Soursop, More Than A Fruit

Cancer steals a lot from people around the world. For a disease that has been around for so long, and all the money that has been pumped to finance its research, why has a cure not been found yet? A family I know of lost their two year old daughter this week to cancer. It’s devastating to see a baby go through chemotherapy for more than 5 times and still not beat the disease.

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Our neighbor years ago was an oncologist. One fascinating thing about him was the fruits he planted in his backyard. A lot of us kids will raid his backyard and take some plums, guava and soursop. Soursop has a nice taste that’s like a mix of apple and banana, It ised to be my favorite in his garden😂. I heard he was the little girl’s doctor when she passed and I suddenly remembered him and his fruits. I also remembered that soursop was said to cure cancer. It was even posted on virtually every board in my department then, maybe that was why he planted it? So I began to research to find out more about thand here’s what I found:

Research shows that Soursop contains phytochemicals as many other plants do, these photochemicals are essentially the compounds used to improve health through the drugs we take. It has been able to successfully cure bacteria like those responsible for cholera and staphylococcus. Among the phytochemicals found in this fruit is annonaceous acetogenin compounds (AGEs), which inhibit nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide which are found on the membranes of cancer cells.

Because of the AGEs Present in soursop, it has cytotoxic effects which allows it to kill cells or induce apoptosis which is the ability of a cell to induce its own death with the help of the mitochondria. Various other parts of the soursop fruit and plant have been tested positive to cure various forms of cancer in the laboratory. The only reason soursop has not been endorsed to be used for treatment is because it has only been tested on rats and not humans. If we really care about the people that die everyday all over the world from cancer, I suggest more research should be carried out on this fruit with clinical trials to determine its efficacy.

Reference

1. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/soursop#summary

2. https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2017/07/experts-warn-against-soursop-fruit-to-fight-cancer

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