9 Common Indian Spices That Prevent Cancer

 

When the opposition in question is an adamant disease like cancer, our armoury should be packed with a healthy lifestyle and a diet including foods that double as anti-cancer agents. Look no further than Indian spices to add incredible flavor to your food and prevent cancer. 

When actress Lisa Ray was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a relatively rare cancer of the bone marrow, all she said was, “I’ll beat cancer”. Carrying this spirit of defeating a disease often labelled ‘incurable’, we try to find out diet methods, especially in the selection of spices that can avert the multiplying of malignant cells in the body that gradually mature into insurmountable cancer cells. 

Our grandmothers would in no time prepare us a glass of warm milk with saffron sprinkled on top when we went crying to her with bruise on our knee or wound on the elbow. The herbal turmeric paste soothed minor cuts and healed all skin rashes. These age-old kitchen tricks are little more than mere quick-fix tactics. Spices like turmeric and saffron are inherent with medicinal properties that, when incorporated to our diet from an early stage strengthens our bodies against invasion of toxins, bacteria and virus.

Spices Stop Blood Clots Better Than Drugs

Spices do a whole lot more than liven up food. Research has found that the active ingredients in several common spices can help keep you alive by preventing platelet aggregation and blood clot formation up to 29 times better than aspirin, offering a much safer alternative to anti-clotting drugs such as Plavix. And they do it without side effects.

Scientists in India have done extensive testing to determine the health benefits of spices traditionally used in Indian cuisine. The latest research to come from the Central Food Technological Research Institute evaluated the effect of the active principle spice compounds eugenol, capsaicin, piperine, quercetin, curcumin, cinnamaldehyde, and allyl sulphide on human platelet aggregation. They demonstrated that each compound evaluated was able to significantly inhibit blood clotting. Furthermore, the compounds performed their anti-platelet aggregation activity against several different factors that promote the clotting of blood.

Eugenol and capsaicin were found to be the most potent inhibitors of induced platelet aggregation. This ability was shown by the other tested compounds too in the declining order of curcumin, cinnamaldehyde, piperine, allyl sulphide, and quercetin. Eugenol was found to be 29-fold more potent than aspirin in inhibiting ararachidonic acid induced human platelet aggregation. Both eugenol and capsaicin inhibited production of clotting factors in a dose-dependent manner.