This video explains the significant health benefits of sulforaphane, a compound found in cruciferous vegetables, particularly broccoli sprouts. It highlights sulforaphane's role in activating the NRF2 pathway, which enhances antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxification processes. The video also discusses studies showing sulforaphane's ability to reduce DNA damage, slow cancer growth in preclinical models, and aid in the excretion of environmental toxins. Recommendations are given for consuming sulforaphane through diet (broccoli sprouts, lightly cooked broccoli with mustard seed) or supplements.
Broccoli sprouts have about a hundred times more sulforaphane than the mature broccoli. And now I'm saying sulforaphane, but that's not entirely accurate because sulforaphane isn't actually produced in the plant until the plant is actually crushed or bitten. So, if you're a little insect and you're going and you're flying onto a broccoli plant and you bite it, then the plant will convert the precursor to sulforaphane called glucoraphanin and it'll convert it into sulforaphane with an enzyme called myrosinase. So, broccoli sprouts actually have a hundred times more glucoraphanin in them than mature broccoli. And that's because young plants want to uh survive and be like, you know, long live long enough to kind of, you know, spread the seed and stuff. So, it that's kind of the the rationale behind why sometimes younger plants will have higher levels of these plant phytochemicals.
Well, sulforaphane, why do I care about sulforaphane? Sulforaphane is actually the most potent dietary activator of a very, very important pathway that is an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory detoxification pathway called NRF2. NRF2 is a transcription factor that ultimately just means that it's able to bind to many, many, many different genes and activate them or deactivate them. Kind of like what vitamin D does, right? And so, sulforaphane will kind of make NRF2 not be in its inactive state. So, it's like usually in its inactive state and sulforaphane activates it. And what happens when NRF2 is active is that it activates what are called phase two detoxification enzymes. These are a variety of enzymes that we have in our bodies to help us handle toxic exposure that we're exposed to on a daily basis, whether that's from air pollution, smoke, wildfire smoke, cigarette smoke, um fungus, you know, all sorts of chemicals that we're potentially exposed to. That's plastic chemicals. That's where the detoxification enzymes you want them active. It also NRF2 also deactivates what are called phase one biotransformation enzymes. So, these are enzymes that are able to take something that's a procarcinogen and convert it into a carcinogen. So, you don't want those enzymes active. And that's exactly what NRF2 does. It turns it down. It shuts them down.
So, these are sort of sort of these procarcinogens or things like if you really, you know, grill your steak real and you got like the the black grill stuff on it and it's got like the heterocyclic amines and things like that. So, basically it's turning down those enzymes that can convert those things into carcinogens. In fact, there's been studies looking at, you know, these people that char their meat and they eat more cruciferous vegetables and it sort of cancels out the increased cancer risk in those individuals.
It's also one of the most potent antioxidants um activators. So, glutathione is one of our body's, you know, very important antioxidant systems, way more powerful than vitamin E or vitamin C in terms of its antioxidant potential. Glutathione uh is the major is the brain's major antioxidant. And there've been studies showing that people that take, you know, broccoli extract that is you know, has sulforaphane in it increase their plasma glutathione levels and also by fMRI it's been shown to increase glutathione levels in the brain. So, very, very important. Sulforaphane is the major activator of this pathway.
All right. Um we also know from human studies that sulforaphane can reduce DNA damage. So, individuals that eat about 85 g of watercress, that's a type of cruciferous vegetable for eight weeks, they have about a 70% lower risk uh sorry, a 17% lower DNA damage in their blood cells. They also have about 24% lower oxidative DNA DNA lesions. So, DNA damage um oxidative lesions lead to eventually double-stranded breaks. Double-stranded breaks are very hard to repair. They're the most deleterious type of DNA damage. Eventually can lead to a type of mutation and damage in a region in your gene that could become oncogenic or cancer-causing. Broccoli, 250 g a day for 10 days. This was done in smokers who have a high level of oxidative damage. It lowered their oxidative DNA lesions by about 41% and it lowered their oxidative uh sorry, increased their oxidative stress resistance by about 23%. And there was another study that was done in people um giving them brussels sprouts, 300 g a day. That's enough to give me too much gas, but anyways. Um 300 g a day for three weeks and it lowered their oxidative DNA damage by almost 30%. So, you know, that's pretty profound. By just eating these cruciferous vegetables, you're getting a lower amount of just baseline DNA damage every day, right? That's important because DNA damage accumulates with time. It's an insidious type of damage. It's not something that we can look in the mirror and see. I mean, you can see when you're sunburned, you can see that damage has occurred, inflammatory processes that you're red. But you can't see DNA damage. You just can't see it. So, you don't know it's happening, but it's happening. It's happening all the time even in healthy, normal people that, you know, you know, DNA damage happens just as a byproduct of our normal metabolism process, of our normal immune activation process. So, it's happening in all of us. And if there's any way we can dampen that down and lower that process, it's really good.
