Cancer herbs and spices can combat the primary cause of cancer, DNA destruction, which can occur as a result of ageing, genetic vulnerability, and exposure to a variety of carcinogens.
How herbs cure cancer ?
Many phytonutrients contained in spices serve as potential cancer prevention agents by protecting DNA against free radicals and other contaminants, preventing toxic chemical overproduction within the body, assisting the body’s detoxification processes, and altering a variety of factors involved in cancer growth.
Herbs and spices, in addition to lowering the risk of contracting cancer, can also be effective therapies for some forms of cancer. Certain spices intensify the effects of conventional cancer drugs such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy while decreasing their negative side effects.
Anise, basil, black pepper, capsicums, caraway, cloves, cumin, fennel, garlic, ginger, mustard, rosemary, and turmeric are the most effective anti-cancer herbs and spices.
Spices – Vital keys to cancer prevention
Cancer is a major cause of death in most developed countries, where huge amounts of money are spent per year on studies for new treatments. Eastern countries, where the severity of most cancers is usually much smaller, spend relatively less money in such research – and incorporate significantly more spices into their diets per year.
It appears that these traditional herbs and spices provide fantastic value. A comprehensive analysis of pathological and experimental data shows that the difference in cancer incidence between the West and many Eastern countries can be due to the latter’s significantly higher rate of spice consumption.
‘Cancer rates in the United States are significantly greater than in spice-eating Eastern countries‘
Breast, prostate, and lung cancer are the three most fatal cancers in the United States, for example. In India, the prevalence of these cancers – and several others – is significantly lower.
Breast cancer is eight times more common in American women than in Indian women, and prostate cancer is more than 30 times more common in American men than in Indian men. Lung cancer is about 20 times more common in the United States than in India.
Also when other considerations such as diet, disease prevalence, and factors are taken into account, these differences are surprising.
As scientists seek to determine variety of spices, recent research suggests that many of these herbs, both individually and in combination, do also have powerful anti-cancer properties.
Indians, Sri Lankans, Thais, and others medicate themselves with some of the most effective anti-cancer natural remedies known by adding an average of 10 grams of spices to their meals per day.
Spices reduce cancer risk.
One of the most critical steps we should take to improve our health is to boost our resistance to cancer. This feat is not as hard as it seems. The following review of cancer causes, processes involved in its growth, and the numerous ways phytonutrients work to fight it reveals that raising our consumption of spices is one of the most efficient, simple, and cost-effective ways we can fortify ourselves against this widespread disease.
Causes of cancer
Cancer is caused by a variety of causes, the majority of which are strongly linked to – or accelerated by – the aging method. As a result, as we get older, our chances of developing cancer multiply by a factor of ten. The process of aging, aging-related biochemical and chromosomal modifications raise the risk of DNA injury, which is the first step toward developing a carcinoma.
Presume that our body mechanism fail to restore the DNA or destroy the cells that produce it. In that case, the body’s cancer-control defenses become dysfunctional, allowing these rare, pre-malignant cells to multiply uncontrolled.
In addition to being less effective at repairing and controlling DNA damage, aging bodies are less well optimized to safeguard cells from the agents that cause damage to our genetic coding material.
Environmental Agents: Nonetheless, cancer will affect individuals of all ages, and youth does not ensure protection from all carcinogenic elements.
Among the most significant are inherited cancer cells; exposure to environmental toxins such as asbestos, petrochemicals, tobacco, and alcohol; viral infections such as herpes and wart viruses; radiation, including ultraviolet rays from sunlight; chronic inflammation such as those caused by autoimmune disorders; and the production of excessive quantities of harmful endogenous chemicals, such as hydrogen peroxide, by malfunctioning cellular processes.
Free radicals and antioxidants These carcinogens normally cause harm by free radicals. Extremely reactive and toxic free-radical particles circulate within our bodies in search of something to react with or oxidize.
When free radicals invade DNA, it loses its ability to send the right signals required to avoid unchecked cell division.
For this reason, antioxidants, which react with and neutralize free radicals before they can attack our body, are such valuable substances to include in our diets.
As a result, antioxidants, which react with and destroy free radicals until they can damage our bodies, are extremely important to have in the diets.
In addition to the many other anti-cancer properties present in spices, almost all of these foods contain potent antioxidants that, when eaten on a daily basis, clear away free radicals before they can cause a cancererous growth.
Spice compounds fight cancer.
