Eat Cruciferous Vegetables

How Certain Vegetables Combat Cancer is a Science Daily article which notes that eating cruciferous vegetables may prevent breast cancer. Cruciferous vegetables include cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. The article explains that broccoli and broccoli sprouts have the greatest amount of isothiocyanates; compounds known to have anti-carcinogeneic and cancer fighting properties.

Isothiocyanate compounds include a substance called sulforaphane. The Science Daily article focused on research of scientists from the UC Santa Barbara laboratories whose research paper was published in the journal Carcinogenesis. The research paper discussed sulforaphane and noted that it's already been demonstrated that sulforaphane inhibits the growth of cancerous human breast cells in cultures and induces the death of cells. Sulforaphane also has reduced the rate of chemically caused mammary tumors.

How does sulforaphane inhibit cancer? It appears to interfere with the mitosis process (cell division) by disrupting microtubule function. So by inhibiting the proliferation of cancer cells and inducing the death of precancerous cells, sulforaphane performs anti-carcinogenic functions. The good news is that it does so without incurring the toxic effects of some chemicals used in chemotherapy.