Crunchy and delicious carrots make a power-packed addition to any lunchbox, dinner plate or snack-sack. This hearty and plentifully available vegetable has long been credited with improving eyesight, prompting many doctors and doctor moms to encourage growing tykes to crunch away to their heart’s content.
It turns out that this veggie offers lots more than just eyesight-helpful beta-carotene. There are actually a lot of different benefits to carrot consumption that makes them even more of a rock star veggie than you originally thought.
Vision Protecting
Parents urge their kids to eat carrots because they are said to help promote the development of good eyesight – which they do. Adults should take their own advice, however, as the beta-carotene present in carrots can also prevent their eyesight from deteriorating.
A study on carrot consumption found that regular beta-carotene consumers are 40 percent less likely to suffer from macular degeneration than those who didn’t eat carrots. The study also found that regular carrot consumers were less likely to develop cataracts than those who skipped the carrots.
Healthy Skin Retaining
If you want to keep your bold and youthful looks, carrots could be the potion you seek. Carrots are rich in both antioxidants and vitamin A, which help promote moisture retention and prevent wrinkling.
These skin-helpful components also prevent acne and other blemishes and even skin tone. Carrots can even be used to keep skin looking healthy from the outside as they can be grated and mixed with honey to make an inexpensive and 100 percent natural face mask.
Oral Hygiene Boosting
Keep your teeth sparkling and bright with carrot crunching. When you munch on carrots you scrape plaque and food particles off of your teeth just as you do when you brush your teeth.
Crunching through a bushel of carrots also promotes the release of saliva, which can prevent the gathering of acid in the mouth, which can cause cavities.
Stroke Prevention
Stave off a stroke by filling your diet with carrots. In a Harvard University study, researchers found that individuals who ate six or more carrots per week were less likely to suffer a stroke than those who ate one or fewer carrots a month.
Heart Disease Risk Reduction
Reduce your risk of potentially deadly heart disease by adding carrots to your snack or meal plan. Carrots contain not just beta-carotene, but also alpha-carotene and lutein.
When these three carotenoids combine they work together to reduce cholesterol levels, which in turn reduces your risk of suffering from heart disease.
High Blood Pressure Prevention
Another way that carrots keep you healthy is by preventing the development of potentially heart-damaging high blood pressure. Carrots are rich in potassium, which can help your body keep sodium levels in check.
This reduces your likelihood of suffering from high blood pressure, and it may aid you in getting your blood pressure under control if you already struggle with this issue.
Infection Prevention
Although you probably don’t immediately think of carrots when you get a cut or scrape, you really should. Carrots have long been used as a natural way to treat cuts and prevent the development of infection.
By shredding raw carrots or boiling and mashing them and spreading them on a cut, they help cuts to heal more rapidly and reduce the risk of infection development.
Age Defying
Although there isn’t a stay-young-forever pill – much to the chagrin of women and men everywhere – carrots can help you put the brakes on the aging process, however slightly.
The beta-carotene found in carrots (the same stuff that helps your eyes) also slows down the aging of cells within your body, helping you stay younger longer.
Body Cleaning
New toxins are introduced to your body daily, but carrots can help flush these bad boys out. Carrots help with this important body function in two ways.
Firstly, the vitamin A in carrots helps the liver as it works to rid the body of toxins. Additionally, the fiber that is readily present in carrots helps the colon move waste out of your body more 
efficiently.
Cancer Development Preventing
Research in this area continues, but some promising studies indicate that carrot consumption could slow the development of cancer cells. Studies suggest that the polyacetylenes in carrots can stifle the growth of colon cancer cells.
Although focused on colon cancer exclusively, this research suggests that carrot consumption, along with being part of maintaining a healthy and balanced diet, could prove beneficial for sufferers of cancers of any type.
