Broccoli Might Reduce Your Stomach Cancer Risk

By Anna Boyd
15:31, April 7th 2009

The summer is that time of the year when you can get advantage of everything that nature has to offer, especially when it comes about food. Now is the time when you can get your vitamins directly from the multitude of fruits and vegetables on the market and the best thing you can do is to learn what each of them can “do” for you. Here’s a good study about the benefits of having a diet rich in broccoli, especially if you are a carrier of the H. pylori bacterium.

Research has shown that people with this bacterium have an increased risk of developing stomach cancer. But the new study appearing in the journal Cancer Prevention Research reveals that broccoli suppresses H. pylori infections among other things.

Jed Fahey, the head of the team at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore who conducted the study, said that broccoli has been of interest to science for the last twenty years. Many studies have shown that it decreases risk for cancer and coronary heart disease due to high levels of vitamin C and beta carotene which are important antioxidants.

“Broccoli has recently entered the public awareness as a preventive dietary agent. This study supports the evidence that broccoli sprouts may be able to prevent cancer in humans, not just in rats,” Fahey said.

For the study Fahey and colleagues randomized 48-H. pylori-infected Japanese patients, giving them either 70-gms of uncooked broccoli sprouts or alfalfa sprouts for eight weeks. Unlike broccoli, alfalfa lacks sulforaphanes, a chemical that has powerful anti-bacterial effects against H. pylori infection.

H. pylori levels were measured via standard breath, serum, and stool tests at enrollment, and again at four weeks, followed by eight weeks.

After eight weeks, H. pylori levels were significantly lower on all three measures among those patients who had eaten broccoli sprouts. H. pylori remained the same in people eating alfalfa sprouts.

“The findings in this study strongly suggest that sulforaphane has promise both as an antibacterial agent directed against H. pylori and as a dietary preventive agent against the development of human gastric cancer,” the study concluded.