Breaking it down
If you've been reading Nutrition & Healing for awhile, you might remember Dr. Wright mentioning BEC-5. This extract, taken from eggplants, has proven itself time and again as an all-natural cure for two forms of skin cancer -- basal cell and squamous cell. But as effective as BEC-5 is for these two forms of the disease, there's another, even more dangerous form that it can't cure, and that's melanoma. But some brand new research out of Penn State College of Medicine shows that there may be a natural cure for this deadly form of skin cancer after all. This one also has origins in the produce aisle, but this time the cancer-fighting extracts don't come from eggplant, but from some other familiar vegetables. Namely, broccoli, cabbage and other Brassica vegetables, which Dr. Wright has touted for years for their ability to fight hormone-related cancers. The Penn State researchers used the same anti-cancer extracts Dr. Wright has mentioned numerous times in Nutrition & Healing, called isothiocyanates, and combined them with selenium, another natural cancer fighter. They then applied the combination to cases of melanoma in experimental animals and found that it reduced tumor growth by a whopping 60 percent. From there, they tested the selenium/isothiocyanate formula against human melanoma cells. Once again, it inhibited their growth by up to 70 percent. Unfortunately, this specific combination of natural extracts isn't on the market yet, and it could take years of further testing before it does become available. But that doesn't mean you have to wait to get the melanoma-protection these nutrients have to offer. You just have to break down the formula into its individual parts -- selenium and Brassica vegetables, both of which are widely available. While there's no guarantee that adding these two components to your daily regimen will have the same dramatic effects seen in the study, it certainly can't hurt. Source:
"Broccoli and cabbage-based drug could inhibit melanoma," ScienceDaily (www.sciencedaily.com), 3/1/09 | 
