"Blocking the Cancer Metastasis Enzyme MMP-9 with Beans and Chickpeas"
Although we’re spending billions of dollars
on fancy new types of chemotherapy,
the overflowing sink that is cancer treatment is expected
to rise by about 70 percent over the next two decades
because drugs are being used to merely mop up the mess
rather than turn off the faucet.
You can’t really give drugs to people to prevent cancer
because of the side effects and cost, but there is said to be
overwhelming evidence that the dietary bioactive compounds
found in whole plant-based foods have signiﬁcant
anticancer and cancer preventive properties.
In a previous video, I talked about the impact of diet
and nutrition on the ten hallmarks of cancer.
The bottom line is that evidence points to a diet with minimal
animal products, and perhaps more importantly, maximal plant foods.
Some foods that appear to be particularly beneficial include fruit
(especially berries), a variety of vegetables (especially greens),
legumes (which are beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils),
nuts and seeds (especially flaxseeds), mushrooms, onions,
garlic, herbs and spices (for example, turmeric),
and, as a beverage, green tea.
Chemotherapy may not even be particularly
good at mopping up the mess.
Cancer drugs often impair quality of life and fail to extend
patient survival. Let me say that again.
You’re paying for drugs, maybe selling your house to pay for drugs,
that may just be making your life worse for no benefit.
Some have suggested we demand at least three months of extended
life from pharmaceuticals, but if we demand
that chemo actually works, might they give up altogether?
On the other hand, maybe by mandating clinically important
benefits—what a concept— maybe big pharma would reallocate
resources towards targeting the more critical cancer processes
like metastatic spread, because it’s the tumor metastasis
that accounts for 90 percent of cancer-related deaths.
Who cares if some drug shrinks your primary tumor if
it’s spreading and cutting your life just as short?
What about controlling metastatic cancer with some of those
natural bioactive compounds in plants?
Evidently it has been proven that plant phytochemicals are able
to inhibit nearly every step of the invasion through metastasis cascade,
at least in vitro, in a petri dish.
Here’s a list of some purported dietary sources of
antimetastatic phytochemicals, all shown to block all sorts of
cancer signaling pathways, but let me focus on one:
matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs).
Since about 90 percent of cancer disability and death is due
to cancer spreading, metastasis, let’s talk about these MMPs
which actively participate in the whole metastatic journey.
Matrix metalloproteinases are enzymes that allow the cancer
to tunnel through the surrounding flesh and invade the
lymph or blood vessels and then enable it
to burrow in and grow somewhere else.
So, Big Pharma developed matrix metalloproteinase inhibitor drugs,
which worked great in animal models but caused severe
side effects when they tried them on humans.
So, what about using food?
There are special proteins in legumes that reduce MMP activity.
What else might you expect from a Dr. Lima?
But which is the leading legume?
Researchers tested eight different kinds: lupin beans,
chickpeas, split peas, black-eyed peas, lentils, and
more common beans (like kidney, black, or pinto),
fava beans, and soybeans. Which do you think worked best?
Without any beans, the matrix metalloproteinase activity
churned away at around 100 percent and dripping on some protein
from pea soup-type peas didn’t seem to help much,
but the black-eyed peas, lentils, common beans, and fava beans
cut enzyme activity by more than 50 percent.
Guess what slashed activity by more than 90 percent?
Lupin beans, chickpeas, and soybeans.
Yeah, but does this translate into slowing down the cancer’s spread?
Researchers plated a layer of human colon cancer cells
in a petri dish and then took a razor blade to clear
a strip down the middle.
Within 48 hours, the cancer quickly converged to fill the gap.
But when a little protein from lupin beans, chickpeas,
or soybeans was dripped on, it looks like the cancer cells
struggled to close the distance.
Okay, but they used raw beans.
You don’t know if these anti- cancer proteins are destroyed
by cooking until you put it to the test.
And the matrix metalloproteinase inhibitors in soybeans at least,
remain active after cooking.
So, maybe it’s no wonder that dietary legume consumption
reduces risk of colorectal cancer. Yeah, but colon cancer,
which sprouts from the inner lining of the colon,
could potentially come in contact with some of these bean proteins.
Presumably they wouldn’t get into the bloodstream.
Those eating vegetarian do seem to have significantly
lower levels of matrix metalloproteinases, but this is just
thought to be due to their lower levels of inflammation,
similar to the way non-smokers also have lower MMP levels.
This is good, because this enzyme isn’t just a cancer biomarker,
but also may be involved in autoimmune diseases
and cardiovascular disease.
The machete-type nature of this enzyme can hack through
the inflamed cholesterol-filled atherosclerotic lesions
lining diseased arteries and cause the plaque to rupture.
People know that those eating more plant-based tend to have
less heart disease but may not realize they harbor
significantly less cancer risk too,
particularly among those eating strictly plant-based diets.