Liquid Vitamin Blog » Louise Chang

Pomegranate Juice May One Day be a Treatment or Preventative for Prostate Cancer?

Dr. Marcus Ettinger — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:14:05 +0000

Compounds in Pomegranate Juice May Help Curb Prostate Cancer, Lab Tests Show
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

(Corrections made by Marcus Ettinger DC, BSc are in Italics)

Sept. 20, 2007 — Natural chemicals in pomegranate juice may slow the growth of prostate cancer, according to scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

The key pomegranate chemicals, called ellagitannins, are also found in foods including strawberries, raspberries, and muscadine grapes, note Navindra Seeram, PhD, and colleagues.

Their theory is that when someone drinks pomegranate juice, the ellagitannins are broken down into ellagic acid then converted, in the small intestines by healthy gut bacteria, into chemicals called urolithins, which may fight prostate cancer.

Seeram’s team tested that notion in their lab.

The scientists bought pomegranates and made their own pomegranate extract from pomegranate skin. They closely measured the ellagitannins in their pomegranate juice.

Next, the researchers tested pomegranate juice against human prostate cancer cells grafted into male mice.

The scientists fed the pomegranate juice to some of the mice. They injected the pomegranate juice into other mice’s abdomens.

For comparison, the researchers fed or injected other mice with a placebo solution containing no pomegranate juice.

The prostate tumors grew more slowly in the mice that got the pomegranate juice orally or by injection, compared with mice that got the placebo.

Finally, the mice got urolithins orally or by abdominal injection. Those pomegranate-derived chemicals gathered in the mice’s prostate, colon, and intestinal tissues more than in other organs.

Add it all up, and it looks like pomegranate ellagitannins may slow (but not totally destroy) prostate cancer in mice.

More studies are needed to see if pomegranate juice works the same way in people, Seeram and colleagues write in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

SOURCES: Seeram, N. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Sept. 19, 2007; vol 55: pp 7732-7737. News release, American Chemical Society.

Pomegranate Juice and Red Raspberry can both be found in Acai Max.

Eating Right During Cancer Treatment

Dr. Marcus Ettinger — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:46:44 +0000

Cancer treatment can sap your appetite, but that’s when getting adequate nutrition is more important than ever. Here’s how to meet your needs.
By Gina Shaw
WebMD Feature
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Here are two selected paragraphs from the article.

“If you want to supplement the nutrition you get from your regular diet, we recommend taking just one multivitamin per day from a reputable manufacturer,” says Gary Deng, MD, assistant attending and assistant member in the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

If you have trouble eating enough at mealtimes, many experts recommend adding a nutritional supplement nutrition drink to the menu. Check the label to make sure your supplement shake contains a variety of vitamins and minerals.

Liquid Power, a whole food source liquid multiple vitamin and mineral supplement fits the bill here perfectly. Not only does Liquid Power contain every vitamin and mineral, it also contains a plethora of highly potent nutraceuticals.*

*Nutraceutical is a blend of the words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical” and refers to foods claimed to have a medicinal effect on human health. Such foods are also called functional foods. It can also refer to individual chemicals present in common foods. Many such nutraceuticals are phytonutrients.

Examples of claims made for nutraceuticals are red wine (resveratrol) as an antioxidant and an anticholesteremic, broccoli (sulforaphane) as a cancer preventative, and soy and clover (isoflavonoids) to improve arterial health in women. Such claims are being researched and many citations are available via PubMed to ascertain their veracity.

“Chemotherapy and radiation treatments are extremely toxic to the body and can weaken or even damage the body long term. (this is in no way a recommendation to avoid these treatments) That is why it is extremely important during chemotherapy and radiation treatments to support the bodies need for high quality vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, fatty acids and nutraceuticals. Supplementing the diet with a high quality nutritional supplements may have profound beneficial effects on the body when it’s needed most.”

Marcus Ettinger DC, BSc.