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Tag: cruciferous vegetables

Reminder To Eat Your Broccoli (and Rapini, and Kohlrabi, and Romanesco, etc.)

Cruciferous fractals.

Just a quick post here, a reminder to eat your cruciferous vegetables. Dr. Rhonda Patrick presents convincing evidence (in the video below) that eating at least three servings a week significantly reduces risk of of death from cancer and heart disease.

I mentioned cruciferous vegetables in this cancer prevention post, but watching Ms. Patrick’s video convinced me to bump them higher in the list and add a bunch of these veggies to the perma-shopping-list in Evernote.

Apparently eating cruciferous vegetables raw or lightly cooked is important in order to obtain the phytochemical benefits; excessive heat destroys sulforaphane and other health-promoting chemicals. Broccoli sprouts are the champs in terms of sulforaphane, but there is strong evidence for the health benefits of consuming the more palatable members of this vegetable family as well. That’s good, because I’m not going to grow or eat broccoli sprouts. Nor am I going to put anything with leaves in a blender. IMO one should not drink leaves, even if they bestow immortality. But I’m more than willing to eat one of more veggies from the following list everyday:

Can You Greatly Reduce Your Risk of Cancer with Lifestyle Changes?

Collage of mixed fruits and vegetables, MRI, by Wellcome Images.

Collage of mixed fruits and vegetables, MRI, by Wellcome Images.

Cancer. It’s one of the few diseases with a personality. The F*ck Cancer meme is much stronger than the F*ck Heart Disease meme, even though both kill a similar number of human beings. While both diseases can develop with no obvious warning signs, cancer is perceived as a sneakier, meaner disease.

Maybe that’s because cancer is mysterious. There are more than 200 different types, and risk factors and causes are multitudinous: genetics, chemical exposure, radiation exposure (including sunlight), age, certain viruses, smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of exercise … the list goes on.

But cancer isn’t a death sentence. As several of the older members of my family have experienced in the past few years, cancer can be successfully treated. Though my family members used both conventional treatments and lifestyle changes, sometimes cancer goes away with lifestyle changes alone.

About half of people in developed countries will be diagnosed with some kind of cancer in the course of their lives. 100% of middle-aged or older people will have small pockets of abnormal cell growth — microcancers — most of which will be either too slow-growing to ever cause a problem, or will be eliminated by the immune system. And if you get cancer and beat it, the only way you know for sure you are “cured” is when you die of something else.

Nobody is totally safe from cancer, but there are things we can do to improve our chances of not developing the disease in the first place. While genetic risk factors play a significant role, so do environmental (lifestyle) factors. The clinical research is there to prove it. We can prevent cancer (or at least improve our odds) in at least seven ways:

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