Herbs and spices are effective cancer-prevention agents due to their antioxidant activities, but many of the phytonutrients found in spices still help the body neutralise and excrete carcinogenic compounds. Spices’ importance is not limited to preventing the first stage of cancer growth. Spices contain a number of potent phytonutrients that work against pre-cancerous cells at various stages of their development into full-fledged tumors.
How cancer develops and spreads
How Cancer Starts? Cell division is a natural and necessary physiological mechanism that exists in virtually all tissues. A vast yet finely tuned biochemical system controls the equilibrium between cell growth and programmed cell death (apoptosis) in a normally functioning body. Tumor growth is a multi-stage mechanism that develops when damage to normal cells’ DNA disrupts the equilibrium between apoptosis and cellular proliferation. This mechanism results in further alterations and modifications inside the affected cell, rapid growth of these abnormal cells, and cancerous cells penetrating surrounding tissues. As cancer cells migrate to other organs through the blood or lymphatic system, this is referred to as metastatic spread.
This mechanism is underpinned by a more complex series of modifications that arise at the cellular level. Almost all cancers begin with a single cell and spread by the mechanism of cell replication and division.
A cell that degenerates into a tumor cell, on the other hand, does not normally accumulate any of these properties all at once or in one generation. Conversely, mutations spread over time – division by division and generation by generation – in a process known as clonal evolution.
And the farther malignant the properties introduced on a cell by a specific mutation, the more advantageous it is over adjacent cells. The most likely it is to reproduce and pass on its mutant genes, the more likely it is to replicate and pass on its mutant genes.
A tumor cell is eventually created as a part of this ruthless selection procedure. This mechanism does not stop with the acquisition of any of the properties that define a tumor cell: later-stage, breakaway cancers are often more virulent than early, primary tumors, as even entirely cancerous cells get stronger and more aggressive over time.
Characteristics of cancer cells
- Resistant to programmed cell death2.
- Cell division is rapid and uncontrolled
- Produce telomerase rendering cells immortal by preventing the
- loss of the telomeres
- Produce their growth factors in excessive amounts
- Insensitive to the body’s growth inhibitors
- Secrete chemical signals that stimulate abnormal blood vessel growth
- Invade other tissue types and spread to distant sites in the body
This process of systematic growth has significant consequences for cancer prevention and care. Ideally, we should be avoiding cancer by eradicating early mutated cells so they can grow into full-fledged tumor cells.
However, since these pre-cancerous cells are undiagnosed, such a technique would be inappropriate if we were to use conventional drugs. Taking costly medications with sometimes unsafe and painful side effects in the expectation of eradicating early cancers that do not yet occur is definitely imprudent.
Spices have exactly what we need in this regard. They include substances that are selective against pre-cancerous cells at various stages of growth. Through eating herbs on a daily and adequate basis, we provide our bodies with the resources it needs to detect tumors in their early stages of growth.
Underlying cancer processes
Many of the factors and processes involved in cancer growth have been shown to be affected by phytonutrients found in herbs, spices, and other plants over the last few decades. While we are just starting to learn how they function, we do know that all of these compounds fight cancer by either strengthening the body’s natural processes for fighting tumorigenesis or by repairing systems that are disrupted as a result of cancerous mutations.
Proto-oncogenes play a critical role in the control and release of chemical messengers that signal the cell to undergo cell division (mitosis) to produce more cells of a particular tissue. If these proto-oncogenes mutate, they become oncogenes that over-express the cell division signals responsible for cancer’s excessive cell division rates. Several spice compounds prevent the conversion of proto-oncogenes to pathogenic oncogenes.
Tumor-suppressing agent Genes code for chemical messengers that delay or interrupt mitosis to allow for DNA repair. This is accomplished by the use of enzymes that sense DNA damage and prevent it from being passed on to the next generation of cells.
A mutation in the tumor-suppressor gene will impair its “switching off” ability, resulting in defective DNA being passed on to each successive generation of cells. These flaws worsen, ultimately leading to the formation of tumor cells.
Antioxidants found in cancer-fighting spices, especially ginger and turmeric, accomplish this by preventing mutations in tumor-suppressor genes from occurring.
The nuclear factor is a protein that plays a role in cell survival, adhesion, inflammation, and development. It is a vital cog in the biochemical mechanism that regulates natural cell growth and proliferation.
