The popular summer fruit that stalls aging AND prevents cancer

One of the most exciting new areas of cancer research is exploring how you can prevent cancer before it starts — in fact, way before it starts — by simply ridding your body of a particular nuisance that’s guaranteed to trigger inflammation, damage cells, and set up a breeding ground for cancer growth.

To gain a better understanding of this excellent cancer prevention tactic, we’ll take a look at the way cells work — or rather, the way they don’t work when they’ve outlived their usefulness.

Senescent cells — or old cells that have stopped functioning — normally self-destruct (a natural process called apoptosis) and are removed by your immune system.

But as you age and your immune system loses some of its oomph, more and more senescent cells survive. In their deteriorated state, they secrete inflammatory compounds that damage surrounding healthy cells, which plays a central role in the aging process.

But beyond aging, these cells also contribute to chronic diseases — like cancer.

Of course, Big Pharma saw this as an opportunity to offer up a “solution” — a class of drugs called senolytics. These drugs eliminate senescent cells by disabling pathways that keep them alive.

In preliminary studies this scheme seems to work, and may help delay and even alleviate age-related diseases.

Ah, but of course, there’s a catch…

As Dr. Fred Pescatore points out in his Essential Protocol to a Cancer-Free Future, many of these senolytics are cancer drugs (such as dasatinib, a leukemia chemotherapy).

So while they successfully do away with senescent cells, they also have a toxic effect on healthy cells, which prompts typical chemo side effects. And as we’ve seen in previous research, chemotherapy itself can cause cancer. Indeed, a very dubious route to longevity…

This is why researchers who aren’t on drug company payrolls are looking for less damaging alternatives to senolytics.

But Dr. Pescatore can save them a little time and effort. He says, “To find those ‘alternatives,’ researchers (and you) don’t have to look any further than the supermarket.”

That’s where you’ll find a compound called fisetin.

Driving out bad cells, while protecting the good

Fisetin is a highly nutritious flavanol plant pigment that also acts as a powerful antioxidant. Additionally, Dr. Pescatore notes that fisetin destroys senescent cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

“It’s exciting,” Dr. Pescatore says, “to see what impressive effects fisetin is having — in reducing the viability of senescent cells, and in fighting high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and inflammation. And one of the most promising areas of research for fisetin is — you guessed it — cancer prevention.”

Dr. Pescatore cites research that suggests fisetin may prevent several types of cancer from spreading. And fisetin also appears to inhibit tumor growth by reducing angiogenesis — the process that allows blood vessels to form and feed tumors.

Fisetin is found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, including…

  • Apples
  • Cucumbers
  • Grapes
  • Kiwi
  • Onions
  • Peaches
  • Persimmon

But by far the greatest concentration of fisetin is in strawberries, which have about six times more fisetin than apples (the second-most abundant source).

Dr. Pescatore singles out one remarkable study in the journal Cancer Prevention Research where researchers gave 75 people with precancerous lesions in the esophagus 1 or 2 ounces of freeze-dried strawberry powder daily. Eighty percent of those who received the larger dose had a reversal in the severity of their lesions.

The researchers concluded that fisetin-rich strawberries have the potential to prevent cancer.

Strawberry fields for fisetin

Of course, Dr. Pescatore strongly recommends including more fisetin in your diet by eating plenty of strawberries and other fisetin-rich foods.

But there’s a catch.

This year, strawberries top the list of the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen foods most contaminated by pesticides. So whenever you eat strawberries, it’s important to wash them thoroughly. And this is one of those cases where spending a little more for organic is well worth it.

And one more caveat: In order to reap the greatest senolytic benefits from fisetin in strawberries, you’d need to eat generous portions of strawberries every day. That’s why Dr. Pescatore recommends taking a fisetin supplement — 50 to 150 mg daily.

You can find his specific brand recommendations in the Resource Directory of his Essential Protocol to a Cancer-Free Future. Click here to learn more about this wealth of cancer-fighting strategies and insights, or to enroll today.

SOURCES

“Senescent Cells and Senolytics” Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, 2/26/17. (leafscience.org/senolytics/)

“Dirty Dozen™ EWG’s 2019 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™” Environmental Working Group, March 2019. (ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php)