Hello and welcome to Nutrition Facts. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. Today we're

going to explore smart nutrition choices based naturally on facts. Whenever there's a

new drug or surgical procedure, you can be assured that you and your doctor will

probably hear about it because there's a corporate budget driving its

promotion. But what about advances in the field of nutrition? That's what this

podcast is all about. Today we're going to take a deep dive into a sigh berries.

A sigh berries are touted for their antioxidant power, but does that translate

into increased antioxidant capacity of our bloodstream when we eat them?

Here's the story. There's so many sigh products on the market now from

frozen pulp and smoothie packs to freeze-dried powder and supplements. How is

it eaten traditionally? Amazonian tribes cut down the tree eat its heart and

then pee on the stump to attract a certain type of beetle that lays these

monster maggots. Since a few weeks later you've got three or four pounds of

these suckers so you can make some grub kebabs. I think I'll just stick with my

smoothie pack. Despite being used for a long time as food in the Amazon only

since the beginning of this century have a sigh berries been the object of

scientific research. Four years ago I reviewed that research, starting with

in vitro studies that showed that a sigh could kill leukemia cells in a

petri dish at levels one might expect in one's bloodstream eating a cup or two

of a sigh pulp or cutting the growth of colon cancer cells in half.

Unfortunately subsequent studies published since then failed to find such

benefit for that type of colon cancer, a different type of colon cancer or an

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