The colour purple seems to matter when it comes to potatoes. They contain properties that kill colon cancer stem cells and slow the spread of the disease.
Researchers believe that the potato’s resistant starch helps gut bacteria create short chain fatty acids that regulate the immune system, suppress inflammation and help cancer cells self-destruct.
Researchers at Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute have tested the purple-fleshed potatoes on stem cells in laboratory Petri dishes on mice and have come up with similar results.
Basically, the potato stops the cancer from spreading but, more importantly, it attacks cancer stem cells, which prevent it from recurring. They hope to test the potatoes on cancer patients next and on various types of cancer.
The researchers say that baking the potato doesn’t kill off any of the cancer-fighting compounds and eating one a day should be sufficient. They believe it may be the compounds (anthocyanins) which make the potato purple that are fighting the cancer cells. If so, other ‘rainbow’ fruit and vegetables may have similar anticancer qualities (J. Nutri. Biochem., 2015).
Eating prunes is good for many facets of health. They can improve gut health and reduce the risk of colon cancer. The fruit is packed with healthy properties that re-establish the gut’s good bacteria and can, in turn, naturally fight off colon cancer.
Prunes contain phenolic compounds that can work as antioxidants to neutralise the damaging effects of free radicals on our DNA, says Nancy Turner of Texas A&M University. A healthy gut environment protects against colon cancer and this has been demonstrated in several studies.
Some interesting research has come to light regarding drinking alcohol. Apparently, women who drink beer once or twice a week are 30 per cent less likely to suffer a heart attack. The same cannot be said for spirits, where drinking gin or brandy increased the risk of dying from cancer by 50 per cent in women who are frequent imbibers. This is defined as drinking spirits more than twice or so a month.
The potato stops the cancer from spreading and attacks cancer stem cells
With regard to wine, the jury is still out. There just wasn’t enough evidence to confirm that wine is indeed the healthiest alcoholic drink, say researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden.
They tracked the health and lifestyle habits of 1,462 women for 32 years, during which time 185 women had a heart attack, 162 suffered a stroke, 160 developed diabetes and 345 got cancer.
The biggest association was between cancer and drinking spirits, while, surprisingly, beer seemed to be protective when it came to heart attacks. Women who drank beer once or twice a week were 30 per cent less likely to suffer an attack than women who drank beer less frequently, or not at all.
However, the researchers were not able to confirm that wine has any protective effects (Scandanavian. J. Prim. Health Care, 2015).
Some researchers believe that depression is a nutritional deficiency. Remember some of my past articles on ‘bad mood food’? Research shows that the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruit, vegetables and nuts, is one of the best ways of preventing depression.
It was noted that those who ate plenty of vegetables and fruit, as well as omega-3 fatty acids from fish, are less likely to suffer from depression. The health and diets of 15,093 participants were tracked. They were all healthy at the beginning of the 10-year study. During the course of the study, around 10 per cent were diagnosed with clinical depression, or took an antidepressant drug. The researchers noted a strong correlation between depression and the type of diet being eaten.
Those who ate a Mediterranean diet, or a similar diet known as alternative healthy eating, which is also high in fruit and vegetables, were far less likely to suffer from depression. Moderate alcohol intakes were also common to both diets. Even following the diets only occasionally seemed to have a protective effect against depression. There appears to be a plateau: those who zealously followed one of the diets every day didn’t reduce their risk of depression any further than those who only occasionally followed it (BMC Med., 2015).
Staying with the negative mood, people who believe that bad karma is the cause of their illness suffer more pain and have worse symptoms. The phenomenon has been seen across a range of disorders, including cancer, mental problems and chronic pain.
Although religious and spiritual beliefs have a positive impact on health and well-being, anyone who has even a slightly negative attitude suffers poorer health. Negative spiritual beliefs can include feeling punished or abandoned by a higher power.
Researchers from the University of Missouri made the discovery when they analysed the spiritual beliefs of 199 people who were either suffering from a chronic health condition like cancer, traumatic brain injury and chronic pain or were in good health.
Those who had negative spiritual beliefs suffered “significantly” worse pain and physical and mental symptoms than those who had only positive beliefs, such as God always loved them and forgave their shortcomings. The researchers believed that teaching positive spirituality can have a huge impact on disease and pain control (Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 2015).
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