In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the potential of natural foods and remedies to combat various diseases, including cancer.
One such superfood that has gained significant attention is wheatgrass. Derived from the young shoots of the wheat plant, wheatgrass has been praised for its exceptional nutritional profile and potential cancer-fighting properties.
Let’s explore the potential of wheatgrass as a cancer-killing superfood and examine the scientific evidence behind its benefits.
Meet Ann Wigmore
Ann Wigmore is affectionately known as ‘the mother of living foods’. Even though studies about wheatgrass were being done by doctors as early as the 1930s, Wigmore popularized the naturalistic health movement in the late 1960s.
Wigmore claimed to have healed herself of various illnesses with ‘live foods’ such as raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs, and most notably, grasses like wheatgrass. Wigmore’s famous health regime became known as “The Wheatgrass Diet” and excluded all cooked food, meat products, and dairy of all kinds.
If you ask me, Wigmore was way ahead of her time. Fast forward to the present and it’s easy to see how influential Wigmore’s diet was; it sounds similar to the vegan diet we discussed in this article right?
But what exactly is wheatgrass?
Wheatgrass boasts an impressive nutritional profile, containing a concentrated source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, and chlorophyll.
It is rich in vitamins A, C, E, and K, as well as minerals like iron, magnesium, calcium, and selenium. These nutrients play crucial roles in supporting overall health and boosting the immune system, which is vital in combating cancer.
Since amino acids are the ‘building blocks of protein’, our bodies use them to repair cells and build muscles. For patients suffering with cancer, it’s always important to keep repairing cells because traditional cancer-killing methods like chemotherapy and radiation destroy healthy cells in the process of killing cancer-causing ones.
So does Wheatgrass actually kill Cancer?
Danny McDonald was diagnosed with stage 4 chronic stomach cancer when he was 74 years old. McDonald was given only a few weeks to live. When McDonald’s doctors told him about the cancer treatments they had planned for him, they admitted that he might not survive them.
Despite his doctors’ dismay, McDonald refused his doctors’ cancer regime and decided to use wheatgrass juice as his sole cure instead. He started with a single ounce of wheatgrass every day and eventually upped that amount sevenfold.
McDonald claimed that he stopped feeling pain from his stomach cancer within a week of drinking the wheatgrass, and then his stomach cancer disappeared.
McDonald said: “I know a lot of doctors think wheatgrass doesn’t have the qualities to kill cancer, but I am living proof that it does. And although many doctors won’t admit it publicly, gradually they are coming round to see the benefits of wheatgrass”.
The internet is full of stories similar to McDonald’s. So I had to check out if they were all anomalies or if wheatgrass actually was a blessing for those suffering with cancer.
The Raw Food Diet to Kill Cancer
There are many supporters of the Raw Food diet who claim that bodies only consuming raw fruits and vegetables make inhospitable places for cancer.
As Kara Mayer Robinson writes: “Some raw foodists believe cooking makes food toxic…The premise is that heating food destroys its nutrients and natural enzymes, which is bad because enzymes boost digestion and fight chronic disease”.
You can’t pick wheatgrass off your lawn and eat it like you could spinach; you have to juice it and drink it immediately after. Because of the wealth of nutritional benefits wheatgrass provides, it’s a staple on many raw food menus.
According to the Hippocrates Health Institute, “Two ounces of wheatgrass juice has the nutritional equivalent of five pounds of the best raw organic vegetables”. So it’s easy to see why patients suffering side effects of radiation or chemotherapy would prefer to down a shot of wheatgrass instead of eating five pounds of vegetables when they’re nauseous from treatments.
While I totally believe in adding more raw foods like fruits, vegetables, and nuts to our diets, unfortunately, there isn’t enough scientific research or evidence to support the fact that raw food diets cure cancer.
Of course, your body will definitely be in a healthier state and will be stronger to fight the cancer cells if it doesn’t also have to fight harmful ingredients in foods from chains like McDonald’s.
B17: The Anticancer Nutrient?
The decision to make B17 a vitamin is contentious at best. It doesn’t matter if you call it a vitamin or a nutrient, wheatgrass has it in abundance.
Dr. Mercola recounts the work done by preeminent cancer researcher Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura on the effects of Laetrile, or B17, on the spread of cancer tumors. Laetrile is formed from amygdalin, which you can find in fruit pits like apricots, apple seeds, and quince.
According to Dr. Mercola: “Amygdalin contains glucose, benzaldehyde, and cyanide. Cyanide is believed to be the active cancer-toxic ingredient in Laetrile”, meaning the cyanide is toxic to cancer cells.
Dr. Sugiura studied malignant lung tumors in lab mice. The control group of mice received a simple saline solution and tumors spread in 80-90% of the animals. While only 10-20% of the mice who were given Laetrile saw their tumors spread.
