Mid-July is mid-summer and it’s a wonderful time of the year! It means steady warm sunny weather, an abundance of fruits and vegetables! Good for those who have the opportunity to feast on the gifts of nature from their own gardens. But even in the absence of such, the shelves of stores at this time of the year are full of juicy fruits! Each of them has its own unique taste, useful substances, vitamins and minerals. Nevertheless, we now propose to pay special attention to plums and peaches. After all, as scientists have found out, such fruits, thanks to their beneficial substances, are able to inhibit, that is, suppress, the development of cancer!
Staff of the Inna Charitable Foundation regularly publish useful information for cancer prevention in their materials on the page of the Striving to Live website. And here is another news that allows us to argue that proper nutrition is the best way to avoid a terrible disease!
A few years ago, the Journal of Agricultural and food chemistry published the results of a study by a group of scientists from the Center for Vegetable and Fruit Improvement, Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M AgriLife University (USA). Experts have studied the preventive potential of polyphenols found in peaches and plums to prevent the development of breast cancer.
The breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-435 was chosen for the study, which is often used in the study of the development, regulatory mechanisms and therapy of breast tumors. Scientists treated these cancer cells with phenolic fractions of flavonoids, procyanidins, phenolic acids and anthocyanins from individual peach and plum extracts, and monitored the condition of these cells.
For information!
Flavonoids are natural dyes, food antioxidants, tannins.
Procyanidin is a flavonoid antioxidant that is 20 times more effective than ascorbic acid and 50 times more effective than vitamin E.
Phenolic acid is a type of phytochemical.
Anthocyanins are natural plant pigments that give intense red or purple hues to vegetables, flowers, and fruits.
According to the results of the research, scientists have found that concentrated extracts from both plum and peach successfully inhibit breast cancer cells. Moreover, the highest activity was shown by the fractions of flavonoids and procyanidins. And even the less active, according to observations, phenolic acids, namely, chlorogenic and neochlorogenic acids, have sufficient chemopreventive potential to suppress the growth of MDA-MB-435 breast cancer cells.
In addition, plum fruits contain vitamins A (in dark-colored fruits), B1, B2, C and P. Useful substances are potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and iron. And in peaches there are vitamins C, B, E, K, PP, carotene, minerals – potassium, iron, phosphorus, manganese, copper, zinc, selenium and magnesium, pectins and essential oils.
As you can see, nature itself takes care of protecting people from cancer! And scientists reasonably believe that the use of such products can be used as a prophylactic against cancer!
