miso and radiation poisoning article

[Carol Orr]

Miso Helps Protect the Body Against Atomic Radiation and Heavy Metal
Poisoning
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It may have been our fear of fallout from the impending nuclear holocaust or
from nuclear power plant meltdowns that first attracted Westerners to miso.
During the 60's, students of macrobiotics and Zen began hearing about Dr.
Shinichiro Akizuki, director of Saint Francis Hospital in Nagasaki during the
second World War. Although Akizuki spent years treating atomic bomb victims
just a few miles from ground zero, neither he nor his staff suffered from the
usual effects of radiation. Akizuki hypothesized that he and his associates
were protected from the deadly radiation because they drank miso soup every
day.

In 1972, Akizuki's theory was confirmed when researchers discovered that miso
contains dipilocolonic acid, an alkaloid that chelates heavy metals, such as
radioactive strontium, and discharges them from the body. However, the most
convincing evidence demonstrating the protection miso offers to those exposed
to radiation was published in Japan in 1989. Professor Akihiro Ito, at
Hiroshima University's Atomic Radioactivity Medical Lab, read reports of
European countries importing truckloads of miso from Japan after the accident
at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Ito reasoned that if people were
protected from radiation by miso, then rats that were fed miso and radiated
should develop less cancer than radiated rats that were not fed miso.
Professor Ito was not surprised to find that the liver cancer rate for rats
that were not fed miso was 100 to 200 percent higher than that of rats that
were fed miso. Ito also reported that rats that were fed miso had much less
inflammation of organs caused by radioactivity.