Pineapple has been directly related to preventing
cancers of the mouth, throat, and breast, as it is rich in various antioxidants, including vitamin A , beta carotene, bromelain, various flavonoid compounds, and high levels of manganese. Manganese is an important cofactor of superoxide dismutase, an extremely potent free radical scavenger that has been associated with a number of different cancers.The enzyme bromelain, found in pineapple, is one of several natural foods you can use to prevent cancer, fight cancer if you have it, and minimize the effects of radiation therapy that often cause as much damage to healthy cells as they do to cancerous cells.
Chemotherapy is the most common form of treatment for cancer in the United States. It has been used for the past four decades despite the fact that it ravages the body, weakening the immune system until it can no longer function properly.
The cure is often worse than the disease, pushing scientists to search for natural cancer-fighting solutions .
The cancer treatment that people are most familiar with is chemotherapy. This method of treatment has been in use for over 40 years and is known for its unpleasant side effects. Chemotherapy works by means of a chemical agent called 5-fluorauracil, which poisons rapidly-dividing cells and halts RNA replication. The goal of this is to kill the cancerous tumor in the patient, but as most people know, chemotherapy is kind of like dropping an atomic bomb on your body; it will attack the cancer, but it will also attack normal, fast-dividing cells which are noncancerous in nature. This is why people undergoing chemotherapy treatment end up losing their hair for the duration of their treatment.
As you might imagine, many people are curious whether there are alternative treatments that can actually work and don鈥檛 have such terrible side effects. There may be a solution in the form of an enzyme few people have ever heard of, that鈥檚 found in a fruit they鈥檝e probably eaten their whole lives.
Bromelain is a natural enzyme found in the core of the pineapple. This fruit has been used in various folk remedies by indigenous people in South and Central America for thousands of years. While pineapples are certainly rich in vitamins, only recently have scientists uncovered evidence that the bromelain found in this popular fruit could actually have cancer-fighting properties.
Researchers isolated and extracted bromelain from pineapple in order to test its effectiveness as a treatment for different types of cancer. The scientists compared the effects of bromelain in treating intestinal, breast, and lung cancer tumors, among others, in laboratory mice. These results were compared with those of a standard treatment of 5-fluorauracil (chemotherapy) group and an untreated control group.
The results were astounding. The survival index of all animals treated with bromelain was significantly higher than the other two groups (the one exception to this was among mice with melanoma). In mice with Ehrlich ascites tumors (EAT), the survival index score went up by a shocking 318 percent, compared with 263 percent for the group receiving chemotherapy.
