Dr. Oz’s “Cancer Detective” Makes a Case for Wild

Dr. Oz has enlisted one of the most deductive minds in plant nutrition research to help us understand the compelling potential of wild plants in cancer prevention. For us, this Sherlock Holmes of health has a very familiar name.

That’s because we spoke with Dr. Mary Ann Lila about the fascinating nutritional research taking place at the Plants for Human Health Institute at North Carolina State University where she is the Director, back in September. She talked to Wild About Health for a two-part series about her work in shifting the global perception of plant crops and their potential, as well as her research involving wild blueberries, including mapping the blueberry genome and its fascinating role in Parkinson’s prevention.

   

On a recent show, Dr. Oz referred to Lila as a “cancer detective” because she is responsible for some major breakthroughs in nutritional health, particularly in the field of cancer prevention. At the Institute, she and her team are using the most up-to-date technology to understand the most old-fashioned remedies: plants. Her task is understanding how and to what extent they protect human health.

Lila performs research by testing promising plants, and uses that research in conjunction with knowledge gathered from places like Mexico, New Zealand, Equador and Bostwana. In these countries, she and her team tap native elders so they can better understand how berries are collected and used. Combined with research, this information helps them to scientifically understand something we have long intuitively understood about fruit and its medicinal properties.

Lila’s focus is on deep pigment berries. They hold the key to powerful anti-cancer nutrients. Today, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and Lila’s detective work entails cracking the case of how berries could lead to stopping cancer in its tracks.

You can find out more about the wild berry mystique at DoctorOz.com and how this translates into protection for our own bodies.

Something Wild

As part of Dr. Oz’s Cancer Prevention series, Lila discusses the compelling cycle of how plants grown in harsh environments naturally have health benefits that are the result of a complex system engaged to defend themselves. Wild blueberries, for example, grow only in Maine and Canada, enduring harsh winters on the coast, and they are prime examples of the wild mystique: wild blueberries are exposed to constant sunlight in the summer, they grow in tough coastal and rocky terrain, and they endure rollicking seasonal shifts.

This otherwise unprotected plant, Lila explains, manufactures its own natural protection. It helps itself endure environmental stress and promote its own survival in its aim to live another season. The wild blueberry’s skin has high concentrations of sun protection; its tough outer tissue wards off cold temperature and salt stress; it naturally discourages predatory insects and invasive microbes; and its bright colors help attract pollinating insects, helping to disperse their seeds. To achieve all this, the plant draws on its own natural components to produce powerful phytochemicals that protect and preserve it and allow it to prosper.

“Stressed for Success”

For human life forms, the benefits from these phytochemicals can’t be overstated. It’s too good to be true that the protection plants use for their own survival and propagation can be used to such enormous effect – aptly stated as medicinal effect – for us. As Lila terms it, these plants are “stressed for success”. The “stress” they endure triggers them to devote their natural resources to accumulating these protective phytochemicals for their benefit and ultimately ours. The anti-inflammatory benefit for heart and blood vessels that phytochemicals provide is medicine we as a population need more than ever as we struggle against increasingly prevalent and deadly diseases associated with these symptoms.

Understanding the difference between wild and cultivated can bring wild’s particular heath advantages into stark relief. Wild blueberries are native to North America and they have little intervention from growers, which allows their natural defenses thrive. In contrast, the berries’ cultivated counterparts are grown for other strengths. That means they have actually been selected against some of the health-protective phytochemicals, Lila explains. And, of course, cultivated plants don’t have the stressors of wild, so they simply don’t produce the protective benefits. Making sure we are eating wild – those native plants indigenous to Maine and parts of Canada – is the key to the most powerful protection against cancer.

In addition to cancer prevention, wild provides plenty of other advantages.

The Wild Advantages: 

  • Superb antioxidant capacity. Wild Blueberries have the highest antioxidant capacity per serving, compared with more than 20 other fruits.
  • Ability to lower blood glucose levels for diabetics.
  • Improved motor skills.
  • Reversal of short-term memory loss associated with the human aging process.
  • Protection for the heart and help in preventing stroke.
  • Protection against the effects of aging including its effects on vision and skin.
  • Promising potential in the prevention of metabolic syndrome.

