Your Anti-Cancer Mother’s Day Gift: Myricetin

walnuts public domainMyricetin may not yet grace your doctor’s anti-cancer tool kit, but put it on your prescription pad. Among all the phytonutrients, it’s what I call “plantastic”– blessed with a chemical structure that works some anti-cancer wonder.  

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Anti-Cancer Strategies: How to Stock Your Plantastic Kitchen®

anti-cancer dillToday, on World Cancer Day, go out and buy some cancer-fighting plants. Here are some musts for your anti-cancer kitchen: Continue reading

Part 3: What’s On and Off Your Anti-Cancer Platter? Flavonoids & The Mighty Italian Triumverate

colorful plants for an anti-cancer dietNow that you’re no longer a “Proteinaholic,” how do you go about selecting the most nutritious plants among all those shades of red, purple and green? 

My first vote goes to “The Mighty Italian Triumvirate,” a combo of   Continue reading

Anti-Cancer Strategies: 3 Better Ways of Eating Berries

anti-cancer foods berries Berries are a must for your anti-cancer kitchen, but how you eat them is key. 

  • Raw or cooked?
  • Combined with what spices?
  • As desserts or snacks?

 

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Anti-Cancer Recipes: Holiday Guacamole with Emeralds and Rubies

anti-cancer recipes guacamoleHere’s a sparkling twist on guacamole to share with friends this holiday season and add to your growing repertoire of anti-cancer recipes.

The emeralds include avocado chunks and cilantro; the rubies, red onions and pomegranates. Continue reading

An Anti-Cancer Holiday Gift: Cranberries to Enrich your Poop

anti-cancer diet: cranberries

Ready to follow me on Twitter?

You don’t know what a healthy poop is until you’ve added some cranberries to your anti-cancer diet.  

And what’s a hearty poop got to do with cancer? 

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Anti-Cancer Foods: Freeze your own Berries

anti-cancer foods: berriesWith summer on its way out, it’s time to freeze some of its most nutritious anti-cancer bounty. How to do it? Remember these 3 letters:  Continue reading

Anti-Cancer Recipe Challenge: Let’s Make Ketchup

anti-cancer tomato pasteWhat’s wrong with buying ketchup for your anti-cancer diet? 

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Anti-Cancer Foods: How to Pick Unseasonal Berries

anti cancer berriesHow should you go about picking berries for your anti-cancer diet when you can’t get fresh ones from the ‘hood? Continue reading

Anti-Cancer Recipes: Have a Berry Merry Tea Party!

anti cancer recipes teas and berriesNow that the holidays are behind us, let’s get back to celebrating life with some simple, health-promoting anti-cancer recipes.  Instead of wine and canapés, treat yourself to a Berry Merry Tea Party—a handful of goji berries along with a cup of the finest tea.  Here’s the black and white—and green and red—on your tea choices.     

For any of you with cancer, please read the last three questions first. Continue reading

Anti-Cancer Recipes: Here’s to a Berry Good Year!

anti cancer berriesSummer’s waning. It’s your last chance to gather these anti-cancer wonders and preserve their pleasures for those long, winter nights. Get out today, and buy a bushel or four along with a large cookie sheet that will fit in your freezer, then Continue reading

Anti-Cancer Recipe: Lemons, Limes, Limonene

anti cancer limonene

Note: One of the pitfalls of a plant-based diet is that some foods can soften the enamel on teeth. The acid in citrus can definitely do that,  As a reader suggests, the solution is to rinse your mouth with water. And wait an hour or so before brushing. You don’t want to brush enamel that’s been softened. 

D-limonene, to be precise. Put it in your anti-cancer vocabulary.  It’s a member of a very fragrant class of molecules that abound in citrus–terpenoids or terpenes. And they’ve been shown to inhibit cancer cell progression and induce cell death.  Continue reading

Grapefruit and Estrogen: Pro or Anti-Cancer?

grapefruit anti or pro cancer

Winter 2014 Update: Dr. Kristine Monroe’s most recent study (discussed briefly in the post below), which looks at the effects of grapefruit and its juice on healthy postmenopausal women, has just been published. She found that the whole fruit led to an increase in “the major form of circulating estrogen in postmenopausal women,” that grapefruit juices had no effect on that form of estrogen, but that they did lower another very potent form of estrogen. 

“The take-away message from this pilot study is that the process of hormone metabolism and absorption is complicated,” Monroe said, and more research is clearly needed.

The few studies on grapefruit—and whether it has an anti-cancer benefits or promotes cancer—are definitely at odds.

It’s clear that grapefruit juice contains natural substances that can inhibit an enzyme system (called CYP3A4) responsible for metabolizing certain meds. The result: an increase of medication circulating in the blood, with potentially toxic side effects.

But can grapefruit also increase your estrogen? Continue reading

Anti Cancer Shopping Tips: What’s going in your Tomato Sauce?

anti cancer tomatoes

2014 update: Add to the BPA free list: Jovial organic tomatoes, Hunt’s plain canned tomatoes (but not any of their other tomato products.) 

Today you’re making tomato sauce. Good choice. Tomatoes are prized for their lycopene, the pigment that turns them red and is associated with anti-cancer activity. Continue reading

Anti-Cancer Foods: Cherries and Estrogen

anti cancer cherries in snow

Cherries from Chili spotted in Canada in January. Worth breaking the “eat local” guidelines?

Next time you need a nibble on something sweetish, grab a handful of fresh tart cherries. They could help control your estrogen levels.

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