Broccoli contains high levels of antioxidants .Steamed broccoli helps boosting the body’s capabilities for fighting off the cell damage and thus reduces the risks of heart attacks.

A recent research finding revealed that the ‘Brassicaceae’ family of vegetables including cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts trigger a mechanism in our body that involves antioxidants. This mechanism helps in preventing the building-up of free radicals. Increased production of these free radicals is more likely to cause harms to the cells and may result in to cancers.

It has long been considered that the antioxidants have several health benefits. Some specific studies however, established facts that are contradictory to this common belief.
Researchers fed selected rats with broccoli and observed certain specific changes in proteins and heart function compared to the rats that were fed with water only.

Researchers are making attempts to explore if the activation of heart-protective proteins in response to antioxidants would yield the same levels of results and responses with broccoli in the humans. They say that it will be slightly more premature to conclude that taking broccoli specifically helps in reducing the chances of a heart attack instead of adopting a healthy eating pattern.

Subhendu Mukherjee and his two other colleague researchers at the ‘Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Connecticut School of Medicine’ in the United States conducted this research study and published in the scientific journal “The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry”.

The laboratory study conducted on rats in order to explore the chances of broccoli being beneficial to the heart. The chances are definitely high, say the researchers. Broccoli contains high amounts of selenium, an inorganic chemical that experts thought to have mopping up effects on free radicals. ‘Glucosinolates’, the organic compounds derived from sugar is also available in many other green vegetables.’ Glucosinates’ are toxic if taken as high dose. It is converted in to ‘sulphoraphanes’ by chewing. It is understood that this mechanism would be potentially effective in providing protection against cancer and heart disease.

Researchers created an experimental equivalent of heart attack and conducted various tests on hearts and heart muscle cells of the rats. It was observed that the rats fed with broccoli showed considerable improvements in the heart muscle functions. The number of dead heart muscles was found to be less in this case. Researchers also observed changes in several proteins that are found in cell nuclei along with some other chemicals that are considered to protect heart.

The experimental heart attack cause death of heart muscle cells with a change in the mitochondria within these cells. Broccoli feeding appeared to reduce the number of heart muscle cells causing cell death. This situation is an indicator of generating some kind of “anti-cell death” signal. Broccoli appeared to be helping in rescue of the heart muscle in the experimental model heart attack.

This study attempted investigations for specific pathways that were considered to protect heart muscle from cell death during a heart attack and established that the broccoli is a unique vegetable in this respect.

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