Med Min #5: 4 Ways Spinach Kills Cancer Cells + Strawberry Muscle Mylk Shake

How Certain Foods Can Assist Chemotherapy

We can’t talk about all the positive effects some foods have on cancer prevention without addressing the cancer patient who is actually on a standard medical treatment, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy.  Cancer patients often want to switch their diets while on standard treatments because they heard about the positive effects certain foods have on cancer prevention. Indeed, certain foods attack cancer cells in similar ways as chemo drugs.

Chemotherapy and radiation kill cancer cells by destroying their DNA. As you may recall from high school biology, DNA is the “manna of life” for a cancer cell, allowing the cell to grow and produce new cells. When cancer cells are hit with a dose of chemotherapy they can certainly fight back!  They fix the damage to their DNA. If they are faster at fixing the DNA damage than the attack from the chemo, then the cancer cells grow a lot and possibly become resistant to the drugs.

4 Ways Spinach Kills Cancer Cells

So if we wanted to create a new drug that could kill cancer cells, targeting the substance that repairs DNA is best.  That substance is known as an enzyme called DNA polymerase (poll-lim–er-ace), aka ‘pol.’  There are certain foods that contain substances that attack ‘pol.’

The following foods attack ‘pol’ (from highest to lowest): parsley > spinach > green tea > kale > broccoli.   

While parsley ranked the highest, spinach can attack ‘pol’ much stronger than parsley, thus it may have a more potent anti-cancer effect in the body. The effect of spinach in preventing new and recurrent cancer has only been studied in animals (i.e. mice), but they are impressive:

1. Lowers the spread of cancer cells (anti-proliferative)

2. Stops the promotion of cancer cells (anti-promotion)

3. Stops the production of new blood vessels, which bring nutrients to cancer cells (process called angiogenesis)

4. Lowers inflammation (anti-inflammatory)

Spinach Protects Against Breast Cancer

In people, scientists have found that spinach can protect against breast cancer.  When scientists decided to survey over 9,400 women on their food habits, which included eating spinach and carrots (also high in Vitamin A) they discovered:

• Those that ate raw spinach or carrots had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer
• Those who ate raw or cooked carrots and spinach twice a week had a 44% lower risk of breast cancer
• Cooked spinach showed the same association but it was not as strong

Receipe Time! Strawberry Muscle Mylk Shake

Whether in animal studies or human studies, it appears that spinach is an anti-cancer food that should be part of any cancer prevention game-plan. To get you started, here’s our favorite vegan protein mylk shake “Strawberry Muscle Mylk Shake.”  Spinach is mild enough to be enjoyed in this sweet summer treat and the hemp seeds add about 10 grams of protein. Enjoy!

(click on the pic to enlarge the view)

References:

Maeda N, Yoshida Hiromi and Mizushina Y. Spinach and health: anticancer effect. In: Watson RR and Preedy VR Bioactive Foods In Promoting Health: Fruits and Vegetables. London, UK: Academic Press; 2010:393 – 405.

To Your Best Health,

Dr. Dee Grace, PhD

Scientist and Cancer Patient Advocate