Colonoscopy? You Might Want to Try Pineapple Instead

The Best Years in Life – by Barbara Minton

Every year more than 14 million healthy Americans follow the dictate of the medical establish to have a colonoscopy.  Of this number, an estimated 70,000 are killed or seriously injured by colonoscopy related complications, according to statistics published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.  But here is the real shocker – that 70,000 is a larger number (by 22%) than the total number of people who die from colon cancer in the first place!

Other interesting facts about colonoscopy include:  

*According to an April 21, 2014 release from the National Institutes of Health, no large clinical trials have been completed to support the need for colonoscopy screening. The American Cancer Society is in agreement with this statement.

*Radiation exposure from one colonoscopy increases the lifetime risk of cancer by 20%.  Since you are supposed to get your first colonoscopy at age 50 and then in five year increments, by the time you reach the age of 70 your cancer risk will be 100%.

*Research has shown that colonoscopy screening increases mortality from all causes.  The Telemark Polyp Study I revealed a 157% increase in mortality among colonoscopy screened patients compared to those not screened.

*An estimated 95% of all polyps are benign, and may actually serve a protective purpose in the colon.

*Removing polyps profoundly increases a patients’ risk of death from hard to detect internal bleeding which may lead to stroke, myocardial ischemia, cardiac arrest, or sudden cardiac death.

*About half of Americans age fifty and older get screening colonoscopies.  So if removing polyps were an effective intervention, we should be witnessing at least a 50% reduction in incidence of colorectal cancer. But in reality we are seeing a 22% increase in incidence of the disease.

As has been repeatedly shown in research, cancer is a lifestyle disease.  The choices you make determine your outcome, even when hereditary factors are present.

Choose pineapple to prevent colon cancer

Instead of subjecting yourself to the horrors of colonoscopy, protect your colon by adding pineapple to your diet, or by getting the an enzyme found in pineapple, known as bromelain, which can be bought in capsule form.

Two recent research studies have shown that bromelain from pineapple has powerful action against colon cancer.  In the first, scientists from Italy evaluated bromelain for its ability to stop the proliferation of cancer cells and  cause them to die on time through a process known as apoptosis.  When cancer cells die on schedule, they are not threatening.

The researchers found that bromelain exerts anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects in colorectal carcinoma cells, and it is effective in stopping the genesis of cancer in vivo.  They concluded that both eating pineapple and taking the bromelain enzyme alone are highly effective at cancer prevention.

In the second study, a team of scientists from Australia researched the ability of bromelain to kill cancer cells in four human gastrointestinal cell lines, and they investigated the mechanisms involved.

They found that bromelain was cytotoxic in a panel of human gastric and colon carcinoma cells.  Their data implicated different mechanisms by which bromelain induced cancer cell death.  While promoting apoptosis, bromelain also impaired cancer cell survival by blocking pathways leading to oncoproteins.  These are proteins encoded with an oncogene which can cause the transformation of a normal cell into a cancerous cell.

Other research has shown bromelain is

effective against cancer by shrinking tumors.  It has the ability to dissolve fibrin, the protein based defense shield that protects tumors, leading to their elimination.  Bromelain has shown the capacity to modulate other key pathways that support malignancy, both directly and through the modulation of the immune, digestive, inflammatory and hemostatic systems.

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research in India have reported the anti-inflammatory, anti-invasive and anti-metastatic properties of bromelain. They studied its anti-tumor effects against induced skin tumor formation in mice.

They found that pre-treatment with bromelain resulted in a reduction in cumulative number of tumors and in average number of tumors per mouse. Reduction in tumor volume was a whopping 65%. Bromelain resulted in up-regulation of the anti-cancer gene p53. This research team concluded that bromelain was protective of DNA formation, and able to prevent inappropriate cell signaling cascades.

http://www.tbyil.com/Try_Pineapple_Instead_of_Colonoscopy_Barbara_Minton.htm