Even though these results seem promising at stopping the spread of cancer cells, Dr. Weil counters this theory by stating that “laetrile and amygdalin can be converted to cyanide in the body, and laetrile use has been linked to several cases of cyanide toxicity”. Yikes that doesn’t sound good, so I guess we can’t conclude anything one way or another when it comes to B17.
Wheatgrass’ Free Radical Scavengers
Have you ever heard of Superoxide Dismutase (SOD)?
Me neither. But wheatgrass is full of it.
Advocates in favor of wheatgrass say that SOD is the strongest free radical hunter in our bodies and is responsible for tracking down harmful free radicals and chopping their heads off (so to speak).
As Webster Kehr writes for the Independent Cancer Research Foundation, Inc., “SOD converts one of the most dangerous free radicals: Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), into a hydrogen peroxide molecule (which has an extra oxygen molecule to kill cancer cells) and an oxygen molecule”.
Why are these extra oxygen molecules important? You’ll have to think back to your grade school science class when you learned about chlorophyll to understand this one.
The Power of Chlorophyll on Cancer
Plants transform energy from the sun into chlorophyll to help them grow. This is what makes plants green. And guess what?
Wheatgrass is about 70% chlorophyll.
I like to think of chlorophyll as blood for plants; carrying nutrients in their bodies to make them strong. Similarly, the hemoglobin in red blood cells carries oxygen throughout our bodies.
What I never knew is that the molecular makeup of chlorophyll is incredibly similar to hemoglobin. Supporters claim that wheatgrass supplies us with hemoglobin-esque substances to aid in oxygen supply. This is very important for cancer patients.
Typically cancer patients have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation to shrink and eliminate their tumors. Chemotherapy literally means killing cells with drugs so the cancerous cells don’t multiply and spread. However, the blood cells created in our bone marrow are sensitive to chemo and they get destroyed in the process, even if they’re not cancerous.
Radiation therapy also affects bone marrow and patients may see drops in their red and white blood cells. Similarly, some cancers that grow in the blood or bone marrow literally stop normal blood cells from developing.
When red blood cells decrease, there’s less hemoglobin and our bodies have a harder time supplying oxygen to our tissues, organs, and cells.
Wheatgrass enthusiasts believe that drinking wheatgrass juice increases the hemoglobin-type substance to transport additional supplies of oxygen to our blood. The Hippocrates Health Institute claims that red blood cell counts rise very quickly when patients drink wheatgrass. When the red blood cell levels multiple, more oxygen is available to travel throughout the body.
Red blood cell levels are critical for oxygen supply. But what happens when white blood cell counts decrease?
Wheatgrass to Strengthen the Immune System
During chemotherapy and radiation, the white blood cells, also known as the warrior cells of our body, are destroyed. If we boost the immunity, and the production of white cells to fight the cancer cells grows too.
Wheatgrass has a ton of vitamin C, immunity boosting enzymes to help our white blood cells, and loads of minerals to aid in the battle. Dr. Dach explains that the central atom in hemoglobin is iron, but in chlorophyll, the central atom is magnesium. Prof. Pierre Delbet found out that “white blood cells destroyed up to three times more microbes than before, after the intake of magnesium chloride”.
Does this mean that wheatgrass, full of magnesium, will help strengthen white blood cells?
According to Jaime Herndon at Livestrong, “Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy may experience something called myelotoxicity, which is an abnormal level of blood cells that make up the immune system, resulting in significantly compromised immunity. Wheatgrass juice may be able to ameliorate low levels of white blood cells, helping to reduce myelotoxicity”.
Like I mentioned earlier, when tumors grow, they absorb all of the oxygen in our bodies. When there’s low oxygen, adenosine gets released and causes immune cells to become sluggish, and even worse, increase tumor growth. These immune cells should be fighting off the cancerous cells, but they can’t.
If the white blood cells can’t fight off infections in the body, even the smallest cold can develop, exacerbate, and lead to death.
In a study reported in Science News, Stephen Hatfield of Northeastern University in Boston and his colleagues measured the effect of oxygen on mice with cancerous tumors. Raising oxygen levels in the air from the normal 21% to 60% “energized immune cells to shrink tumors in mice”.
The study claims that “about 40 percent of cancer-ridden mice put in an oxygen-rich environment survived 60 days or more”. However, the results for the mice stuck in the normal air weren’t so great, “after getting an injection of lung-cancer cells died within about 30 days”.
As the study reinforces, supplying the body with additional supplies of oxygen helps immune cells naturally kill off, or shrink the tumors. Wheatgrass should be incorporated to help grow and invigorate blood cells so they allow more oxygen to fight off the cancer cells.
However, the science isn’t there yet to forgo treatments like chemotherapy and radiation that have proven to be successful. As you can see from the research I mentioned, there are advocates for natural medicine in the science world and I have faith in them to deliver us a safe and effective cure using what’s available in our gardens. As always, make sure to speak with your doctor or oncologist before adding wheatgrass to your diet and health regime.
Do you believe in the powers of wheatgrass?
