Broccoli May Just Save Your Life

My day job keeps me interested in nutrition, having worked in pharmaceutical and food companies all my working life. I am always on the lookout for the ‘next big thing in ingredients’

Nutrition is becoming more and more important as the ‘nutraceutical’ segment blending, nutrition, and supplements derived from food sources.

Sulforaphane is a powerful active within broccoli that acts as an antioxidant and antimicrobial. It also has anti-inflammatory effects. We know that most chronic diseases and almost all pain in the body usually have that one factor namely inflammation at play.

Dr. Young S. Kim the head of the largest government cancer and nutrition body in the world lists sulforaphane as the top natural compound to prevent cancer recurrence and there are hundreds of studies backing up her optimistic outlook.

All cruciferous vegetables provide sulforaphane, but the leading vegetable providing this powerful compound is broccoli.

Broccoli contains up to around 50 times the amount of sulforaphane of other cruciferous vegetables. These little green trees of life that we all love to hate are crucial to our health. It seems our parents were right all along. ‘Eat your broccoli’ is declared through many millions of households worldwide. Perhaps the new declaration should be ‘eat your broccoli if you want to prevent some terrible diseases.’

Breast Cancer

Think of how many women suffer from this disease, how many women succumb to this disease. Mothers and sisters and aunts and grandmothers. This amazing compound has been shown to prevent breast cancer and stop the growth of cancer stem cells. This is not from one study but a meta-analysis of 146 studies. (source below)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7352481/

Prostate Cancer

The gene expression for the promotion of cancer in men with prostate cancer was significantly reduced amongst men who consumed broccoli soup in an American study. I quote from the study.

“Evidence suggests that consumption of cruciferous vegetables is associated with reduced risk of prostate cancer progression, largely attributed to the biological activity of glucosinolate degradation products, such as sulforaphane derived from glucoraphanin. Because there are few therapeutic interventions for men on active surveillance for prostate cancer to reduce the risk of cancer progression, dietary approaches are an appealing option for patients.”

Colorectal cancer

A Japanese study showed that sulforaphane prevents H Pylori infection in the stomach lining and that there is an inverse relationship between the intake of cruciferous vegetables in the diet and Colorectal cancer, the more cruciferous vegetables eaten the lower the incidence of colorectal cancer.

Dietary sulforaphane-rich broccoli sprouts reduce colonization and attenuate gastritis see source below

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19349290/

Leukaemia

The effects on Leukaemia were very encouraging too. (The leukaemia that affects children.) A study by Baylor College in Texas showed sulforaphane enters cancer cells and reacts with the proteins to cause cancer cell death.

The big benefit is that, unlike chemotherapy, healthy cells are unaffected.

Vegetable compounds could become ingredients for treating leukemia

It looks like your mother was on to something when she said, "Eat your vegetables!" A concentrated form of a compound source is below:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121212205602.htm

Bladder and oral cancer

The active sulforaphane has also been shown to prevent bladder and oral cancer, there are so many benefits to eating broccoli. If you don’t like the taste mask it with something else in a smoothie, but whatever you make sure you get your daily broccoli. Make sure your children do too. I would also like to just state for the record I have no commercial interest in promoting broccoli. I just love it when we discover the blessings within what has been given to us.

Final thoughts:

Broccoli and the active compounds contained within are amazing little trees of life.

The preventative and curative action of sulforaphane is something that will receive greater attention in the future no doubt.

Having such positive effects on the health and fighting many types of cancer, why don’t we all adopt the position that food is medicine and have our cup of broccoli a day?

Add it to smoothies, or eat as a soup, stir-fry it whatever and however, you want to think of consuming broccoli ‘just do it’ as per Nike.

I hope this article assists you in life. Thanks for reading.