Lung Cancer Metastases & Broccoli

What else can broccoli do? Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States, but lung is actually the number one cancer killer of women. About 85% of women with breast cancer are still alive five years later. But lung cancer is picked up so late that the number’s reversed; 85% of lung cancer victims are dead. And 90% of those deaths are from metastases, the lung cancer spreading to other parts in the body.

Well, broccoli seems to be able to do everything else. What about suppressing the metastatic potential of human lung cancer cells? Check!

What they did to assess cancer cell migration is lay down a layer of cancer in a petri dish, and then cut a swath down the middle. Within 24 hours, the cancer was creeping back, and by 30 hours, closed the gap completely. Until they started dripping some cruciferous compounds on them. As you can see, the cancer cells seemed almost paralyzed, kind of stuck in place. They don’t seem to want to go anywhere, anytime soon.

In their conclusion, they talk about the antiproliferative, antitumor effects of these broccoli family dietary compounds, ending with a Latin phrase rarely seen in scholarly literature, since it’s just so nondescript. But in this case they evidently felt it necessary. “These compounds have inhibitory effects on several types of cancer cell growth, such as leukemia, prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer, etc.”

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.

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Images thanks to Fir0002 via Wikimedia commons, TobaccoDocuments.org, and Health Canada.