What do bananas have to do with skin cancer??

It sounds far-fetched, but in recent years, scientists have been able to make major headway in the fight against skin cancer by studying bananas! If you suffer from hyperpigmentation (aka dark spots) on your face, you have something in common with a ripening banana: increased production of an enzyme called Tyrosinase. This is why you may have heard me refer to my LITE BRITE | Skin Illuminating Serum as a “tyrosinase-inhibitor” and why it helps to slow the chemical process that creates dark spots on the surface of the skin resulting from triggers like sun damage, heat, and hormones (and sometimes physical trauma.) 


Scientists at the Laboratory of Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry at Sion, under the direction of Hubert Girault were able to draw parallels between the appearance of spots on skin samples from cancer patients and the distribution of spots of the skin of bananas. This led to the development of a device which can scan uneven skin and determine the amount of Tyrosinase present, thereby giving an accurate picture of what stage cancer a patient is in. The hope is that patients could potentially receive treatment sooner that is far less invasive and far more targeted. This could potentially eliminate the need for chemotherapy and biopsies. All thanks to our potassium-filled friend, the banana!


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