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More and more people who suffer from various ailments and health conditions could experience the effects of natural and herbal remedies. A great deal of experts would agree to the fact that our Mother Nature has effective and very powerful solutions for virtually any disease, and all we need is to find those herbs or plants which should be used to treat one or another health condition. That is why a great number of research groups around the world are currently working on analyzing chemical content and checking out the properties of plants and other natural substances hoping to find new effective natural remedies for common diseases, including such serious ones as type 2 diabetes, arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, and even cancer, the curse of our epoch. Though still any cure for cancer has not been found, from time to time scientists report about their finding a clue to possible creating one.
This way, the scientists from the University of Illinois published the findings of their studies saying that common herbs and vegetables that we use as a part of our daily diet contain flavonoids that have a property to kill pancreatic cancer cells. Practical experiments of the scientists have shown that such natural remedies as artichokes, celery, Mexican oregano, and some others contain certain ingredients like luteolin and apigenin which have very strong powers to inhibit human pancreatic cancer cells. Scientists could witness the fact that these flovonoids could inhibit the growth and development of an important enzyme which plays a role in pancreatic cancer cells development. 
The report about the study along with other related materials and interesting expert comments provided by University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, were the study was carried out, were published in August 2012 in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.
According to Elvira de Mejia, the study leader, it is possible to used apigenin and luteolin consequently in order to reduce the development of cancer cells. She says that apigenin can cause death of cancer cells of two cell lines of pancreatic cancer. However, in order to maximize the effects, the scientists treated cancer cells in apigenin for about 24 hours first, and then treating those in gemcitabine, one of the developed anti-cancer medications, for about 36 hours. This trick of using natural flavonoids as a preliminary treatment was thoroughly tested by Illinois scientists, and was proven to be effective for the most aggressive forms of pancreatic cancer. “Even though the topic is still controversial, our study indicated that taking antioxidant supplements on the same day as chemotherapeutic drugs may negate the effect of those drugs,” the study leader said.
Flavonoids have very strong anti-oxidant properties and can help in slowing down the effects of the oxidative stress. “If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables throughout your life, you’ll have chronic exposure to these bioactive flavonoids, which would certainly help to reduce the risk of cancer,” the study leader said. Actually, apigenin is a known natural flavonoid with excellent anti-cancer properties. According to the findings of another study carried out by the researchers from the University of Missouri and published last year in the online journal Hormones and Cancer, this natural anti-oxidant can be used effectively to treat breast cancer. However, dues to a lack of studies of the effects of apigenin on humans (as a continuation of lab researches and trying to use this substance on artificially generated human cells and enzymes), there is still no effective treatment based on this miraculous natural ingredient. Hopefully, new researchers will take place shortly, and creating of a new solution for this serious and very common disease will follow soon.
Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.
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