Posted on 02/21/2015 11:40:43 AM PST by Tired of Taxes
A Rutgers nutritional scientist and two cancer biologists at New York Citys Hunter College have found that an ingredient in extra-virgin olive oil kills a variety of human cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
The ingredient is oleocanthal, a compound that ruptures a part of the cancerous cell, releasing enzymes that cause cell death.
Paul Breslin, professor of nutritional sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, and David Foster and Onica LeGendre of Hunter College, report that oleocanthal kills cancerous cells in the laboratory by rupturing vesicles that store the cells waste.
The findings are published in Molecular and Cellular Oncology.
Scientists knew that oleocanthal killed some cancer cells, but no one really understood how this occurred. Breslin believed that oleocanthal might be targeting a key protein in cancer cells that triggers a programmed cell death, known as apoptosis, and worked with Foster and Legendre to test his hypothesis.
We needed to determine if oleocanthal was targeting that protein and causing the cells to die, Breslin said.
After applying oleocanthal to the cancer cells, Foster and LeGendre discovered that the cancer cells were dying very quickly within 30 minutes to an hour. Since programmed cell death takes between 16 and 24 hours, the scientists realized that something else had to be causing the cancer cells to break down and die.
Pancreatic cancer (PC3) cells treated with an increasing dose of olive-oil ingredent (-)-Oleocanthal (OC) in the absence of serum (fetal bovine serum). After 30 minutes of treatment, 100% of cells have been detached from the plate. Survival and growth of PC3 cells depend on being attached, so loss of attachment and the rapid rounding of cells seen in 20 micromolar (20µM) concentration of OC indicate these cancer cells are dead. (credit: Dr. Onica LeGendre)
LeGendre, a chemist, provided the answer: The cancer cells were being killed by their own enzymes. The oleocanthal was puncturing the vesicles inside the cancer cells that store the cells waste. These vesicles, known as lysosomes are larger in cancer cells than in healthy cells, and they contain a lot of waste. Once you open one of those things, all hell breaks loose, Breslin said.
But oleocanthal didnt harm healthy cells, the researchers found. It merely stopped their life cycles temporarily put them to sleep, Breslin said. After a day, the healthy cells resumed their cycles.
The researchers say the logical next step is to go beyond laboratory conditions and show that oleocanthal can kill cancer cells and shrink tumors in living animals. We also need to understand why it is that cancerous cells are more sensitive to oleocanthal than non-cancerous cells, Foster said.
It will also be interesting to explore the implications of this study for research suggesting beneficial effects of ingesting fullerenes dissolved in olive oil.
According to the World Health Organizations World Cancer Report 2014, there were more than 14 million new cases of cancer in 2012 and more than 8 million deaths.
Damn!
Now it’s going to take a prescription to buy extra-virgin olive oil?
We spent a couple of weeks on an island off Croatia a couple of years ago. We rented a little apartment in a villa. The owner took us out on his boat for the day.
We took the boat to another island. This island was owned by a German guy who bought the land some years back. He had some daughters there and they ran a quasi farm/restaurant. Probably like something from a dream for a man, four blonde single German daughters-one he was looking to marry off because her husband had turned out to be a bum. But, I digress. (:
Anyhow, they prepared this meal of a life time--and it just went on and on for hours. Wine, fresh bread, fish, fresh artichoke stew, fresh vegetables grown on the island. The wine (homemade, ofcourse) carafes kept filling and we just kept drinking, eating, talking and laughing.
Easily one of the best experiences of my life. Definitely the way I want to live.
There are many chemicals that kill cancer in a petrie disk. A few of those work in mice. Unfortunately, most don't work in the human body.
Interesting. My family is American, but our ancestors were from Italy. So, there’s a lot of olive oil in our diet. And we have a lot of cancer in our family. That’s why I never believed the claims about the Mediterranean diet. But, as you point out, the olive oil is heated...
OTOH, maybe it has less to do with what we eat, and more to do with genetics.
Thought you may be interested in this from the foodie angle. :)
Do olive oil pills work?
Sometimes it seems as if we can’t win, no matter what we do.
#13 many from lead poisoning.....
Good question. All I know is that I was eating olives every single day before I was diagnosed. (In remission now for 4 years.) But they were canned olives with ferrous sulfate added.
In some cases, though, like mine, I wonder if whatever we do makes any difference, or if genetics determine our fate.
Bastards!
Meanwhile people are dying. If I was terminal, I would insist they shoot me up...and RIGHT NOW!
Why are they frigging around?
I follow a "Forks over Knives" whole food, plant based diet and have for years. I have no intention of eliminating whole grains.
also
I am not falling for government anything. My dietary lifestyle is influenced by the books of Dr. Joel Fuhrman and "Forks Over Knives". To me, olive oil is nothing but unnecessary fat. I would eat whole olives, in moderation, of course. I don't touch eggs or butter. I plan to outlive climate change . ;p
I don’t know, but they might be worth a try.
We also know that people here have a vastly different character than the rest of the Mediterranean. They have volcanic tempers that quickly subside. Despite living on harsh, steep terrain, they're known for relentless optimism and three-day parties. They don't get stressed by deadlines. They go to bed well after midnight, sleep late and take naps.
In a way, that does sound like a healthier way to live.
It is clear that finding an olive oil that has a high content of oleocanthal in it would be the objective. I haven’t found any oil yet that states it’s content. One factor is where the olives are grown. Some have very low content of oleocanthal and some have high content. A detailed paper on this can be found at:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/27042.pdf
With all these studies, there must be some truth in these theories about Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
I seriously doubt that God would have gave us the grains if they were bad for us. Of course, man has been tampering with them.
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I agree. I have also been using extra virgin olive oil exclusively for about 12+ years now.
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