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The Miracle of Broccoli – Can It Beat Breast Cancer?
Everyone knows that eating cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, has been known to greatly reduce the risk of certain medical conditions such as cancer and arthritis, but exactly how that has worked has never been made clear. New information has recently been revealed to show that sulforaphane, a compound found in broccoli, can increase your body’s own anti-cancer fighting agents. Evidence seems to point to the fact that sulforaphane can maintain a good balance of antioxidants and thereby counter the effects of environmental, dietary or other types of carcinogens, states researches at the Institute of Food Research.
What Researchers Have Found
Sulforaphane is found in both broccoli and broccoli sprouts. Sulforaphane appears to prevent new cancer cells from growing while killing cancer cells themselves. Studies have been performed only on mice at this time but it’s a very exciting discovery as researchers have seen that cancer cells, when treated with sulforaphane, are unable to form new tumors. Current chemotherapies, although successful at killing cancer cells, do not kill stem cells, which allow for cancer to return and spread. Sulforaphane also has little to no effect on normal cells.
This is great news as it is well known that most conventional treatment methods, such as chemotherapy, destroy healthy cells along with diseased ones. This research leads scientists to believe that there is a potential for a completely new form of treatment for breast cancer patients. Scientists hope that one day they might be able to strike out at all manners and aspects of breast cancer and control cancer stem cells.
There are currently two new studies being done using broccoli based medicines. Both of these studies are being done right here in America. Also, the Knight Cancer Institute in Oregon has researchers checking into whether a broccoli extract taken three times a day can slow the development of tumor cells. Researchers are currently looking for a method to extract sulforaphane and will complete a clinical trial to test it as a possible prevention and treatment for breast cancer, although no clinical trial is available at this time.
SEE ALSO: Cancer Causing Foods
So Eating More Broccoli Will Keep Me Cancer Free, Right?
Well, the studies have not been completed enough to say one way or the other. Eating more broccoli is good for you, there is no doubt there, but you would have to eat several servings of broccoli everyday of your life to consume enough to be useful and most people are simply not willing to do that. Even then, there are still no assurances that this would prevent all forms of breast cancer.
As of this writing, taking sulforaphane via supplements is not being recommended as possible side effect research has not been completed. So even though you may not be able to fight cancer cells of the future simply by eating broccoli today, it’s still a well-known fact that broccoli is good for you and adding more of it into your diet allows you to take advantage of all the vitamins and good health benefits broccoli can bring you. Read also how to detox your body naturally.
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