Fighting Cancer with Citrus

December 10, 2014

Clementines

The citrus family has some popular members—orange, lemon, lime, clementines and grapefruit. It also has some members that are no less important but are certainly less popular. These include pomelo, tangelo, tangerine, mandarin, blood orange and bitter orange, plus a whole lot more.

Citrus fruits are famous for their vitamin C content. This is impressive but there is a whole lot more to impress you about citrus! At the top of that list is that citrus fruits contain plant nutrients from the Flavonoid family.

You may have heard of flavonoids. They are also in blueberries, apples, dark chocolate, green tea and other foods and are promoted for their cancer-fighting ability.

While flavonoids have been shown to reduce cardiovascular disease risk and neurodegenerative disorders, their cancer-fighting ability is what has peaked my interest.

In a study published in 2002 researchers tested the ability of various fruit extracts to stop the growth of human liver cancer cells that were living in a petri dish. Lemon was the second most powerful—it beat out apple, strawberry, red grape, banana, grapefruit and peach. The number one most powerful was cranberry and I’ll be writing about that in a future article.

Citrus fruits are also anti-inflammatory and anti-angiogenic; meaning that they don’t allow cancer cells to create their own blood supply.

So, if you are feeling down about the lack of fresh, tree-ripened fruit in the produce section, take heart and stock up on all the juicy goodness that winter offers us through oranges, grapefruit, clementines, lemons and limes. Know that when you make the citrus family a part of your diet, you are participating in one of the many things you can do to reduce your risk of cancer.

 

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