Being diagnosed with cancer can be one of the most challenging things you have to deal with. While mainstream medicine offers treatments ranging from chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy to surgery and stem cell transplants, alternative medicine is buzzing with solutions for various cancers. Less invasive, and designed to make your body work for you to fight the big C, these therapies and natural remedies are gaining ground. Ayurveda and other streams of traditional medicine believe that diet plays an important role in healing and building immunity. Which is why certain foods are being recommended for their role in beating cancer – and carrots are one of them.
Carrot Cure Success Spurs Others
Stories like that of Ann Cameron, who in 2013 beat stage 4 colon cancer with an unconventional treatment that involved drinking copious quantities of carrot juice, give new hope in the battle against cancer. While Cameron seems to have done it without using radiation and chemotherapy, as she details in her book Curing Cancer with Carrots, some research still needs to be done to see just how effective carrots can be. According to Cameron’s book, the secret to carrot’s healing anti-cancerous powers lies in its falcarinol and luteolin content. Together, she says, they reduce and even eliminate tumors – and she is living proof of this.1
What’s In A Carrot?
According to the USDA, a 128 gm cup of raw carrots has 10,605 micrograms of beta-carotene, making it one of the best dietary sources of the nutrient. A cup of frozen, cooked (boiled), and drained carrots gives you a whopping 11,971 micrograms of beta-carotene. Carrot juice is even better, giving you the goodness of multiple carrots in one easy-to-consume glass.2
The carotenoids in carrots react with free radicals, countering their effect and making the vegetable a powerful antioxidant. These free radicals have a central role to play in cancers brought on by oxidative stress, exposure to environmental toxins, and ionizing radiation. Consuming carrots may therefore help the body to ward off the ill effects of free radicals, cancer being one of them.3
Can Its Antioxidants Cure Cancer?
While the body makes its own antioxidants to neutralize free radicals, it also depends on external or exogenous antioxidants obtained from the diet. This is why consuming antioxidant-rich foods is considered a means to lower cancer risk. Some experimental studies show that certain vitamins with antioxidants benefits, as well as certain phytochemicals, can spur apoptosis (cell death) in cancerous cells while leaving normal cells intact. This hints at the possible uses of antioxidant vitamin-rich food like carrots as a means to support cancer cure and therapy.4
Cancer Fighting Ability Of Carrots
Leukemia, one of the most devastating kinds of cancers that strikes even the very young, showed positive results with the administration of carrot juice extract. Lymphoid leukemia cells being treated with the polyacetylenes responded to the dose by way of lower live cells and higher dead cells and apoptotic cancer cells. Strikingly, the falcarinol and falcarindiol-3 acetate from carrots, as opposed to the beta-carotene, were the polyacetylenes that were most effective.5
Black carrots in particular contain anthocyanins that have beneficial effects in cancer as well as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular illness. The anthocyanin derivatives have been shown to be anti-inflammatory and antioxidant.6
Increased Cancer Risk From Beta-Carotene Supplementation
Some studies, however, indicate beta-carotene supplementation might in some instances actually increase cancer risk. One study found that when high-risk individuals like smokers were administered high levels of beta-carotene based on the assumption that the nutrient’s antioxidant powers would lower cancer risk, something unexpected transpired. Researchers found that lung cancer risk actually went up.7 But others have shown that the use of beta-carotene supplements doesn’t impact cancer mortality.8
Too Soon To Call It A Cure?
While some studies and books authored by those who have seen results from the therapeutic use of carrots endorse the beneficial effects of falcarinol and beta-carotene, it is early days yet. In fact, representatives from both the medical community and cancer research not-for-profit organizations emphasize that the focus should be on a balanced diet rather than on one specific food or food group.
High profile deaths like that of the controversial Jessica Ainscough from Australia raise enough questions to make you think twice about relying solely on alternative diet-based solutions to cancer. Ainscough used a combination of alternative means to cure cancer, including carrot juice and coffee enemas. While things seemed to go well at first, the absence of more conventional modern medicine in her treatment regimen may have contributed to the progress and deterioration of her condition.
If you do opt to include a healthy dose of carrots or carrot juice in your daily diet, it is probably best not to depend only on this for treating your cancer. Instead, look at carrots as a supplementary therapy to keep you healthy and help your body as it is treated through more effective conventional means.
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