Many of us may associate carrots with improving eyesight and providing us with certain vitamins or nutrients. But a woman in China found out about a lesser-known side effect of consuming the vegetable when she began to turn orange.
Hoping to lose weight, she ate up to 500g of carrots every day for three months.
She later discovered that her skin had begun to turn orange and rushed to see a doctor, who told her that the carrots were the culprit behind the colour change.
They told her to drink more water and avoid coloured foods so she could recover in roughly two months.
According to White Deer Videos (白鹿视频), a woman in China had decided on carrots as a method for losing weight.
Source: 白鹿视频 on Weibo
From July this year, she snacked on the low-calorie veggie instead of her usual treats. She even occasionally coated it with turmeric and fried it.
The woman claimed that she ate around 200 to 500g of carrots every day.
Around China’s National Day holiday on 1 Oct, she looked into a mirror and was shocked to find her face a distinctly orange shade.
Source: 白鹿视频 on Weibo
Her friends all rushed over to check it out, and sure enough, her skin had turned orange. They urged her to see a doctor immediately.
Source: 白鹿视频 on Weibo
At the hospital, the doctor told her that the overconsumption of carrots was the culprit behind the strange condition.
Refusing to believe them at first, the woman begged the doctor to test her liver for issues, perhaps fearful that she may have gotten jaundice, a disease that also turns skin yellowish.
Fortunately, the doctor was right and the lab tests found nothing wrong with her liver.
The doctor thus advised her to drink more water and avoid eating ‘colourful’ foods. This way, she could turn her skin back to its normal colour in around two months.
It seems absurd that eating carrots could ‘dye’ your skin orange like mixing colours in a washing machine.
However, the phenomenon is fairly well-known in medical science. The video itself showed numerous comments relating similar anecdotal stories.
One claimed that their classmate’s grandpa had a bountiful carrot harvest that year. After eating them every day, his classmate soon had an orange-coloured grandfather.
Source: 白鹿视频 on Weibo
According to Britannica, carrots and other orange fruits and veggies are high in a pigment called beta-carotene.
Since the woman ate too many carrots, she ingested too much beta-carotene for the small intestine to convert to Vitamin A.
As such, the pigment circulated inside her bloodstream instead. Due to her regular consumption, the sustained pigment in her blood turned her skin orange, a condition called carotenemia.
Source: DermNet
The turmeric powder she ate with carrots also contains a different pigment that causes skin discolouration, effectively causing her to accentuate her orange look.
Thankfully, the condition is harmless, and the woman will hopefully be able to return to her previous form with better diet management.
Also read: Russian Vegan Influencer Dies Of Starvation In M’sia, She Reportedly Only Ate Durian & Jackfruit
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Featured image adapted from 白鹿视频 on Weibo.
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