There are a lot of supplements out there that people take and cancer patients seem to be some of the biggest consumers of them.
I'm very pro-supplement. I see memes a lot by people mocking the use of supplements, and I get it. There have been studies that show some scary stuff. ...Like the one that showed that cancer patients surveyed who took vitamin E had shorter overall survival rates than those who didn't. There were some issues with that study but we'll save that for another time in an effort to keep me somewhat on track here.
Good Luck. I'm like my puppy when she sees a rock. (Yes. A rock. Most puppies chase squirrels. Mine is broken.)
Anyhoo- Supplements are supported by many oncologists but not all. I've read accounts of multiple patients whose doctors say supplements can't help. At the risk or sounding too snarky, that's just incredibly silly to me. If you want to know why I believe this, please read this post.
There are many supplements that I personally think are invaluable in cancer treatment. ...And there are good reasons for that thought. I'll go through some of the reasons why I think quercetin is good for cancer prevention, health during treatment, and overall health in a moment, but first let's look at what quercetin actually is.
Polyphenols, Flavonoids, and Anti-oxidants
I used to get these terms so mixed up. What in the heck are they? Some books say it's a flavonoid. Some say it's an anti-oxidant. And what is a flavonol??
Ok, so a polyphenol is just a compound. The term is a chemistry word and essentially explains how it is derived. You can put that term straight outta ya mind, because it isn't particularly helpful to us chemophobes. (Eww. I guess I'm a real chemophobe now because I don't like chemo OR chemistry.)
A flavonoid is a type of polyphenol that is a pigment, ie- coloring. Why the heck can't we just call them "color compounds" and make it easier on everyone? I don't know. (Actually, I do know. Words like polyphenol make us sound cool.) These pigments help plants in several ways, the most important being that they color flowers.
Now, antioxidants, you've heard of and hopefully you know what it means. Or maybe you just know they're good, but not why. I've written about this before, but antioxidants work like this: Free radicals are scooting around in your body like the Yoko Ono of the microscopic biome. They're ready to get into your DNA and break up the band. They're unstable and ready to bond with whatever they can latch onto. Antioxidants are like the band manager who buffers the DNA, bonds with Ono, and keeps the band, ...er DNA, from being damaged.
Lovely, right? I liked that analogy so much, I had to use it again.
...So, what is quercetin?
It's all of the above. It's a flavonol which is a flavonoid which is a polyphenol which just happens to also be an anti-oxidant.
Mind boggling. But now you know.
Moving on-
How does quercetin work in our bods?
Oh, man. I don't even think I can explain all the ways quercetin works, even if I wanted to. (Chemophobe, remember?) Honestly, there should be an entire book written on quercetin. ...Ok, if not a book, at least one of those booklets that they try to sell for 75% of the cover price of a book despite only being 30% the size of a book.
My point is, there's a lot of information out there and quercetin does loads of stuff.
For cancer patients, it is an apoptosis promoter, it regulates your stem cells (so cancer doesn't recruit them from the bone marrow to spawn baby cancer cells), it controls inflammation via the COX-2 pathway, it's an anti-metastatic, it helps to control cell growth through the NFkB pathway, binds to estrogen receptors on certain organs, thus blocking the receptors for estrogen driven cancers, boosts the immune system's cancer fighting natural killer cells, and words on the Bcl-2, MEK, HER-2, EGFR, Ras, PGE-2, Aromatase, and TGFb pathways.
Phew! That was all one sentence and I still didn't get all of the goodies in.
Whatever, you guys get my point. Quercetin is good stuff.
It is irritating to me that, according to WebMD and the American Cancer Society Complete Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Therapies, quercetin still gets the note that there is no good evidence to back up the claims that it should be used for things such as allergies, arthritis, bladder infections, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and viral infections. 🙄 I mean, okay. I get what you're doing here, FDA.
If you have one of these conditions, though, quercetin *might* help.
Where do you find quercetin?
First and foremost, let me remind you that there ain't enough supplements in the world to make up for all those cheeseburgers, girl, so put down the patty.
The best supplements come straight from the source. It is a pretty common flavonoid if you're actually eating plants, so that's good news.
The bad news is, I think I read that the regular American diet gets about 25mgs of quercetin through their diet. I don't know where I read that and I actually quoted that for sure, I'd have to find my source, so if you don't believe me, look it up. I wouldn't believe me, either, so now you have homework.
According to a review by Oregon State University, though, people ate up to a gram a day and had no adverse reactions.
You can find it in things like red onions, apple peels, cranberries, broccoli, cherries, tomatoes- all the good stuff. I take 500 mgs twice daily in addition to my whole foods, plant based diet and I even get monthly IVs of the stuff.
Interactions
According to Healthline, there are all sorts of medications that interact with the supplement. I find this interesting because at least three of the medications I've been on at times and I've never had a reaction nor have my doctors instructed me to stop taking either. I can't imagine that any doctor would tell you to not eat a bag of apples while you're taking a medication, so I find it curious that there is such a long list of medications. On the list are pretty common drugs, like cimetidine and fexofenadine, along with less common ones. As always, be sure to discuss any supplements with your doctor prior to starting them.
Next time you find you have a drippy nose and gouty toes, perhaps you can grab some quercetin to ease your woes.
(Yep. I DID end this post with a cringey poem.)
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels
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