Cancer is a very complex, multifaceted disease that is strongly associated with inflammation.

Many studies have shown that reducing inflammation reduces cancer risk, and can also reduce the spread and growth of existing cancers.

We know that inhibiting cancer requires blocking a number of cell-signaling mechanisms, as well boosting immunity and stopping mechanisms that enhance tumor invasion and spread.

Unlike chemotherapy agents, which do not differentiate between normal cells and cancer cells, anticancer compounds found in medicinal plants selectively target cancer cells.

In doing so, they not only spare damage to normal cells, they also protect normal cells from damage by chemotherapy agents and radiation.

The basis of this protection is the difference in metabolism between cancer cells and normal cells.

Most chemotherapy agents act on one of two mechanisms, which the cancer cell can quickly adapt to.

One way cancer cells avoid damage from chemotherapy agents is to use cell mechanisms to expel the chemotherapy agent, thus preventing damage to the cancer cell.

Once a cancer cell develops resistance to one chemotherapy drug, it is usually resistant to most of them — a process called multidrug resistance (MDR).

Another method of protection cancer cells use is to shut off special suicide genes (p53 and p21 genes) by mutating them. These genes exist in all cells, and are activated when a cell is badly damaged and at a high risk of becoming a cancer cell.

When the cell is killed, it cannot convert into cancer. But when the suicide genes are turned off, the cell becomes immortal, and cancerous.

A number of plant extracts can repair the cells’ suicide genes, and thus kill tumor cells.

Plant extracts can also reverse multidrug resistance, making the cancer cell vulnerable once again to chemotherapy drugs and other treatments.

Plant extracts can also make cancer cells selectively hypersensitive to being killed by radiation treatments, and at the same time protect surrounding normal cells from radiation damage.

Curcumin is particularly effective at this type of dual effect.