Nature provides all we need!
Bitter melon helps to control breast cancer and diabetes
From Healthy Pages 26/02/10
A common vegetable known as bitter melon(karela) is looking like a hopeful candidate in the cancer war. Bitter melon is a regular feature of Indian and Chinese cooking. It is extremely bitter when eaten raw, but is much liked as a cooked vegetable dish.
Already, bitter melon juice is drunk or powder taken by many Indians in order to control diabetes.
This recent research now shows that under lab conditions this same vegetable “triggers a chain of events on a cellular level that stops breast cancer cells from multiplying and also kills them.”
The study conducted by scientists at Saint Louis University, was inspired by Ratna Ray, Ph.D., professor in the pathology department who regularly cooked bitter melon herself and was already aware of the effect it had on blood sugar levels. She decided it would be worthwhile to investigate for other health benefits of the vegetable.
Discovering that it inhibited breast cancer growth was quite a surprise to her.
Commenting on the study, Dr Ray said "To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the effect of bitter melon extract on cancer cells," adding that "Our result was encouraging. We have shown that bitter melon extract significantly induced death in breast cancer cells and decreased their growth and spread."
The study involved using human breast cancer cells and exposing them to an extract of bitter melon in lab conditions.
In a press statement Dr. Ray said "Cancer prevention by the use of naturally occurring dietary substances is considered a practical approach to reduce the ever-increasing incidence of cancer. Studying a high risk breast cancer population where bitter melon is taken as a dietary product will be an important area of future research."
From the Denver School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences Professor Rajesh Agarwal described the importance of the study, saying “Breast cancer is a major killer among women around the world, and in that perspective, results from this study are quite significant."
The study is to be published in the Cancer Research journal, itself a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research
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