Sunless Tanning with the Aid of Vegetables

Everytime I eat vegetables, I remember my mom during my childhood days reminding me to eat my veggies every dinner.  I’m so glad that she did it without failing. It really pays to obey your parents. Because of those constant reminders, I learned to love those lowly and shunned vegetables. We all know that vegetables are known to promote good health. What most of us actually don't know is that they are also good in giving a healthy tan.

There is a recent research that shows fruits and vegetables diet will give a person a healthy golden glow than the sun according to Dr. Ian Stephen at the University of Nottingham, who led this research. This study suggests that instead of going outdoors which can put you at risk of getting cancer due to the sun's harmful UV rays, you might as well enjoy the benefits of a healthy tan by including fruits and vegetables such as apples, carrots and tomatoes in your daily diet.

Dr. Stephen and his team noted that persons whose daily diet include a rich portion of fruits and vegetables have a healthier, golden glowing skin. Fruits and vegetables contain carotenoids, the substance found to be responsible for that healthy glowing skin. These carotenoids are anti-oxidants that combat the effects of daily stresses that the body encounters.  Carotenoids also help in strengthening the body’s immune system as well as the reproductive system, giving us more reason to include fruits and vegetables in our daily diet.

Though this research is meant for Caucasian faces, the paper also contains reports that describe the same effects to non-Caucasians.

Revealing Glioblastoma’s Characteristic – Why Doctors Find It Hard to Combat the Disease

Macroscopic pathology of Glioblastoma multiforme
Image: Wikimedia commons, Sbrandne

Glioblastoma is a fast-growing type of malignant brain tumor. Recent studies reveal that the disease has the capability of feeding the cancer cells on its own by making its own network of blood vessels in order to feed the brain tumor.

These findings may help explain why some anti-angiogenesis treatments failed, the brain cancer cells characteristics also affected efforts to find other means of anti-angiogenesis treatment to fight the dreaded disease.

Glioblastomas have unique vasculature, differentiated by large, rapidly increasing cells and abnormal structures. These vessels were thought to be derived from pre-existing brain capillaries according to the researchers. To confirm their findings, they conducted an experiment by isolating tumor cells containing markers suggestive of a stem-cell-like state and injected it into an immunosuppressed mouse. The results once again confirmed their discovery since they found out that a large percentage of blood vessels that developed in the tumors were of human and not of a mouse.

This recent discovery may not be unique in Gliobastomas alone since all tumors have blood vessels. There are possibilities that other cancer form may have the same characteristics; therefore, researchers in other field of cancer research are encouraged to look into the possibilities.