Raw Broccoli & Bladder Cancer Survival

For years I’ve been presenting data on how we can best tune our diet to prevent cancer. What if you already have it? There’s been a burst of new research lately on cancer survival, which I’d like to share.

For example, we used to tell cancer patients to rest; conserve their energy. But now, there’s evidence that cancer survivors may survive longer if they exercise. But what about diet? Where are the data?

Well, we know that eating cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, may help prevent bladder cancer, so I guess it should come to no surprise that broccoli may help with survival. This was a study done at Roswell Park, following a few hundred bladder cancer patients for about eight years. Of course, many didn’t live that long, but in teasing out which factors seemed to improved survival, they found that raw broccoli consumption appeared the most powerful. Cooked broccoli wasn’t useless, but this definitely makes sense, given the whole sulforaphane story I talked about before.

Eating just a single serving or more a month of raw broccoli was associated with half the cancer mortality. If you know anyone with bladder cancer, go buy them some broccoli, or even better, a broccoli seed-sprouting kit.

Fruit and vegetable intake also improves survival from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, especially green leafy vegetables and citrus—though it is sobering to note that only 22% of the patients in this study followed public health recommendations for the minimum intake of fruits and vegetables, suggesting that the lymphoma diagnosis may be an important “teachable” moment to improve diet and other health behaviors. If a cancer diagnosis can’t get someone to eat their greens, I’m afraid nothing will.

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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Image thanks to Russ Walker / flickr