Learn more about wild at DoctorOz.com, at get recipe suggestions to help you get in touch with your wild side!

Spotlight On: Plants for Human Health Institute

Part Two: Betting Big on Blueberries

The nutrient-rich blueberry has been lauded as an antioxidant powerhouse and true “superfruit”. It consistently tops the lists of nutritionists and scientists alike as one of the healthiest foods for anti-aging and disease prevention. Owed to the high concentrations of nutrients in its deep blue skin, especially in the smaller wild berry, the blueberry’s antioxidant properties contribute to heart, brain and vision health, and serve as a powerful defense against cancer.

At the Plants for Human Health Institute at North Carolina State University, the blueberry is at the heart of some of the most exciting research involving human health and plant food crops. Director Mary Ann Lila’s dedication to revealing even more of its nutritional mysteries has lead efforts that aim to uncover major scientific discoveries in the fields of health and nutrition. In fact, she considers the blueberry a cohesive force at the Institute.

“Blueberry projects have tied together different teams on the campus that otherwise would not be likely to work together,” said Lila of the unique role blueberries play at the school’s Research Campus. “For example, the blueberry genomics research and the phytochemical characterization research that we are conducting here at the Plants for Human Health Institute, North Carolina State University, links us very closely with researchers at University of North Carolina – Charlotte (the bioinformatics and transcriptomics researchers), with NC A&T University (the postharvest quality researchers) and with UNC-Chapel Hill’s Nutrition Research Institute (the epigenetics and human cognitive research).”

The ambitious project Lila refers to involves mapping the blueberry’s genome. Collaborations with researchers around the state offer significant support of resources and technology when it comes to such large scale projects. Ultimately, one of the goals of PHHI is the development of mainstream fruit and vegetable produce with enhanced health benefits. As part of this mission, researchers are engaged in identifying the blueberry’s genetic code in an effort to ultimately enhance breeding lines. It’s one of the most exciting studies the institute is engaged in, said Lila.

In addition, blueberry-themed research has contributed to the strong relationship with The David H. Murdock Research Institute, a non-profit institute designed to support research at the North Carolina Research Campus. And, it has been the catalyst for a new USDA program on blueberry health benefits and individualized nutrition. Lila credits research involving blueberries for stimulating staff expansions and for the decision to embed USDA researchers on the campus to work on integration of blueberry research at the plant, animal, and human clinical levels – a program that looks at responders and non-responders to different classes of phytochemicals. “Getting blueberries in there at the ground floor level has helped to spur momentum for research at the institute,” Lila said. “It is exciting. It dovetails and synergizes with what we are already doing and makes us a tour de force for blueberry research worldwide.”

A recently publicized area of interest at the institute has been research concerning metabolic syndrome, a combination of medical disorders responsible for increased risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Working with wild blueberry fruit compounds known as anthocyanins, Lila led a team of researchers that demonstrated that blueberry phytochemicals helped alleviate hyperglycemia in rodent models, a condition associated with and metabolic syndrome, and also diabetes. (You can read more about this research in Phytomedicine, 2009 May; 16(5): 406-15.)

This past summer, Lila and her team presented exciting new research as part of the Wild Blueberry Research Summit in Bar Harbor, Maine. The Summit is an annual meeting of leading researchers and scientists that gather to share their research findings and to explore opportunities for future collaboration. The presentation concerned ongoing in-vitro studies into the connection between blueberry components and Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s is an incurable disease involving neuron loss, and Lila said the research concerns protection against such neurodegeneration. “The best defense for Parkinson’s is prevention, and the research is showing how in particular the anthocyanin pigments are protective against neuronal death.”

Poised for growth and alive with the potential to drive wide-ranging changes in how we eat and think about food, the PHHI is the perfect place for a blueberry to be. With major projects underway involving farmer’s markets, greenhouses, state-of-the-art labs, genome mapping and dedicated scholars with a passion for plant food crops, the bottom line is that if you are keeping your eye on health, you’d be wise to keep the work of PHHI and Dr. Mary Ann Lila in view.

Read Part I: Tapping Our Global Resources