Guyabano
fruit is a green, pear-shaped fruit covered with soft spines. Matured guyabano
or soursop fruit weighs about 2 to 5 kilograms. It is ovoid and large, up to 18
centimeters long, with thin skin and the soft edible whitish pulp that is
fleshy and fibrous and has inedible black seeds. It has also a distinct sweet-sour flavor that tastes like pineapple and strawberry with a tang of sour
citrus taste.
The Story:
What would you do if you have just
earned yourself the right to retire from government service after more or less
60 years and just relax on your resthouse, only to be told that you are dying
of cancer? Seems like heaven disallowed its joyous rays to cast upon you?
Rose Palacio, a post government
employee, had developed dermoid cyst, which is malignant, which led to her
being diagnosed of cancer last October 2009.
“I was asked by my doctor to get a
second opinion but the second opinion confirmed her findings and the second
doctor also recommended that I be operated on the soonest possible time if I
still wanted to live,” she said. Of course, she was barely alive then,
suffering from long bouts of stomach pain and her inability to urinate for
several days. She was hospitalized when she was no longer able to bear the pain
of cancer seeping through her entire body, but the anxiety coming from the fear
of where to get money for her mounting hospital bills made her decide to beg
her doctor to release her.
“He said if I don’t get the
operation then I was as good as dead but realizing that I had decided not to
get the operation for financial and other reasons, he asked me to buy all the
guyabano I can find in Bankerohan Public Market,” she said. “Sabi n’ya Rose,
bilhin mo lahat ng guyabano na makita mo at inumin mo oras-oras (Rose you buy
all the guyabano you can find and drink it every hour).”
She
then drank guyabano shake every hour, even alarming late at night just to
continue her hourly dosage. Supposedly, ripe guyabanos which are sweet are to
be taken, but due to the scarcity of ripe ones, she drank even the bitter raw
guyabanos just to comply with her requirements, even without sugar because
sugar contains chemicals that may lessen the potency of the guyabano.
In less
than three days, she was able to urinate and had regular bowel movement.The
pain also lessened and while I had but pains regularly before, it was reduced
as the days went on, she said. Two weeks later, her colleagues in the media
could not believe it when they saw Rose covering one of the press conferences
in the city, looking healthier and as if nothing happened. When asked what she
did to get rid of her malady, she would gladly utter one word — guyabano.
The Pros:
Researchers have confirmed that
guyabano contains Annonaceous acetogenins or chemicals with very strong
anti-tumorous properties. The beauty of these chemicals is that while these are
toxic to cells with cancer, it does not affect the healthy cells. One of the
reasons why cancer patients like Rose refuse to undergo chemotherapy is because
of its adverse effects on healthy cells. With guyabano, only the cancerous
cells are affected. An unreleased report
by the US National Cancer Institute in 1976 has included guyabano or Graviola
in the list of plants that were found to be effective in killing malignant
cancer cells. Research shows that a lot of clinical studies have been made on
the anti-cancer properties of guyabano but it has yet to be tested on cancer
patients.
The Cons:
The idea that graviola is an
effective cancer fighter evidently stems from research (published in 2008)
conducted at the Purdue University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical
Sciences on the unique substances known as annonaceousacetogenins that have
been extracted from the graviola tree. The Purdue investigators found these
substances to be potent inhibitors of cancer cells while leaving normal cells
alone. They also found the compounds to be effective against drug-resistant
cancer cells.
But these studies were conducted in
vitro, i.e., conducted on cancer cells in test tubes. These are a long way from
clinical trials that determine the efficacy and safety of these compounds in
people with cancer. In fact, there were not any human study found on graviola
and cancer.
Another possible reason for this
might is that, the intake might just be a placebo. The placebo is clearly
evident in the famous phrase, “mind over matter”. It is a simulated or otherwise medically
ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to
deceive the recipient. Sometimes patients given a placebo treatment will have a
perceived or actual improvement in a medical condition, a phenomenon commonly
called the placebo effect. That means, an individual given a placebo, in this
case, a guyabano, as an anti-cancer medicine
will induce a psychological effect and belief that guyabanos are really
effective; deceiving the human brain to allow the human body to surpass
sickness and diseases and may have the capacity to develop therapeutic claims
and physiological healing.
Conclusion:
Even without due scientific
evidence and global acceptance, it wouldn’t be that bad to try taking guyabanos
as an anti-cancer fruit. Practically thinking, nothing would even change
whether the dosage of guyabano would work-out or not – if drinking the guyabano
shake should not compensate the cancer
present, then chemotherapy is the only chance of survival, if the latter
choice would cure you of cancer, then even better.
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