The most challenging health concerns like diabetes, obesity and cancer are spreading wider and their treatment is an utmost challenge for healthcare professionals. Out of these, Cancer is one of the most common causes of death globally. Mortality rates from cancer are estimated to continue to emanate, with an estimation of 11.5 million deaths by 2030.
Today, cancer treatment involves several interventions, including surgery, chemotherapy, psychosocial support and radiotherapy that is intended to cure the disease or extend life while enhancing the quality of life of patients.
According to WHO, “About 30% of cancers are due to several major environmental and behavioural risks that are possibly changeable.” One of them is dietary factors, in particular inadequate intake of vegetables and fruits. Promotion of a healthy diet, including anti-cancer foods along with proper physical activity can significantly reduce the risk of cancer.
Many studies have acknowledged that high intake of vegetables, greens, fruits, pulses and nuts play an essential part in our daily diet. Biological constituents present in these foods are crucial to combat cancer. Especially the role of exotic vegetables and fruits are at a whole new level. These exotic foods provide you extensive cancer protection and reduce the risk of various cancers.
Let's explore what are these exotic vegetables and fruits and how these are helpful in cancer prevention:
Exotic Vegetables
Many exotic vegetables being enriched with alkaloids and polyphenols exhibit potential anti-cancer actions, including anti-inflammatory and free radical scavenging properties. Let's explore these one by one:
Rosemary(Rosmarinus officinalis):
Rosemary is a potential herb that has extensive value in health care. Rosemary consists of many bioactive compounds like luteolin and apigenin. Other than these two bioactives, rosemary also contains naringin, which is promptly metabolized to naringenin.
These components possess a variety of pharmacological effects, including antioxidant activity, anti-carcinogenic activity, lowering blood lipid’s level and managing various metabolic syndrome. Including this in your daily diet can prevent you not only from cancer but also from various other health problems.
Cabbage(Brassica oleracea):
Cabbage is native to coastal Western and Southern Europe. This is a part of nutritious cruciferous vegetables. Other vegetables of this class are broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts.
All these vegetables along with cabbage play a significant role in reducing the risk of getting cancer. The flavonoids, carotenoids and xanthophylls present in cabbage helps to fight against free radicals.
One of the other components, quercetin is also a potent anti-cancer component. These vegetables are very efficient in preventing gastric cancer by reducing the risk of gastric or peptic ulcers.
Garlic(Allium sativum):
Garlic is enriched with allicin, flavonols, quercetin and myricetin. All these components work synergistically to show potential chemoprotective effects. Along with this, this food also acts as a potential hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic agent and aids in keeping your sugar levels and lipids levels in healthier amounts.
Turnip (Brassica rapa):
This vegetables usually grow in the temperate regions globally. The greens of turnips contain ample vitamins and overall this vegetable is enriched with zeaxanthin, quercetin, lutein, phylloquinone, kaempferol, α-tocopherol and β-carotene.
All these components show potent cancer preventive and cancer suppressing actions.
Consuming all these vegetables in your daily diet can significantly help to fight against a cancerous environment flourishing inside you. These vegetables help to detox your body, neutralize free radicals and prevent the body from cancer.
Exotic Fruits
Other than exotic vegetables, there are exotic fruits too, which also helps to counter the cancer cells. These fruits are:
Durian (Durio zibethinus):
This fruit present in South-east Asia and known with the name of “the king of fruits.” This fruit exhibits potential anti-obesity and anti-diabetic actions, which considerably lower the risk of getting diabetes and obesity.
These two metabolic diseases have a significant relationship with cancer development. Therefore, reducing the risk of these two diseases also helps you to reduce the cancer risk.
Other than this, this fruit contains potential levels of flavonoids, minerals, vitamins and anthocyanins. These components possess potent antioxidant and antiproliferative properties, which brings a detox environment inside your body that lowers the risk of cancer progression.
Goji (Lycium barbarum):
This fruit is the native to East Asia. It is the extensive part of Chinese medicine, used to treat many ailments, including obesity, diabetes and oxidative-stress mediated complications. It also exhibits cardioprotective effects.
Other than this, this fruit is known to reduce inflammation, removing harmful carcinogens, slow downs tumor growth and improve the efficacy associated with cancer treatments.
Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus):
This fruit is widely present throughout the Southeast Asian region and the Western Ghats in India. Being enriched with stilbenoids, this fruit significantly used to enhance the glucose tolerance in both diabetic patients and healthy individuals.
This fruit exhibits potential antioxidant and anti-inflammatory actions. This fruit is very effective against stomach ulcers, hence lowers the risk of stomach cancer.
Mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana):
This fruit grows in Malaysia, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Philippines and Sri Lanka. It is greatly used as a medicinal plant in treating various health problems. It lowers the bad cholesterol and reduces formation of free radicals.
In the context of cancer prevention, this fruit exhibits potential antiproliferative, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties against cancerous cells.
Acai (Euterpe oleracea):
This is the fruit present on large palm trees in the regions of South America. This fruit is high in polyphenolic and anthocyanin content, which synergistically acts as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Along with these, this fruit also possesses proapoptotic, antiproliferative and cell cycle arrest activities against cancer cells.
Avocado (Persea americana):
This fruit is the native of Caribbean, South America, Mexico and Central America. This fruit is also known to reduce the risk of certain cancers, including oral and prostate cancers. This fruit also improves the immune system.
All these fruits possess potential actions which help to deal with various cancer cell lines. Other than these you can also eat dragon fruit, pomegranate and cherry tomatoes.
Eating these cancer fighting foods on a regular basis improves the body's ability to fight against such abnormal cell growths, improves cardiovascular health, lowers bad cholesterol and helps to control the blood glucose levels. All these contribute to flourish a healthy environment in the body. You feel more refreshed, active and stronger.
Therefore, eat these exotic fruits and vegetables and keep your health up-to-mark.
Also, take a look at anti-cancer spices for effective care against cancer.