidants in the outer layer of white onions, compared to the core. You'll also note that yellow.
In general have more antioxidants than white and a red onions. Beat them. Both based on three different antioxidant testing methods. That's why I always try to buy red. The red onions are indeed slightly better yellow or white onions are no slouches containing considerable levels of antioxidant activity so nutritious, sure, but are there any particular clinical benefits to onion consumption? Evidently older white women who consumed onions at least once a day had overall bone?
That was five percent greater than individuals, who consume the onions. No. More than once a month, 5%, might not sound like a lot. But that Improvement in bone density, could potentially translate into decreasing, the risk of hip fracture by more than 20%. If indeed it was cause and effect daily. Administration of onion did cause a big bump in bone density. This opens the possibility for a low-cost safe and effective nutritional approach to osteoporosis. You guessed it in the rat.
Other rodent study rats, but finally, here we go. Tremendous strides have been made in treating osteoporosis with drugs, but they have the potential for serious adverse side effects. So scientists have drawn their attention to natural remedy. So let's randomize people to drink onion juice or Placebo, onion juice. I don't know. What sounds worse. Sugary onion juice or fake. Sugary onion use and as if
Drinking onion, juice wasn't bad enough. It was all for nothing. It didn't even work. What about the anti-allergy? Activities of shallots and any therapeutic effects on helping allergic runny noses, 16, such patients were randomized equally into an antihistamine group or a group that got antihistamines, plus some capsules, containing dried shallot powder, and it looked like the shallot group did better, but there was actually no.
Statistically significant difference in total symptoms between the two groups. So another hashtag on Yin fail. There has to be something onions. Can do what about testing the effects of fresh? Yellow onion consumption on breast cancer. Patients to try to decrease the toxic effects of a chemotherapy drug called doxorubicin. Unfortunately, no, significant benefit was found on decreasing damage to the liver or heart. But here we go, finally a clinical benefit.
The onion's, the consumption of fresh yellow onion ameliorates, the high blood sugars and insulin resistance in breast cancer, patients during doxorubicin. Based chemotherapy doxorubicin isn't just toxic to the liver and heart may also contribute to insulin resistance. So, let's do a randomized. Triple blind controlled clinical trial. Randomizing patients to like a whole onion a day, or a third. I'm an onion a day. What happened? The high onion group. Experienced a significant decrease in blood.
Sugars and insulin resistance compared to the low on in Group. They went up in the law and group but down in the high onion group. So make onions your friend. What's the worst that can happen? A little onion breath and Bo probably the least of your worries if you have cancer on
chemotherapy in our next story, we learn what just an eighth of a teaspoon of day of onion, powder can do for body fat. And what raw red onion can
Do for cholesterol.
Enter, the effect of steamed onion consumption on body fat in overweight subjects. The researchers use steamed onions, so they can better disguise it against Placebo and dried it into an onion powder and gay people. Just a minuscule amount about an eighth of a teaspoon a day. Surely a little daily dusting of onion powder isn't going to affect the course of people's weight. But check out these results reported in the abstract a significant reduction in body fat mass in both dexa. Scan.
And measured by CT scan. A significant decrease in the areas of whole fat, visceral fat and subcutaneous fat. Hold on. A if a little onion powder is so effective for weight loss. Why wasn't it featured in my book? How not to diet? Because as so often happens in studies, the spin in the abstract doesn't accurately represent the actual data. Here the dexa, scan results. No significant change of fat in the group that got the placebo capsules. They only appeared to lose about a spoonful of fat.
Where's the group? Unknowingly taking an eighth of a teaspoon of onion powder, stuffed into capsules lost. Nearly one and a half pounds of body fat. A significant drop from Baseline, but not a statistically significant drop compared to the placebo. Group means the loss could very well have been due to chance. Same thing, with the CT scan results, five times more loss of overall fat and 30 times more loss of the dangerous, visceral fat, but did not reach the testicle significance compared to Placebo, or recent studies.
Four teaspoons of onion powder day, and similarly failed to accelerate, the loss of body fat compared to Placebo. But the Petit Bois was also four teaspoons of onion powder a day. They use yellow onions, versus white onions. And it seems they both may have caused a loss of body fat, without a significant difference between them. Either way. You can look at these two studies and say, yeah, but what are the downsides? I mean, just an eighth of a teaspoon of onion powder, a day. Why not? Give it a try, can't hurt, but we just don't have
Confidence, that it's actually gonna help turning now to polycystic ovary syndrome. Also known as PCOS or P. Cos it's one of the most common hormone disorders, affecting 5 to 10% of reproductive age women. In addition to symptoms, like irregular periods P cost is also a pre-diabetic state. With decreased insulin sensitivity. Pecos treatment is a big challenge, due to medication side effects. So, what about using dietary options? How about a randomized controlled clinical trial of
Raw red, onion intake. Why onions? Well onion extract 7. Only help in diabetic rats and more importantly, in diabetic humans, but evidently not in non-diabetic humans. Pico suffers are kind of pre diabetic, so would work for them. First. Let's look at those other two studies. Here's the diabetic. One on the metabolic effects of onion and green beans. Diabetic spent a week. Eating either a small onion today where the same diet with about 5 cups of green beans instead.
And they both worked the onion group dropped people's blood sugar's by about 10% in the green beans. More like 15%, Here's the study that supposedly shows. No blood sugar benefits for non-diabetics. It's true onions, don't lower normal blood sugars, which is a good thing. But check out what happens when you feed people sugar? Happy people down about 2 tablespoons of corn syrup and their blood sugar's shoot up for the next two hours before their bodies able to Tamp it back down, but give people the exact same.
A sugar, but with more and more onion and the blood sugar spike is significantly dampened. Almost as much as if you instead giving them an anti-diabetic drug. We see the same when you give people a shot of adrenaline with or without onions. So while their blood sugar benefits both diabetics and non-diabetics a like no difference, was found between the higher and lower onion groups of P cos patience, nor were there any differences in
In a marker of inflammation between the two groups, but women with PCOS aren't just at high risk for diabetes and inflammation, but also high cholesterol when with pikas are seven times more likely to have a heart attack. Then the number one killer of women, but raw red onion consumption. Appears to be effective as a cholesterol-lowering food though. The hi, Anya group. Only dropped their LDL cholesterol about Five Points, not significantly different than the low onion group. I did find this study from nearly 50 years ago.
Researchers fed people nearly an entire stick of butter and their cholesterol shot up about 30 points within hours of consumption. But only nine points or three points. When combined with about a third cup of raw or boiled onion, the moral of the story being,
don't eat a stick of butter. We would love it. If you could share with us your stories about, Reinventing Your Health through evidence-based nutrition, go to nutritionfacts.org /, testimonials. We may share it on our social media.
Media to help Inspire others. See any graphs charts Graphics, images are studies. Mentioned here. Please go to the nutrition facts podcast, landing page there. You'll find all the detailed information. You need plus links to all the sources. We cite to each of these topics. My latest two books are how to survive a pandemic available on eBook. Audiobook, warp actual book and the how not to diet cookbook with more than 100 recipes.
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