Could Beta Carotene Help Cure CancerCould Beta Carotene Help Cure Cancer
Home Disease Prevention Drugs & Supplements Diet & Nutrition Fitness Health Insurance Medical Malpractice
 
 
 


Could Beta Carotene Help Cure Cancer ?

Beta carotene is required for the production of vitamin A in the body. Most of us get beta carotene from plants and fruits like mangoes, kale, spinach, papaya, sweet potato leaves carrots, yams and sweet gourd leaves.

  

There are several credible reasons for hypothesizing that beta carotene might reduce the risk of cancer:

  1. Increased consumption of beta carotene is strongly associated with reduced risk of   cancer. Moreover, epidemiologic studies have shown that people with high intakes of beta carotene or high blood concentrations of this nutrient have a reduced risk of various diseases including cancer.
  2. The chemical abilities of the dietary beta carotene as an antioxidant is well established and antioxidants are believed to inhibit early stages of carcinogenesis. For modifying cancer risk, the importance of early administration of an antioxidant in relation to the time of exposure to the initiating carcinogen has been well established.
  3. Beta carotene may play an important role in facilitating normal cell-to-cell communication through gap junctions. Because many carcinogens inhibit gap junction communications, protection of this activity by dietary substances could be an important function in protection against cancer.
  4. Beta carotene reduces cancer in some experimental animal models

However, recent clinical trials on Cancer Prevention Study failed to find any benefit of beta carotene in reducing the risk of cancer or heart disease. The results of these highly publicized clinical trials were without a doubt disappointing to those expecting beta carotene to lower the risk of cancer, but the current data should not be overgeneralized. The results do not show that beta carotene has no anticarcinogenic effect. Because the trials studied populations at very high risk of lung cancer, and because the duration of treatment was far shorter than the induction time for this cancer, these trials neither support, nor disprove the hypothesis that beta carotene may be anticarcinogenic in early stages of cancer.

More Articles :

Could Beta Carotene Help Cure Cancer

Web Presentation
Subscribe Feed

Vitamin Supplements:

Extraction Of Beta Carotene From Pumpkin

Extraction-Of-Beta-Carotene-From-Pumpkin      Higher blood levels of beta carotene and alpha carotene are associated with lower levels of certain chronic diseases. Beta carotene has been shown to have very powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Scientists reasoned that if the beta carotene in foods helped to prevent lung cancer, it followed that a beta carotene supplement would do the same. More..