There's also some studies that have shown, getting back to the detoxification studies, so there've been a couple of studies out of China um in Beijing where air pollution I just got back from China and Beijing and you can feel the air is like heavy when you breathe it in. It's it's like you can feel it. Um air pollution is a big thing over there. And so, there were a couple of studies done where people in China were given again, they were given sulforaphane in the form of like a broccoli sprout extract. It was about 40 micromoles a day of sulforaphane for 12 weeks and it increased the excretion of benzene. So, benzene is a known carcinogen. It is in air pollution. It's in cigarette smoke. Um it it by 60% it increased that excretion and it happened This was an eight-week study. It happened within 24 hours and continued throughout the whole eight weeks. So, in other words, within 24 hours of this dose of sulforaphane they were excreting benzene. Acrolein also acrolein excretion also went up. Acrolein is something that's also found in the in, you know, um it's a it's a air pollution, but also in foods. When you cook the foods, acrolein, you're ingesting the acrolein. So, again, detoxification process is happening. Um there was another couple of studies that have been done in prostate cancer patients. So, men with low-grade prostate cancer, they were given about 60 mg a day of sulforaphane and it they did this for about six months and it slowed the doubling time of this PSA biomarker antigen by 86 86% after just six months. Slowed that doubling time. Pretty, pretty profound effect on prostate health as well. And then there's been other studies that actually topical use of sulforaphane can prevent some of the UV damage and inflammation that occurs as well.
There's a lot of preclinical studies out there. Um just looking at the effects of giving mice sulforaphane and injecting them with human tumor solid tumor samples and it of course lowers tumor slows tumor growth, it reduces metastasis. So, in the prostate cancer animal model it reduced metastasis by up to 63%. Um in the breast cancer model, so breast cancer stem cells were injected into mice. It actually decreased cancer stem cell populations by up to 80% and it reduced tumor growth by more than 50%. And then there was a colon cancer model where the the precancerous lesions were decreased by about 44%. And there's countless preclinical studies like this. I mean, I'm just showing you three here. I mean, there's just so much data on animals and lots of mechanisms at play. But ultimately, I think the bottom line here is that we should be eating either our cruciferous vegetables or supplementing with sulforaphane or eating the broccoli sprouts. So, broccoli sprouts are the best source if you're going for the the dietary way. Um if you want to get about if you want to get between 25 to 35 or sorry, 55 micromoles of sulforaphane, you're going you're going to want to get between 45 to 100 g of fresh sprouts. If you're going to go with the broccoli, just be aware that when you cook the broccoli, you actually inactivate the enzyme myrosinase that converts the precursor glucoraphanin into sulforaphane somewhat. So, you want to lightly cook it and then you want to add back that enzyme. So, what I like to do to my broccoli is I is I add some mustard seed powder to my broccoli because mustard seed, also the cruciferous family, and it has myrosinase enzyme in it. And so, you're essentially adding back that enzyme so that you can convert the glucoraphanin in the broccoli to sulforaphane. In fact, there've been studies showing that people that do this, it increases the bioavailability uh by about fourfold of glucoraphanin. So, it does work and it is a a nice little kind of hack. And then there's supplements and that's ultimately also what I do. I take a nice supplement. Um you can find stabilized formulations. Um if you want to know what I'm taking, I'm happy to tell you, but you know, there's there's definitely a lot of noise in that supplement world as well. So, you want to find a quality supplement.
