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The Color Orange
The Color Orange
Colors make the world delightful. It’s hard to imagine
a life without blue skies, green plants, and the sometimes
fiery, sometimes muted, highlights we see in the
world.
Colors also affect our psyche; they create an
emotional response. Too many gray days breed discontent,
prisons are being painted in pastels of various colors to
control moods, and businesses use different colors to make
people hungry, content, excited, or calm.
Color also
can affect our health, especially if you consider that, in the
plant world, coloring is achieved through carotenoids, which
not only supply us with something pleasant to look at, but
also healthful properties.
Orange
Orange
is the color of carrots, yams, cantaloupes, butternut squash,
and pumpkin. In the natural and healthful world, you would say
that orange represents beta carotene. Beta carotene gets its
name from carrots, but green leafy vegetables like spinach
also contain beta carotene. The orange is masked by the green
of chlorophyll. What does the color orange do for us
healthwise?
The cancer connection
Nature, the
International Journal of Cancer, and the Lancet.
In late 1981, the New York Times featured an article
about the risk of lung cancer and how beta carotene reduced
this risk.
Official recognition came in 1982, when the
National Academy of Sciences’ report, Diet and Cancer,
gave the academic and medical "seal of approval" to the link
between beta carotene and vitamin A and reduced risk of
cancer. Since then, there has been reconfirmation of this
link.
In a study reported in the July 1996 issue of
Carcinogenesis, the effect of beta carotene and
selenium on pancreatic carcinogenesis in rats was
investigated. The researchers noted that both beta carotene
and selenium might have had chemopreventive effects,
especially when added to diets during the late promotion phase
of the carcinogenic process.
A 1998 study in
Pancreas on pancreatic carcinogenesis showed similar
results. In this study, the effects of alpha carotene, beta
carotene, palm carotene, and green tea polyphenols (GTP) on
the progression stage of pancreatic carcinogenesis were
studied in Syrian hamsters. Inhibitory effects were noted for
beta carotene and palm carotene (which includes beta
carotene). GTP also showed inhibitory effects.
In 1997,
Harvard Medical School released research that indicates that
beta carotene can sharply reduce the risk of prostate cancer
in men with low beta carotene blood levels. (Cancer Weekly
Plus, June 9, 1997). In this research, the diets,
lifestyles, and health of more than 22,000 male doctors were
observed. Half of the doctors were given 50 mg (80,000 IU) of
beta carotene every other day. The findings indicate that
physicians with low levels of beta carotene were one-third
more likely to develop prostate cancer. The doctors who
supplemented with beta carotene were 36 percent less likely to
develop prostate cancer than those who ate few beta
carotene-rich fruits and vegetables and did not take beta
carotene supplements.
An article in the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition (August 1997) notes that
epidemiological studies reveal that people with high intakes
of beta carotene or high blood concentrations of this nutrient
have a reduced risk of various diseases, including cancer and
heart disease. The authors note that this is a credible
hypothesis, because
1) increased consumption of beta
carotene is strongly associated with reduced risk of
cancer;
2) beta carotene is a dietary antioxidant and
antioxidants inhibit early stages of carcinogenesis;
and
3) beta carotene reduces cancer in experimental
animal models.Why the link?The link
between beta carotene and cancer prevention may be found in
beta carotene’s effect on the immune system.
Michelle Santos, et al., writing in the November 1996
issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
notes that beta carotene may increase the activity of natural
killer (NK) cells. NK cell activity has been postulated to be
an immunologic link between beta carotene and cancer
prevention. The article states that, "Our results show that
long-term beta carotene supplementation enhances NK cell
activity in elderly men, which may be beneficial for viral and
tumoral surveillance." This has been reconfirmed in a more
recent study by Santos (The American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition; July 1998).
Another reason for beta
carotene’s effect on cancer may be due to its influence on the
gap-junctional communication between
cells.
Gap-junctional communication is a way that cells
communicate; it is the exchange of small molecules and ions
between neighboring cells. All cells within a tissue, with the
exception of circulating blood cells and smooth muscle cells,
are connected to one another by gap junctions. These
communication channels allow the transmission of important
cellular messages and play an important part in maintaining a
normal cellular environment.
Some scientists believe
that beta carotene, and other carotenoids, achieve cancer
protection by improving the communication which takes place in
these gap junctions. This improved communication may help
cells being transformed into cancer cells revert back to being
normal.
Most specifically, beta carotene apparently
stimulates a molecule that helps the immune system target and
destroy cancer cells. It increases the number of receptors on
white blood cells for a molecule known as major
histocompatibility complex II (MHC II).
MHC II is
integral in helping monocytes, a type of white blood cell,
direct killer T cells to cancerous cells (Cancer Weekly
Plus, Jan. 6, 1997). In other words, beta carotene is
integral in directing the immune system to kill cancer
cells. |
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AIM JustCarrots
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Retail:
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