Cancer is one of the greatest plagues of all humankind, and the treatments are about as horrifying as the disease itself. But there may be some good news on the horizon.

The BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine published a study demonstrating ginger’s ability to fight ovarian cancer, the most deadly kind of the female reproductive system. The ginger worked by blocking cancer from growing, limiting its ability to spread.

“Ginger inhibits growth and modulates secretion of angiogenic factors in ovarian cancer cells,” the study states. “The use of dietary agents such as ginger may have potential in the treatment and prevention of ovarian cancer.”

Another study published by the British Journal of Nutrition in 2012 found that ginger has an incredible impact on prostate cancer, which impacts one in sex men in the United States.

“Whole ginger extract (GE) exerts significant growth-inhibitory and death-inductory effects in a spectrum of prostate cancer cells,” the study’s authors wrote. “Comprehensive studies have confirmed that GE perturbed cell-cycle progression, impaired reproductive capacity, modulated cell-cycle and apoptosis regulatory molecules and induced a caspase-driven, mitochondrially mediated apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells.”

Basically ginger tricks the cancer cells into killing themselves. The ginger was able to shrink tumors by 56%.

Fighting cancer is like fighting a war. You can’t just use the navy or the air force or the army. All three have to work together in order to achieve most victories. In the same way, maybe to effectively defeat cancer, you have to combine western medicine with natural medicine?

This certainly warrants further study.

Credit: simpleorganiclife.org