The Right Diet May Prevent Cancer

 Another guest blogger.  Enjoy

The bad news is that there are many types of cancer and that they can kill you. The good news is that at least two types of cancers may be preventable if a person eats a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.  The foods to target are black raspberries and raw vegetables such as broccoli sprouts.  These foods contain antioxidants, as reported in this article at Webctor.com.
Studies presented at Six Annual International Frontiers on Cancer Prevention shows promise that the right diet can help prevent cancer.  More studies still need to be done.  Doctors stress that people still need to exercise and stop smoking in order to best help fruits and vegetables help prevent cancer.

Barrett’s Esophagus Pre-Cancer

Black raspberries helped patients with the pre-cancerous condition known as Barrett’s esophagus or BE.  People with BE rapidly degenerate into developing esophageal adenocarcinoma, which kills 14,000 Americans per year.  The main cause of BE is thought to be gastroesophagal reflux disease or GERD.  The constant presence of stomach acid in the esophagus causes severe damage.  People at risk for GERD include smokers and obese people.

Ohio State University studied the affects of eating black raspberries on patients with BE.  Patients ate black raspberries every day for 26 weeks.  The patients experienced less progression of BE through tissue damage.  Samples indicated less pre-cancerous cells in the patient’s digestive system.  Study leaders are hoping to try a similar black raspberry regimen for patients with oral cancer, as this has shown promise with lab animals with cancer.

Bladder Cancer

Raw cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, radishes and broccoli contain isothiocyanates or ITCs – chemicals that can help prevent cancer.  Currently, it is unknown just how much raw vegetables a person would need to eat in order to get the most bladder cancer prevention benefits.  ITCs help the bladder protect itself against carcinogens and other chemicals that can cause cancer.

But a study on rats with bladder cancer may help.  Instead of making the rats eat raw vegetables, they instead were given an extract made from broccoli sprouts.  Rats given broccoli sprout extract experienced a much slower progression of their bladder cancers than rats on a normal lab rat diet.  After the broccoli sprout extract fed rats were dissected, researchers were excited to find ITCs in the bladders of rats but not in their livers.  This indicates that the ITCs were going directly to the bladder through urine production and not anywhere else in the body.

The Raw and the Cooked

Researchers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute wondered if cooking affected the ITC content of cruciferous vegetables.  It certainly did.  To get the most ITCs, people should eat these vegetables raw.  But cooked vegetables still retain some ITCs.  But they only contain 10% to 40% of raw vegetables.  Researchers did not experiment on black raspberries.
Clearly, diet can affect whether or not we get cancer and how fast cancers can progress in the body.  The team here are Webctor.com also urge their readers to quit smoking and exercise regularly for overall good health and cancer prevention.

This article was written by  Judith Hunter MD, which provides a professional medical content on Webctor.com - world’s health center.