Bunch of bananas by Ian Ransley via Flickr Creative Commons
There are more to bananas than what meets the eye as recent studies have shown that bananas can help fight cancer. Bananas are very nutritious and contain a fair amount of vitamin C, vitamin B6, potassium, as well as dietary fiber. It doesn’t just stop there; it is low in saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol and as the bananas ripens the amount of antitoxins increases.
Banana’s nutritional values via http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1846/2
While most people eat bananas as part of their daily fruit and vegetable intake, bananas are found to be beneficial to the human body. Research have shown that bananas provide health benefits such as relieving morning sickness, lowering blood pressure, increasing nutrient absorption, maintaining a healthy digestive tract — and most surprisingly, it helps prevent cancer.
Take a look below at Dr. Willie T. Ong’s health blog regarding the benefits of bananas.
From YouTube user: Kindguymd
A type of cancer scientists have associated with bananas is a type of kidney cancer called renal cell carcinoma, also known as hypernephroma. The tumours can travel to other areas of the body if they get into the lymph nodes (a process called metastasis), and the degree of spreading is categorized by the different stages of cancer. A cohort study done by van Dijk et al. explores the relationship between vegetable and fruit consumption and the risk of renal cell carcinoma. Although through their findings they found no association between total vegetable and/or fruit consumption, they did find that bananas have a protective effect. Furthermore, they mention another cohort study that has found statistically significant inverse association between bananas and renal cell carcinoma as well as previous reviews concluding a reduced renal cell carcinoma risk with vegetable and fruit consumption.
And there you have it! Start snacking on those bananas! Maybe next time when you’re eating a banana, you won’t think of it as merely a fruit!
For further readings regarding the studies on bananas and cancer see here.
– Alice Lin
