Transcription
Broccoli sprouts have about a hundred times more sulfurophane than the mature broccoli. And now I'm saying sulforophane, but that's not entirely accurate because sulfurophane isn't actually produced in the plant until the plant is actually crushed or bitten. So if you're a little insect and you're going and you're flying on to a broccoli plant and you bite it, then the plant will convert the precursor to sulfurophane called glucaraphin and it'll convert it into sulfurophane with an enzyme called myroinesise.
So broccoli sprouts actually have a hundred times more glucaraphin in in them than mature broccoli. And that's because young plants want to uh survive and be like, you know, long live long enough to kind of, you know, spread the seed and stuff. So that's kind of the the rationale behind why sometimes younger plants will have higher levels of these plant phyitochemicals.
Well, sulfurophane, why do I care about sulfurophane? Sulurophane is actually the most potent dietary activator of a very very important pathway that is an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory detoxification pathway called NRF2. NRF2 is a transcription factor that ultimately just means that is able to bind to many many many different genes and activate them or deactivate them kind of like what vitamin D does, right? And so sulfurophane will kind of make NRF2 not be in its inactive state. So it's like usually in its inactive state and sulfurophane activates it.
Now what happens when NRF2 is active is that it activates what are called phase 2 detoxification enzymes. These are a variety of enzymes that we have in our bodies to help us handle toxic exposure that we're exposed to on a daily basis. Whether that's from air pollution, smoke, wildfire smoke, cigarette smoke, um fungus, you know, all sorts of chemicals that were potentially exposed to, that's plastic chemicals. That's where the detoxification enzymes, you want them active.
It also NRF2 also deactivates what are called phase one biotansformation enzymes. So these are enzymes that are able to take something that's a procarinogen and convert it into a carcinogen. So you don't want those enzymes active. And that's exactly what NRF2 does. It turns it down. It shuts them down. So these are sort of sort of these procarinogens are things like if you really, you know, grill your steak grill and you got like the the black grill stuff on it and it's got like the heterosyclic amines and things like that. So basically it's turning down those enzymes that can convert those things into carcinogens. In fact, there's been studies looking at, you know, these people that char their meat and they eat more cruciferous vegetables and it sort of cancels out the increased cancer risk in those individuals.
It's also one of the most potent antioxidants um activators. So, glutathione is one of our body's, you know, very important antioxidant systems, way more powerful than vitamin E or vitamin C in terms of its antioxidant potential. Glutathione uh is the maj is the brain's major antioxidant and there have been studies showing that people that take you know broccoli extract that is you know has sulfurophane in it increase their plasma glutathione levels and also by fMRI it's been shown to increase glutathione levels in the brain. So very very important sulfurophane is the major activator of this pathway. All right.
Um we also know from human studies that sulurophane can reduce DNA damage. So individuals that eat about 85 grams of water crest, that's a type of cruciferous vegetable for 8 weeks, they have about a 17% lower risk, sorry, a 17% lower DNA damage in their blood cells. They also have about 24% lower oxidative DNA DNA lesions. So DNA damage um oxidative lesions lead to eventually double stranded breaks. Double stranded brakes are very hard to repair. They're the most delterious type of DNA damage eventually can lead to a type of mutation and damage in a region in your gene that could become encogenic or cancer-causing.
Broccoli 250 grams a day for 10 days. This was done in smokers who have a high level of oxidative damage. It lowered their oxidative DNA lesions by about 41% and it lowered their oxid sorry it increased their oxidative stress resistance by about 23%. And then there was another study that was done in people um giving them Brussels sprouts 300 grams a day. That's enough to give me too much gas. But anyways, um 300 grams a day for 3 weeks and it lowered their oxidative DNA damage by almost 30%. So, you know, that's pretty profound. By just eating these cruciferous vegetables, you're getting a lower amount of just baseline DNA damage every day, right? That's important because DNA damage accumulates with time. It's an insidious type of damage. It's not something that we can look in the mirror and see. I mean, you can see when you're sunburned, you can see that damage has occurred. Inflammatory processes that you're red, but you can't see DNA damage. You just can't see it. So, you don't know it's happening, but it's happening. It's happening all the time, even in healthy, normal people that, you know, you know, DNA damage happens just as a byproduct of our normal metabolism process, of our normal immune activation process. So, it's happening in all of us. And if there's any way we can dampen that down and lower that process, it's really good.
There's also some studies that have shown, getting back to the detoxification studies, that there have been a couple of studies out of China, um, in Beijing, where air pollution, I just got back from China and Beijing, and you can feel the air is like heavy when you breathe it in. It's it's like you can feel it. Um, air pollution is a big thing over there. And so there were a couple studies done where people in China were given again they were given sulfurophane in the form of like a broccoli sprout extract. It was about 40 micro moles a day of sulfurophane for 12 weeks and it increased the excretion of benzene. So benzene is a known carcinogen. It is in air pollution. It's in cigarette smoke. Um it by 60% it increased that excretion and it happened this was an 8week study. It happened within 24 hours and continued throughout the whole 8 weeks. So in other words, within 24 hours of this dose of silver, they were excreting benzene. Acryine also acryine excretion also went up. Acryine is something that's also found in you know um it's a it's a air pollution but also in foods when you cook the foods acryine you're ingesting the acryine. So again detoxification processes happening.
Um there was another couple of studies that have been done in prostate cancer patients. So men with lowgrade prostate cancer, they were given about 60 milligrams a day of sulfurophane and it they did this for about 6 months and it slowed the doubling time of this PSA biomarker antigen by 86 86% after just 6 months slowed that doubling time. Pretty pretty profound effect on prostate health as well. And then there's been other studies that actually topical use of sulfurophane can prevent some of the UV damage and inflammation that occurs as well.
There's a lot of pre-clinical studies out there um just looking at the effects of giving mice sulfurophane and injecting them with tumor tumor solid tumor samples and it of course lowers tumor slows tumor growth reduces metastasis. So in the prostate cancer animal model, it reduced metastasis by up to 63%. Um in the breast cancer model, so breast cancer stem cells were injected into mice. It actually decreased cancer stem cell populations by up to 80% and it reduced tumor growth by more than 50%. And then there was a colon cancer model where the the precancerous lesions were decreased by about 44%. And there's countless preclinical studies like this. I mean, I'm just showing you three here. I mean, there's so much data on animals and lots of mechanisms at play, but ultimately I think the bottom line here is that we should be eating either our cruciferous vegetables or supplementing with sulfurophane or eating the broccoli sprouts.
So, broccoli sprouts are the best source if you're going for the the dietary way. Um, if you want to get about if you want to get between 25 to 35 or sorry, 55 micro moles of sulfurophane, you're going you're going to want to get between 45 to 100 grams of fresh sprouts. If you're going to go with the broccoli, just be aware that when you cook the broccoli, you actually inactivate the enzyme myosinise that converts the precursor glucaraphin into sulfurophane somewhat. So you want to lightly cook it and then you want to add back that enzyme. So what I like to do to my broccoli is I is I add some mustard seed powder to my broccoli because mustard seed also the cruciferous family and it has my rosinese enzyme in it. And so you're essentially adding back that enzyme so that you can convert the glucaraphin in the broccoli to sulurophane. And in fact, there have been studies showing that people that do this, it increases the bioavailability uh by about four-fold of glucaraphin. So it does work and it is a nice little kind of hack.
And then there's supplements and that's ultimately also what I do. I take a nice supplement. Um you can find stabilized formulations. Um if you want to know what I'm taking, I'm happy to tell you. But, you know, there's there's definitely a lot of noise in that supplement world as well.