How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
Carcinogen-Blocking Effects of Turmeric The Indian spice turmeric, which gives curry powder its characteristic golden color, may also help prevent some of the DNA damage caused by smoking.
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
Cancer risk may also depend on what’s being fried. A study of women in China found that smokers who stir-fried meat every day had nearly three times the odds of lung cancer compared to smokers who stir-fried foods other than meat on a daily basis.25 This is thought to be because of a group of carcinogens called heterocyclic amines that are formed w
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Eggs (along with soda) have also been associated with asthma attacks in children, along with respiratory symptoms, such as wheezing, shortness of breath, and exercise-induced coughing.51 Removing eggs and dairy from the diet has been shown to improve asthmatic children’s lung function in as few as eight weeks.52
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
they found that three months of whole-food, plant-based nutrition and other healthy changes could significantly boost telomerase activity, the only intervention ever shown to do
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
So why didn’t I learn about any of this in medical school? There’s little money to be made from prescribing plants instead of pills. The neuropathy pain reversal study was published more than twenty years ago, and the blindness reversal studies more than fifty years ago.
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
Curcumin is special in that it appears to belong to all three groups, meaning it may potentially help prevent and/or arrest cancer cell growth.13
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
But when the smokers were given turmeric, the DNA-mutation rate dropped by up to 38 percent.15 They weren’t given curcumin pills; they merely got less than a teaspoon a day of just the regular turmeric spice you’d find at the grocery store. Of course, turmeric can’t completely mitigate the effects of smoking. Even after the participants ate turmeri
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The fumes produced by frying bacon contain a class of carcinogens called nitrosamines.31 Although all meat may release potentially carcinogenic fumes, processed meat like bacon may be the worst: A UC-Davis study found that bacon fumes cause about four times more DNA mutations than the fumes from beef patties fried at similar temperatures.32
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
For reasons not fully understood, curcumin seems to leave noncancerous cells alone.
Michael Greger MD • How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
When meat is grilled, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are also produced, one of the probable carcinogens in cigarette smoke. The researchers discovered that not only was the ingestion of grilled meat in the third trimester associated with smaller birth weights, mothers merely exposed to the fumes tended to give birth to babies with a birth
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