Fall has arrived, and so has a new crop of fresh, crisp apples. Apples live up to their reputation of “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Many recent studies have shown that a single apple is a powerful cancer-fighter and can reduce the risk of developing several forms of cancer, including breast and lung. So, enjoy fall’s bountiful harvest of apples and lower your risk of five cancers at the same time.
1. Prostate cancer
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that quercetin — a flavonoid in apples — may help prevent and treat prostate cancer. A lab study found that quercetin prevented or reduced the growth of human prostate cell cancer cells by blocking androgens, a hormone linked to prostate cancer. "By blocking androgen activity, the growth of prostate cancer cells can be prevented or stopped," researcher Nainzeng Xing told the journal Carcinogenesis. "Our study suggests quercetin may be a potential non-hormonal approach to preventing or treating prostate cancer."
2. Breast cancer
A study of rats at Cornell University found that fresh apple extract slowed the growth of breast cancer tumors. Rats were exposed to a known mammary carcinogen and then fed the human equivalent of one, three, or six apples each day for 24 weeks. Tumors developed in 81 percent of the control rats which were not fed apples. Rats that were given the human equivalent of one, three, or six apples a day had the development of tumors slashed by 17, 39, and 44 percent respectively.
"We not only observed that the treated animals had fewer tumors, but the tumors were smaller, less malignant and grew more slowly compared with the tumors in the untreated rats," Cornell researcher Rui Hai Liu, who has conducted six studies that confirm the cancer-fighting properties of apples, said in a statement.
3. Lung cancer
A study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School of 125,000 Americans found that eating one apple a day reduced the risk of developing lung cancer in nonsmokers by 20 percent. A Finnish study and the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study found similar results. A Hawaiian study found that people with the highest intakes of apples and onions — two foods high in quercetin — reduced their risk of lung cancer by 40 to 50 percent.
4. Colon cancer
Several recent studies have found a link between apples and the risk of colorectal cancer. A 2009 study published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention found that eating just one apple a day reduced the risk of colon cancer by 35 percent. Eating more than one apple lowered risk by 47 percent. And a Polish study found that eating one or more apples a day slashed the risk of colorectal cancer by 63 percent.
In addition, a German study found that apples may increase the production of a compound called butyrate that protects against colon cancer.
5. Liver cancer
Rats fed an extract made from apple skins lowered their risk of developing liver cancer by 57 percent. Even though the cancer-fighting nutrients are concentrated in apple skins, the apple flesh also contains significant amounts. One study at Cornell found that treating liver cancer cells with 50 milligrams (half a teaspoon) of apple extract derived from unpeeled apples inhibited the growth of human liver cancer cells by 57 percent. Extract derived from the fleshy part of the apple inhibited cancer cells by 40 percent.
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