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10 Benefits of Drinking Carrot Juice Regularly
The benefits of vegetables certainly need no explanation. (1) The benefits of carrots in particular have also been well researched. (2) However, one of the biggest rising trend in recent years has been juicing vegetables like carrots, kale and even broccoli. Many of the emerging questions meeting this rising trend is whether the nutritional value of the vegetables are reduced by the juicing process, and whether this reduction then affects the benefits that these vegetables provide.
Despite these questions, others have made the claim that juicing these vegetables will help provide unique benefits that would not be achieved through eating the solid form of these foods, due to a quicker digestibility and the ability to consume more vegetable content than possible if it wasn’t juiced.
One of the most popular vegetable juices is carrot juice, both as a homemade juice and as a ready made juice available in many stores. Because of this, the benefits of carrot juice will be shown below to answer the above questions and concerns, and will also look at some unique benefits that carrot juice can offer over it’s whole food counterpart.
Beauty Benefits of Carrot Juice
Carrot juice and carrot extract have been used in the past as both medicine and beauty product. (3) The reason for this is that the health benefits of carrots also transfer to benefits in beauty, particularly for the skin and nails.
1. Carrot Juice Can Act as a Natural Tanning Agent
Beta-carotene, the main source of both the vitamin A and the red colour carrots have, is stored in the skin when enough of it is taken in, this can give skin a glowing bronzed look (4), which is one of the reason most tanning tablets or pills contain very high levels of beta-carotene. (5)
By drinking carrot juice, which contains over four and a half times the recommended daily amount of Vitamin A, this makes consuming much higher amounts of beta-carotene much easier to do and offers a more natural way to help increase skin tone.
2. Carrot Juice Can Strengthen Skin and Nails
Carrots have a very high content of Vitamin E and Vitamin K, offering nearly a quarter of the daily recommended amount of Vitamin K in only one serving of juice. (6) This high level of Vitamin K helps improve skin and nail strength through increasing the amount of keratin, the main protein used in skin, your body produces.
This helps provide the glowing skin mentioned above as well as improved strength and a decreased amount of dry or flaky skin and can act as a good supplement to use for people looking to help prevent skin problems or looking for a natural and cost-effective way to improve skin and nail health.
3. Carrot Juice Can Reduce Wrinkles And Fight Aging
High levels of Vitamin A and Vitamin K have also been acclaimed for their anti-aging properties, helping to prevent wrinkles and reduce the effects of aging on skin. (7) They have also been claimed to help naturally exfoliate the skin and help keep pores clean, making this a great choice for people looking to improve their skin, particularly as they begin to get older.
These anti-aging benefits can be achieved from drinking carrot juice, or alternatively, the benefits can also be found from applying around 2 to 3 teaspoons of carrot juice or carrot oil directly to the skin and allowing it to rest for a few minutes before removing it. (8)
Health Benefits of Carrot Juice
As mentioned above, many of the beauty benefits derived from drinking carrot juice stem from the health benefits that come from increased carrot intake. These nutrients found in carrot juice can also help improve immune function, nutrient absorption by the body and may even help improve adaptations from training.
4. Carrot Juice Can Help Eye Health
Vitamin A has been shown to be essential for eye health by helping to lubricate and form a protective layer around the surface of the eye. (9) This high Vitamin A content, along with some other nutrients like copper Vitamin C and Vitamin E, contained in carrot juice helps to maintain eye health and sight during youth and old age and even protects against eye disease like Macular Degeneration
5. Carrot Juice Can Help Boost The Immune Health
Vitamin A in carrot juice is also a key element in the functioning of the immune system. (10) It does this by helping develop mucous and immune cells. As such, people who take in less Vitamin A have been shown to experience increased infections and illnesses. (11)
Carrot juice offers an easy way to increase Vitamin A intake and increase immune system health, reducing occurrences of illnesses and improving general health.
6. Carrot Juice Can Aid Digestion
Constipation and nutrient absorption can be an issue for a lot of people, particularly the elderly. Through increasing the body’s production of digestive enzymes, helping improve the absorption of the nutrients in food and help regulate bowel movements. (12)
This makes carrot juice a great drink to take alongside a digestive aid or high fiber foods to help fight constipation and aid digestion.
7. Carrot Juice Could Help Improve Muscle Growth
Through delivering Vitamin A after a strenuous workout, carrot juice can help improve recovery and help increase muscle growth. (13) This can have a host of secondary benefits such as boosting metabolism, improving strength and function, allowing for a greater amount of exercise and improving fat loss.
Also, because juice is more rapidly absorbed into the body than whole foods, this offers a significant advantage to carrot juice over whole carrots as a post-workout recovery drink that athletes can take with them to the gym.
Childcare Benefits of Carrot Juice
Some unique benefits to carrot juice lie in the benefit it can offer an unborn fetus and to pregnant women directly due the high amounts of vitamins and minerals and the increased speed and ease of digestion when compared to whole fruit.
8. Carrot Juice Can Improve Lactation in Post-Pregnant Women
When drank immediately after pregnancy, carrot juice can help improve the health of the new mothers and help increase lactation to help nourish the newborn babies. (14) As the study shows, this offers a great means for low-income mothers to improve their own health and help improve the health and nourishment of their children.
9. Carrot Juice Can Help Increase Nutrition In Newborn Children
In the initial few weeks of a newborn baby’s life they are unable to process solid foods, making nutritional planning for a young child more difficult. Carrot juice offers a means of providing the majority of the nutrients found in carrots available to children, without needing to rely on baby formulas or other commercial products.
This allows for a more natural and less expensive means of nourishing newborn children for mothers who may struggle financially.
10. Carrot Juice Can Help Prevent Infections in Unborn Children
Another study showed that when women consumed carrot juice during their final trimester in pregnancy had a reduced risk of fetus complications or infections. (15) This was again theorized to be due to the higher levels of Vitamin A taken in from the carrot juice, that otherwise may have proved difficult to maintain if eating carrots whole.
Conclusion
Carrot juice offers a wide spectrum of benefits, from beauty to childcare. Utilizing it properly can result improved health, decreased risk of contracting disease, among many others.