Tips for Healthy Living

We’ve partnered with Dr. Doug Husbands of Holistic Health Bay Area to bring you a new set of Tips for Healthy Living. Dr. Husbands is a functional medicine doctor, clinical nutritionist, anti-aging health practitioner and doctor of chiropractic. I appreciate that he encourages visiting the doctor to focus on staying healthy instead of only visiting when you’re sick.– Carmelo Sigona

How Broccolette is Good For You

By Dr. Douglas Husbands

Broccolette, also known as broccolini, is a hybrid vegetable that is a hand-pollinated cross between gai lan (a.k.a. Chinese kale) and broccoli. Now from a nutrition viewpoint, it is one of my favorite vegetables, and here’s why: both broccoli and kale are very high in some components that help balance hormones and decrease cancer development!

As I’ve talked about in a previous Sigona’s Tips For Healthy Living, vegetables in the brassica classification have some special nutrient components. Both broccoli and kale are in the brassica class. This vegetable classification has significant amounts of indole-3-carbinol (I3C), diindolylmethane (DIM) and sulforaphane glucosinolate (SGS).

One of the greatest benefits of I3C, DIM and SGS are that they act to decrease a process called “aromatization” of testosterone produced in the body to harmful metabolites of estrogen. The harmful metabolites of estrogen, the 4-hydroxyestrones and the 16-alpha-hydroxyestrones, encourages tumor development.

By the way, these harmful estrogen metabolites can be objectively measured in the urine to see if your body is producing too much. Contact me to find out more about this if desired.

Another benefit of regularly eating broccolette is that I3C, DIM and SGS also promotes your body by making an estrogen metabolite that inhibits tumor growth. This metabolite, called 2-hydroxyestrone, helps to decrease the growth of cancer cells, according to numerous research studies.

For more detailed information of how I3C, DIM and SGS used in an effective concentrated therapeutic dose can significantly decrease cancer cell growth, see some articles in my newsletter archives and in my blog. For those of you who are not so intensely concerned with how broccolette can benefit your health, but just want to enjoy it, look for the cooking tips and recipes contained elsewhere in this issue of the Sigona’s newsletter!

About Dr. Doug:
Dr. Douglas Husbands is a Functional Medicine Doctor, Clinical Nutritionist, Anti-Aging Health Practitioner, and Doctor of Chiropractic. As a health advocate and coach, he is dedicated to achieving optimal health through resolving the underlying disease processes through diet, nutrition and lifestyle modification. To contact Dr. Doug, call 650-394-7470 or visit http://www.HolisticHealthBayArea.com

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