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Selenium and Cancer
By vincent - Jan 27, 2007, 02:27
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Selenium has been shown to have certain antioxidant properties in the body. As you may know antioxidants actively seek out and attach themselves to various free radicals that float around in the body and cause damage to the cells. Once attached the antioxidant can safely transport the radical to be flushed from the body. Antioxidants are especially good at fighting cancer because cancer develops when cells begin to mutate and grow out of control. This usually occurs when a cell is damaged for some reason and free radicals can be one of those reasons.
Simply living in an area with high Selenium content in the soil seems to help reduce the risks of developing all kinds of cancer overall. Probably because you are likely to eat some crops or meat grown in the area you reside in. Since Selenium enters the food cycle via plants it's a very good idea indeed to live somewhere with high selenium content or to at least eat a lot of food from these areas.
Also a study by Cornell University and the University of Arizona has shown that men and women who took Selenium supplements for ten years had a forty one percent less cancers overall than those who took a placebo. The study started in nineteen eighty three with one thousand three hundred and twelve patients with a history of skin cancer and who lived in areas with low Selenium content in their soil. They were divided into two groups, one which took a placebo and another which took two hundred micrograms of Selenium daily. This is a much higher dose than the daily recommended amount of sixty micrograms, and was given under the supervision of doctors.
Ironically the study was meant to see if the recurrence of skin cancers and while it did show Selenium reduced the risk of cancer overall it didn't significantly reduce the recurrence of skin cancers.
In those that took the Selenium supplements sixty nine patients developed cancer compared to one hundred and sixteen of those that took a placebo and twenty eight of those that took Selenium died compared to fifty eight of those from the placebo group. Doctors stated that they found an eighteen percent lower mortality rate in those that took Selenium compared to the placebo group.
There were several types of cancer that were more reduced by taking Selenium. Risk of developing prostate cancer was reduced by seventy one percent, esophageal cancer was reduced sixty seven percent, colorectal cancer was sixty two percent, and lung cancer was forty two percent lowered compared to those patients that took the placebo.
You probably needn't fear lack of Selenium in your diet increasing a risk of cancer if you live in the Americas. Even Americans with the lowest Selenium intake got around sixty to eighty micrograms a day of Selenium in their diet. Places like China have the lowest Selenium intake in the world with only ten or so micrograms daily because the soil is very deficient in the nutrient. There the diet is supplemented with Selenium much in the we supplement our diet with Iodine, in table salt.
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