It is well-established that eating lots of fruits and vegetables is vital to a healthy diet, for a plethora of reasons. To add to the list, new research performed at the University of Hawaii shows that eating more fruits and vegetables, especially yellow-orange fruits and vegetables, may significantly reduce women’s risk of invasive bladder cancer.
A research team led by Song-Yi Park, PhD, analyzed data from 185,885 older adults, spanning a period of 12.5 years. This data included 581 cases of invasive bladder cancer, in 152 women and 429 men. Results were adjusted for variables including age, plus other factors related to cancer risk.
From their analysis, Park and her team found that those women who ate the most fruits and vegetables, as well as the women who consumed the most vitamins A, C and E, had the lowest risk of bladder cancer.
Remarkably, women who ate the most yellow-orange vegetables were found to have a 52 percent less chance of having bladder cancer than those women who consumed the least yellow-orange vegetables.
The result that puzzled researchers was that no association between fruits and vegetables and invasive bladder cancer risk was found in men. Park says, “further investigation is needed to understand and explain why the reduced cancer risk with higher consumption of fruits and vegetables was confined to only women.”
Numerous past studies have linked eating more fruits and vegetables to lowered risk of heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, a variety of cancers, as well as other chronic diseases, in both men and women.
To get the most nutrient content out of your produce, and to avoid pesticide exposure, always go organic!
-The Alternative Daily
Sources:
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/143/8/1283
http://cancer.stanford.edu/information/nutritionAndCancer/reduceRisk/