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A traditional food that has been used for centuries to promote health and well-being has recently been studied by scientists for its usefulness in preventing or managing a common type of cancer. Studies show that this natural plant may be more effective than chemotherapy, radiation treatments and a drug that’s commonly used in cancer patients.

The Study

A study published in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry revealed that Morinda citrifolia (Noni) leaves, may be ideal for preventing or managing lung cancer. The study found that extract from a Noni leaf was more effective than the chemotherapy drug known as Erlotinib, when it came to suppressing metastasized lung cancer in an animal model.Noni leaf

Lung cancer takes 1.2 million lives each year, and about 80% of these lung cancer cases are classified as non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which conventional chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy is rarely able to kill, due to chemoresistance and radioresistance. Researchers pointed out, “Chemotherapy and/or irradiation usually fail because NSCLC cells are intrinsically resistant to them. Chemotherapy is quite ineffective for advanced NSCLC patients with only 20-35% response rate and a 10-12 month median survival.”

Erlotinib was approved by the FDA based on its ability to improve survival for a few months when added to conventional chemotherapy, but it has never been proven to be safe for use. This new study evaluated the effects of Noni leaves on metastasized lung cancer development in both a cell model and an animal model, and compared the results with Erlotinib, using two different types of lung cancer cells.

The Results

In the cell model, the Noni leaf extract “inhibited the proliferation and induced apoptosis” (programmed cell death). The extract caused changes consistent with those of an excellent chemotherapy agent. The Noni leaf extract also exhibited no toxicity in normal lung cells — something that chemotherapy and radiation cannot match, as they can damage healthy cells in the process.
noni

When tested against Erlotinib in a non-small-cell lung cancer model, the Noni leaf extract significantly increased healthy gene response and decreased unhealthy gene response, increased anti-inflammatory expression in the lungs and enhanced antioxidant responses against oxidative injuries. The extract also suppressed inflammation and increased antioxidant response, and the response of apoptotic genes that suppress cancer.

The researchers concluded that “the 300 mg/kg extract was more effective than the 50 mg/kg Erlotinib for most of the parameters measured.”

Something to Think About

Erlotinib can cause upwards of $7,700 a month depending on the dose used, and it has only been shown to prolong survival, while chemotherapy and radiation have many negative side effects. Noni leaf extract can cost as little as 12 cents per 250 mg, has no negative side effects, and has been proven to aid in the process of healing. Human clinical trials are needed to obtain an FDA drug approval, but Noni leaf extract could not be patented by a company, which takes profit out of the equation.

What do you think? Check out the video below for more information on Noni fruit!

h/t: green med info

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One Response

  1. Michael

    *If you are convinced that your writing methods, evidence, and reasoning here are sound, you’ll reply to this comment and allow your readers to decide for themselves. But if you are exactly like pharma and/or the FDA , which naturalists (if you’ll forgive my label—it is more of a compliment than anything else) often denounce, you’ll censor this comment. I won’t reply to your reply. If I break my word, you’d be more than justified for censoring anything else I write. But if you censor this comment, then you know exactly what you are and what kind of world that you are helping to create. If you aren’t already aware, then censoring this comment should lift the veil for you to reflect on your actual motives. So it goes with man-made good and evil, it is ultimately your choice.*

    Where are your sources? I apologize if I missed them, but I did look. And I presume that you value evidence, because otherwise you wouldn’t reference a study or use words that relate to science. I see that you referenced a journal, but why not give us a link? I failed a paper in college for doing what you did in this article. Quoting something without a specific source (so your reader can go look at it, not to give ego-credit to the author) is plagiarism, albeit of the less serious kind. Still, without allowing readers to see for themselves what the context of the selected quote implies or how it qualifies the conclusions of the research, you are potentially telling a story all your own. This approach inhibits the very critical thought that would be necessary for consumers and citizens to be aware of pharma’s profit-motive bias. It can appear that you might simply want to compete with pharma, rather than rebuke it. After all, they also use selective evidence and bury research; and, of course, the natural remedies that require special procedures like extraction to be useful also come with a profit motive for those who have the necessary specialized equipment and skill–not to mention the natural resources themselves. I am a fairly cynical person, but it seems to me that the FDA and pharma do nothing worse than what you do in this article. You criticize conventional cancer treatment (perhaps rightly so), and lavish praise on natural treatment (perhaps rightly so), while reducing to four little words that which could make or break the entire point of the article: “in an animal model”. Of the 80% of readers that won’t notice that glaringly important point for anyone that understands the scientific method, hopefully 10% of them will read my comment. I assume it wasn’t a human model. Was it even an in vivo study? Scientists try to use animals with the nearest biological similarity to humans. But it is impossible to even get close. Unless the study is on humans themselves, the conclusions are highly susceptible to irrelevance. And often times, for various reasons, theydon’t even perform the study on a whole, living organism. It can merely be on lung tissue in a petri dish. When applied to a living human, it can even sometimes have the reverse effect—occasionally proliferating the very thing that an animal model demonstrated the treatment variable to eliminate.
    So even when they do their best, well over half of the things that apply in in vitro or in an animal study simply don’t end up applying to a living human. I imagine you know this, but don’t care. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve become that cynical. But in case you don’t know it, never is the old adage truer than as it applies to science: half-truths are often worse than a lie. Studies progress to the point of relevance—to the point of human trials. The trials must be randomized. They must entail a representative population.
    They must be controlled. They must be blind. They must be replicable and replicated. They must be internally valid, so they separate correlation from causation in a plausible way. These components are the only thing that makes science objective. They protect us humans from our own fallibility—bias, self-interest, pattern-seeking errors, etc. They are the only thing that makes empirical claims verifiable and falsifiable. They are the tool that we can use to say “that’s true” and “that’s false”–“you’re correct and you’re mistaken, and most importantly, here’s why…” Just as ethics has been reduced to relativity, so too are logic and science in danger of this demotion. It might not have been avoidable when it comes to questions of right and wrong, as disconcerting as it nonetheless is. These questions might require faith or variable emotions or intuition or whatever. But if our society undermines fact-based evaluation, there will be no basis left for conversation. People already choose their own ethics, as you will have in response to this comment. But if they begin to choose the facts that suit them, then we’re truly and completely lost. Conversation is really the only thing that maintains a free and self-governing society. Conversation is fragile. It requires trust. Without it, we have anarchy at best and tyranny at worst. But either way, to paraphrase Nietzsche, all that is left is the will to power. My mother has non-small cell lung cancer. She is a living human being. And she is at the mercy of those with the power to disseminate truth and false information about how to treat her. And my hope is subject to an identical fate—my hope for my mother’s life, and my faith in humanity.

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