Vegetable Health Benefits: Cancer-Fighting Agents and More

I have read time and again from various magazine and online sources that vegetables are so important to our diets and how many types prevent cancer. So I'm here to share with you some of what I've compiled.

Many types of vegetables provide protection against different types of cancer. So therefore, make sure you have a very varied consumption of vegetables to better increase your chances of being protected from a wider range of cancers.

According to HealthCastle.com, the vegetables with the highest anti-cancer activity are garlic, cabbage, soy, ginger, and umbelliferous vegetables (carrots, celery, cilantro, parsley, and parsnip). Vegetables with lower activity include onions, flax seed, citrus, cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower) and solanaceous vegetables (tomato and peppers).

On Scientific American, Pharmacologist Shivendra Singh of the University of Pittsburgh and his colleagues showed that when you chew cruciferous vegetables, the phenethyl-isothiocyanate that is released helps control human prostate tumors in mice.

Fellow University of Pittsburgh pharmacologist Sanjay Srivastava and his colleagues discovered that the chemical that makes hot peppers hot killed human pancreatic cancer cells in mice.

And finally, obstetrician J. Rebecca Liu of the University of Michigan and her colleagues found ginger powder killed ovarian cancer cells in vitro.

The National Cancer Institute estimates that about one-third of all cancer deaths may be related to diet. So what you put in your mouth may be more important than you think! You need not look further than your local grocery store to find foods rich in antioxidants, which neutralize unstable free radicals that do damage to your body.

At http://www.cancertutor.com, there's even a raw food treatment for cancer, which includes vegetable juice.

Dietary experts recommend that we eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables as a part of our daily diet, but studies have shown that very few people actually consume this amount. With cancer on the rise in this age of processed foods, lack of exercise, and an alarming excess of sugar and fat, we need our vegetables more than ever.

Sugar-among other things such as beef-feed the cancer cells that are already in all of our bodies. But once the multiplication reaches a threshold in which it is out of control, you have what is officially called "cancer."

Vegetables are clearly part of today's new cancer-fighters, with some people going as far too replace traditional methods of chemotherapy and radiation with a highly vegetable-oriented diet. The reason you don't hear doctors recommending cancer patient alternate cancer treatments involving vegetables is because they either don't know about it or because it may affect their job (obligations, monetary loss, etc.).

Vegetables are stirring a revolution in cancer fighting. There's a wealth of information online that points to vegetables as a safer, more effective treatment than visiting the doctor.