Watercress – Anti-cancer Food?

History tells us that the ancient European civilizations had great faith in the health giving properties that watercress had to offer. In fact, Hippocrates – the Father of modern medicine – is said to have deliberately located his first hospital beside a stream so that he could grow a plentiful and convenient supply of watercress with which to help treat his patients.

Through the latter half of the twentieth century the popularity of watercress had been falling, mainly due to increased competition from imported and more exotic ‘fresh produce’. However since its identification as a ‘super food’, watercress has been experiencing something of a revival and has now become one of the most popular salad crops available today.

Brimming with more than 15 essential vitamins and minerals and packed full of beneficial glucosinates, watercress contains- gram for gram – more vitamin C than oranges, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach and more folic acid than bananas.

Recent research shows that eating watercress regularly can help to kill cancer cells .

The University of Ulster has published a report in the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ that suggests a regular intake of fresh watercress can significantly reduce DNA damage to white blood cells within the human body. In fact, they found that DNA damage to white blood cells was cut by an incredible 22.9%. This is a terribly important find, especially as white blood cell damage is considered to be an important trigger in the development of cancer.

In addition to this, watercress also appears to raise the levels of beneficial compounds within human cells allowing them to protect themselves from the damaging effects of particles known as ‘free radicals’.

When cell samples were exposed to hydrogen peroxide – a highly reactive substance which is used to generates large numbers of free radicals within the body – damage levels were found to be 9.4% lower than would normally be expected. In addition to this, the research found that the blood levels of antioxidant compounds, such as lutein and beta-carotene (naturally occurring chemicals important in combating the effect of free radicals) were also increased significantly.

In contrast, levels of potentially harmful triglycerides were reduced by an average of 10%.

With important discoveries such as these being discovered within one of the cheapest and easiest to grow salad plants that you can find, you would be foolish not to include watercress as a part of your everyday meal plan. Not only can it help reduce the incidence of this countries number 1 killer, it actually tastes good too.

Although there is a lot of good identified with the consumption of watercress there is a word of warning to those of you who intend collecting watercress from the wild. Dirty streams can make watercress unfit to eat and so as a rule of thumb – if you wouldn’t drink the water, you shouldn’t eat the watercress. More importantly though is collecting watercress from bodies of water found near to where sheep and cattle are farmed. Water that has come into contact with their dung can cause watercress to become contaminated by liver flukes. Acute infection from liver flukes will cause severe abdominal pain, intermittent fevers, eosinophilia, malaise, and weight loss due to liver damage.

What you need to know – by Mike Adams

• Watercress is a well-known example of an “anti-cancer food” that contains phytonutrients known to boost the body’s defenses against cancer.

• Studying the anti-cancer effect of a single food is very much a western, compartmentalized way to look at anti-cancer diets. A true anti-cancer diet includes onions, garlic, broccoli, raw sprouts, almonds, blueberries and many other foods and herbs that work synergistically to combat cancer. You cannot study one at a time and expect to get an accurate assessment of how they work synergistically.

• Many conventional scientists don’t want to admit that foods contain powerful anti-cancer drugs proven to be more effective than chemotherapy, thus they attack any scientific study that shows foods, herbs or nutritional supplements in a positive light.

• Cancer is a disease that’s easily prevented through food, supplements and herbs, and the disease is usually simple to reverse in early stages. Conventional medicine thrives on cancer, depending on the disease to create billions of dollars in revenue from pharmaceuticals, radiation, surgery and other hazardous treatments. The cancer industry has actually gone out of its way to suppress and censor information about anti-cancer foods or genuine prevention methods that are safe, simple and affordable.

• “Watercress is just one of many anti-cancer foods that I strongly recommend to anyone interested in preventing or reversing cancer. Combine watercress with garlic, cruciferous vegetables, raw almond milk, raw celery juice, superfoods like spirulina and chlorella, radish sprouts, supplements like zinc, selenium and reishi mushrooms, and rainforest herbs like cat’s claw, and you have one of the most powerful anti-cancer treatment plans known to modern science. Conventional oncology can’t even come close to the effectiveness of these anti-cancer foods, herbs and supplements.” – Mike Adams, author of Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them.

Found at http://www.naturalnews.com/021646.html