However, some of the above-mentioned carcinogens may cause it to become over-activated, causing it to become an active tumor growth accelerator.
Extensive research in recent years has shown that phytonutrients extracted from spices, such as anise, basil, capsicum, clove, cumin, fennel, ginger, rosemary, and turmeric, will disrupt the pathway that activates this signaling pathway.
Activated Protein (AP) is a molecule that, when overproduced, promotes the biosynthesis pathway that promote tumor growth, angiogenesis, and tissue invasion. Turmeric compounds inhibit the effects of active protein. These same compounds also inhibit estrogen’s stimulatory effect on certain hormone-dependent tumors.
Autocrine loops are cancer cell cycle feedback systems in which tumor cells release chemical messengers (cytokines) that encourage further tumor growth.
Cytokines do this by activating growth factor receptors on other cells, which in turn create more cytokines, speeding up these positive-feedback autocrine loops.
Several molecules, including those present in mustard, either inhibit cell receptors or the activity of cancer cell cytokines, limiting these self-sustaining processes.
The JAK-STAT pathway is a network of receptors, cytokines, and enzymes that contribute to a crucial stage in the growth of most tumors.
Curcumin, a phytochemical present in turmeric, has been found to have a significant inhibitory impact on this important tumorigenic pathway, together with other phytochemicals.
Telomerase is an enzyme released by cancer cells that prevents telomeres from being lost from cancer cell DNA.
Telomeres are genes found at the ends of chromosomes that are missing in normal cells when each generation of cells duplicates itself.
Telomerase disturbs this pathway and is one of the mechanisms by which cancer cells reach immortality. Turmeric, among other things, includes phytonutrients that suppress telomerase and thereby give cancer cells a limited lifespan.
Apoptosis (programmed cell death) is a natural process that occurs in the majority of normal cells. Cancer cells avoid this unavoidable process by using some of the mechanisms described above.
Phytonutrients derived from a variety of spices, including citrus zest, garlic, and mustard, have a variety of functions that make them effective inhibitors of tumor cells’ apoptosis-evasion processes.
Angiogenesis is a natural mechanism in which the body creates blood vessels for the formation of fresh tissue and is triggered by the release of various endogenous chemicals.
Cancer cells often release chemical signals that promote angiogenesis in the region where they are developing, but this is often an unregulated and haphazard mechanism that results in irregular blood vessels. Turmeric contains phytonutrients that suppress tumor cell angiogenesis, reducing the nourishment available to these cells and limiting their invasion of neighboring tissues.
Cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2) is an enzyme that, when overproduced, induces chronic inflammation in a variety of diseases, including arthritis. It is also overexpressed in almost all cancers.
Turmeric, garlic, and ginger all contain compounds that are strong COX-2 inhibitors[1]. This property makes them essential foods in the battle to prevent and cure cancer, as well as a variety of other conditions where COX-2 enzymes play a role.
Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are popular but ineffective cancer therapies. They have serious and crippling side effects, yet tumor cells also develop resistance to these treatments.
Furthermore, in addition to their expected killing of cancerous cells, these therapies also cause NF-kappa beta, decreasing apoptosis and encouraging tumor growth – the very opposite of what is desired from cancer therapy.
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy also stimulate COX-2 enzymes, amplifying the inflammatory mechanism that is at the root of many cancers. Several compounds present in high concentrations in turmeric inhibit COX-2 activation and sensitize tumor cells to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, increasing their therapeutic effect.
Properties of vital anti-cancer herbs and spices
- All herbs/spices: Powerful antioxidant activity
- Cumin, black pepper: Enhance antioxidant enzymes
- Cumin, garlic, ginger: Inhibit cancer-associated inflammation
- Ginger, black pepper: Inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokines
- Garlic, ginger, turmeric: COX-2 inhibition
- Ginger, black pepper: Attack tumors directly
- Anise, basil, capsicum: Inhibit NF- κB
- Fennel, garlic, ginger: Inhibit NF- κB
- Garlic, mustard, citrus zest: Induce apoptosis
- Mustard (brassicas): Modulate autocrine loops & cell cycles
- Turmeric: Inhibits angiogenesis
- Caraway, cumin, mustard: Neutralize carcinogenic toxins
- Turmeric: Inhibit telomerase
- Turmeric: Inhibits JAK-STAT pathway
- Turmeric: Inhibits hormone-dependent tumors
- Turmeric: Enhances chemotherapy/radiotherapy
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