Posted on November 5, 2009 in Cancer, Dietary Section, Research by BrandonNo Comments »

Researchers at Cornell University found that apple skins (from Red Delicious apples) had powerful antioxidant (stronger than vitamin C) and anti-proliferative effects. Specifically they tested certain flavanoids from apple skins against certain liver cancer and breast cancer cell lines and found that both were potently inhibited. This may help explain some of the treatment strategies used by certain natural anti-cancer therapies such as Gerson Therapy, or other juicing regimens that include heavy use of apples. One of the problems though is that the skins of the apples also have the most pesticides, so remember to only use organic apples since peeling them takes out most of their anti-cancerous properties. It may be even more beneficial when juicing apples to save the fiber and then eat it later since some of the skin components will not make it into the juice (don’t mix it in with the juice or you may impair nutrient absorption). Hopefully, Steve Gomberg can give us a recipe for how to do this in a palatable way.
 
J Agric Food Chem. 2008 Nov 12;56(21):9905-10. Epub 2008 Oct 2.

Posted on November 1, 2009 in Environment, Dietary Section by BrandonNo Comments »

Oh how I’ve been waiting for this study. Turns out that arsenic poisoning is a big problem in India due to contamination of the water supply and no alternatives. So researchers from Hamdard University in New Delhi noticed that some people who ate a lot of sugarcane didn’t generally get arsenic poisoning. So they hypothesized that perhaps sugarcane had some protective effects against arsenic poisoning. To test this, they took a bunch of mice and administered arsenic together with sugarcane and compared it to mice fed only arsenic. They found that many of the adverse effects of arsenic were substantially mitigated or entirely prevented by sugarcane. These included enhancing levels of detoxification enzymes, preventing damage to the lungs and substantially reducing inflammatory markers. Keep in mind this is sugarcane juice and not sugar. There is a huge difference between the two. Also, the study did not look at the subsequent dental health of the mice.
 
Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2009 Oct 26. [Epub ahead of print]

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