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CAPITAL BERG – A new study has shown that daily diets that include dried plums can keep colon cancer away. Experiments carried out by US researchers have proven that these fruits assist the retention of colon gut bacteria, a phenomenon which in turn makes it less likely for the individual to develop the disease.
Many studies and surveys have recently concluded that people’s diets can influence how the composition of colon gut bacteria changes, and how their metabolism behaves.
Dr. Nancy Turner, lead author on the new study and professor of food science and nutrition working at the Texas A&M University, in the department of AgriLife Research, offered a statement mentioning that human beings have trillions of bacteria that have made a home in their intestinal tract. But despite this, field experts have only managed to identify 400+ species so far.
Researchers seem to agree that colon cancer develops when people’s colon gut bacteria experience disruptions. This initially leads to intestinal inflammation, then to recurrent inflammation, and once this starts to persist, colon cancer starts to develop.
Dr. Turner and her colleagues believe that one reason why dried plums can fight against these inflammations is that they contain generous amounts of phenolic compounds that act as antioxidants and neutralize the oxidant effects linked to free radicals that attack and damage DNA.
The research team came to these conclusions after testing their theories on lab rats that they split in two (2) separate groups. One group was fed a diet that included dried plums, and the other a diet that deliberately eliminated dried plums.
The research team made sure that both diets had the same macronutrient composition and contained the same number of calories per day. This was the only way that they could ensure that whatever health benefits they would see, would be able to be attributed to the fruit.
The next step was for them to analyze the intestinal contents of the rats, as well as tissues taken from various segments of the colon.
They concluded that the diet with dried plums caused the number of Bacteroidetes to increase in the distal colon, and the number of Firmicutes to decrease in the sane area.
And the diet without dried plums gave the opposite results – it caused the number of Bacteroidetes to decrease in the distal colon, and the number of Firmicutes to increase in the sane area.
On top of this, Dr. Turner and her colleagues also noticed that rats who were fed dried plums had fewer aberrant crypts. This si important because Derek Seidel, research assistant and doctoral graduate student, offered a statement of his own informing that a high number of aberrant crypts is a clear warning sign that the individual is developing colon cancer.
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