Featured Image Credit: Marianne Purdie/Getty Images
Topics: Food and Drink, Health, Women's Health, Social Media
Bec Oakes
Topics: Food and Drink, Health, Women's Health, Social Media
The health benefits of eating carrots are seemingly endless.
Chock full of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants like beta-carotene, the crunchy veggie can help do a whole host of great things for your body, including promoting healthy vision, supporting your immune system and even potentially lowering your risk of developing cancer, according to WebMD.
Now, some are saying eating raw carrots may be also be a fix for one common women's health problem.
Advert
Raw carrots seem to be super popular among social media users right now as they claim the vegetable can soothe and even prevent period pain by supposedly reducing levels of oestrogen - a group of hormones that play a vital role in the regulation of the menstrual cycle and pregnancy - in the body.
One X user posted: "Eating raw carrots every day has helped my periods significantly!! I haven’t gotten cramps once. This is the cheat code girls!!!"
And, in a TikTok video, user @nourishedwithbecca said: "I used to have really really painful periods. I'm talking cancelling plans, curling up on the couch, debilitating cramps, could not leave my heating pad."
She claimed that raw carrots were a great tool to maintain a 'pain-free' cycle because they help remove excess oestrogen from your small intestine, supporting your hormone balance.
But, with social media being a key source of increasingly wild health claims, it begs the question whether this one is true.
The answer? Well, kind of.
While the nutrients present in carrots are great for your overall wellbeing, there's limited evidence to suggest that they directly alleviate period pain.
US-based dietician Caroline Thomason RD told USA Today: "Promoting carrots as a cure-all can be misleading and may distract from other effective strategies for menstrual health, like balanced nutrition, exercise, hydration, and stress management."
And, while raw carrots can help detox the excess oestrogen that can cause pre-menstrual symptoms to worsen, it's not a magic fix.
Thomason affirms that while no food can completely eliminate period cramps, raw carrots can help support your body’s natural detox process.
"Raw carrots are high in fibre, particularly soluble fibre, that supports hormone balance by binding to oestrogen in the digestive tract and promoting its excretion," she said.
And, OB-GYN Dr Thaïs Aliabadi explained that Vitamin A (or beta-carotene) can also support the liver, which helps metabolise and eliminate excess hormones.
"In that sense, a healthy liver function could support overall hormone balance, but carrots alone won’t 'detox' oestrogen," she added.
Dr Aliabadi also urges anyone with significant period pains to consult a doctor as this 'isn't normal' and could be a sign of something more serious like endometriosis.