- [Dr. Patrick]: The next question was, "If I can't consume broccoli sprouts daily,
how beneficial is it to consume them only after exposure to heavy air pollutants? As
a firefighter, I am exposed to a lot of carcinogens during a fire and I
am wondering if it's beneficial to only take them post fire calls and for how many days?"
- [Dr. Fahey]: Yeah, another great question. And to the firefighter that asked that,
thank you for your service. It's been a rough year for firefighters out West, that's for sure.
So my best guess is that taking them regularly, or taking a supplement, in order to prime your
system and get your antioxidant and detoxication system ready for the regular assaults that you're
laying on your body, it would probably be wise. I think this is a case where you should remember
that you...if we're talking about carcinogens or toxins or oxidant chemicals, you never really know
when you're being attacked by those vicious chemicals. And I'm actually not exaggerating,
I mean there are a lot of nasty chemicals in smoke certainly from home fires and even from wildfires.
So there's... You know, if you look at the analogy to wearing seat belts,
you know, you wear a seat belt not because you plan on getting in an accident, but
it's prophylactic. And I think you could make a similar argument, if you know you're regularly
blasting your lungs and your body with the components of smoke, you could make an argument
that priming your system to get that response maximally geared up would be a good thing.
One thing we do know from our work in China with a study of air pollution
and the effects of sulforaphane on that is that you don't fatigue, and this is fortunate,
but you don't fatigue the biochemical response system. So we gave...for 12 weeks we gave daily
glucoraphanin and sulforaphane, and monitored the upregulation of this protective response,
and did not really see any fatiguing of the response of that system.
So a short answer then is...to the firefighter, is yeah, I think taking a supplement regularly
would be... Obviously you're not going to make broccoli spouts when you're out doing fire calls.
But, so probably supplements in your case would be a good...you know, a good thing.
I'm not a physician, I'm not prescribing them to you, but that's the way I feel about it, yeah.
- [Dr. Patrick]: Jed, if I just could comment, as well. Your 12-week study was
extremely relevant to not only firefighters, but, you know, people particularly
on the West Coast in California and, you know, Oregon, you know, people that are being exposed
to these wildfires that are breathing in acrolein, which is heavily in smoke, and benzene. But,
you know, and your studies showed that within 24 hours benzene excretion was excreted by 60%
and acrolein study was increased...or acrolein excretion was increased by 20%...about 23%.
And so I guess also the question is let's say, you know, the firefighter or whoever
isn't going to take it daily, but, you know, even within a few days
of knowing they're going on call or whatever. Do you think that would even be beneficial? Because,
I mean, it literally was within 24 hours, your study in China.
- [Dr. Fahey]: Yeah, yeah. So I do. I mean these...
Obviously there is some time lag between the time you ingest
glucoraphanin or sulforaphane and the time the enzymes are upregulated or respond. It's quite
short though and, you know, even after a couple of hours some of those enzymes are cranking up.
So the answer to your question is yes. And, you know, the main sort of situation where I think,
you know, you might almost have to have it onboard before an event is
some of the neuronal injury models, like when we talk about traumatic brain injury and spinal cord
injury. There is an absolutely pronounced effect of sulforaphane that we have seen in a variety
of studies, we and others. When I say "we," I always mean we and other people. Or maybe
I wasn't even involved in that study, in this case. But we see an effect. Obviously
if you have that sort of injury and you're looking for the rapid response of sulforaphane,
it would be ideal to have had it onboard your body beforehand. But one of the things that appears
evident is that with neuronal injury, even getting it right after the injury may have some value.
So with the fire analogy, or the fire situation, absolutely. We showed that the response was
upregulated quickly and it was maintained and, as you say, detoxication of two out of the three
major pollutants that we looked at happened to a substantial degree.
And I should mention this was work that my colleague Tom Kensler started a long time
ago in China. And we joined a network in the...I guess in about 2001. And so we've been involved
with it for many years now and the final studies there are going to be published soon, I hope.
- [Dr. Patrick]: Just amazing work, I love those studies. And the fact that the 12 weeks there
was no exhausting of the upregulation of these important detoxication enzymes, that's really
profound that they were maintained within that whole 12-week. It wasn't like it was a short-term
effect that went away. Also it's...as we're going to discuss probably in a couple of minutes about
a lot of the preclinical studies on the effects of sulforaphane in Alzheimer's disease,
there's been a just onslaught of new research that has shown air pollution
is contributing to neurodegenerative diseases, starting in early life.
So there was a study in Mexico City where air pollution is terrible. And children...so they've
been doing postmortem, you know, studies looking in the brain of unfortunately infants and children
and young adolescents that have died for whatever reason and they have amyloid beta plaques in their
brain as early as infancy, and other, you know, pathological changes in the brain going on early,
early in life, which is really unfortunate. So I think that the possibility of something like
moringa or sulforaphane or Brussels sprouts, you know, to help with excreting these, you know,
toxic compounds and even in other potential ways improving brain health is really exciting.