Your doctor, oncologist or nurse are completely wrong when they say that there is no point in changing your diet to help you survive longer or even beat cancer; the main reason for their error is that they have no understanding of the microbiome.
To this day, after writing about cancer for 22 years, UK Hospitals still have not changed - they continue to offer patients sugary, milky tea and chocolate biscuits or cake when they are having their chemotherapy. On every floor there are fizzy soft drink machines. They are living in a time warp that ignores the plethora of research. If you tell the oncologist or the nurse that you've changed your diet, they will tell you that it's a waste of time. They are simply showing their ignorance.
Why Diet is so important. Eat to beat cancer:
1. Following a good diet and exercise plan can increase your survival and even prevent a cancer returning.
In 2012 the American Cancer Society released their extensive report on complementary cancer therapy research since 2006. They were absolutely clear, a good diet and exercise were the top two factors that could increase your cancer survival time, with weight control coming third.
They then set out to test these findings. In a 7-year study on stage 3 Colorectal cancer patients, all of whom had had surgery and chemotherapy. Those who stuck most closely to th diet and exercise guidelines had a 31% longer survival and 42% less death in the seven years. Dear oncologist, do you know of a drug that can give figures this good?
The National Cancer Institute, the Government cancer body in America, in 2012 summarised all their previous research on preventing cancer recurrence. Dr. Young S. Kim (head of cancer and nutrition at the NCI) showed that a poor diet would encourage the re-growth of a cancer tumour after chemotherapy had decreased tumour size, but that eating a good diet, including certain natural compounds like curcumin, piperine, vitamin E and A, genistein, B vitamins like choline, theanine, sulphoraphanes, EGCG (from green tea) and resveratrol, could stop the cancer tumour re-growth.
Indeed, she went on to say in the research report that if you could not eat the foods containing these compounds, you could obtain these beneficial bioactive compounds from quality supplements.
Maybe you should: 88% of people on diagnosis with cancer are deficient in Iodine, causing low cellular oxygen, poor cellular metabolism, fatigue, even contributing to anaemia. 40% of women are deficient in magnesium. Is it a clever idea to ignore these facts? Magnesium levels are dependent upon diet but further eroded by chemo, yet they are essential to a healthy liver. It is easier to supplement daily during chemo.
Leeds University Medical School showed that people who had had CRC and wanted to reduce the risk of a recurrence could take a concentrated fish oil of 3000 mg to improve their personal chances of survival. The fish oil reduced inflammatory polyps and patients survived longer.
Fish oils in 3 studies have been shown to reduce the risk of cachexia. Cancer patients can die from cachexia, so doesn't this mean that people who take fish oils might increase their survival times?
A good number of US Hospitals now use a version of the colourful Rainbow diet for patients.
2. Sugar consumption causes the immune system to go into a 'temporary coma'. High blood fats disrupt it for longer!
Sugar consumption puts the immune system into a 'temporary coma'. This was not our phrase but came from a review on the effects of sugar on the body by the journal Scientific American. So much for the chocolate cake and tea and biscuits. Suppose you were having immunotherapy IV. Is it a good idea to put your immune system into a temporary coma while having the IV.?
We know that consuming a glass of orange juice sourced from a supermarket carton will put your immune system down for 90 minutes, as will a home made fruit smoothie - however delicious.
If you have high blood fats, you will damage your cytokines and Natural Killer cells for much longer.
But what about people who are overweight. Adipose tissue - your fat store - has now been shown to act like an endocrine gland. It provides hormones that disrupt the immune system (1).
Don't you need a good immune system to fight cancer and survive longer - isn't this the whole point of the new immunotherapy drugs? Won't a good immune system increase your chances of survival?
High blood sugar and high blood fats damage the immune system. Full stop.
3. Cancer tumours need sugar; fat helps cancer spread
And then we come to the cancer itself. Cancer tumours, by and large, need sugar to grow. Be clear, all cells can use sugar, but cancer cells NEED sugar.
In fact, we have 20 research studies on how cancer uses sugar to form, and then grow. In one research study, Dr. Craig Thompson, President and Chief Executive of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center showed that the gene, AKT, promotes cancer by signaling what a cancer cell should ‘eat’ in about 80 per cent of cancers. “When an AKT protein is placed inside a cell, it does what any single-cell organism would do - IT JUST STUFFS ITSELF WITH GLUCOSE", he said. Is it right to think that the President and CEO of the prestigious cancer centre Sloane Kettering is wrong?
When cancer tries to spread it mainly goes into the lymph and those cells switch to burning fat. Cancer needs fat to travel and puts on a back pack of fat; fat makes cancer cells more aggressive. Cancer also needs lots of fat for all those new cell membranes. And it prefers saturated fat (coconut oil, dairy, seed oils) to unsaturated fat (olive oil, walnut oil). The type of fat you consume is critical to the spread of cancer. We also have many research studies on this.
High blood fats also cause inflammation, and inflammation can cause immune and genetic changes. A University of California Riverside study (2) demonstrated that high bad-fat diets affected genes not only linked to obesity, but to colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, the immune system and brain function. The researchers fed mice a high fat diet over a 24 week period using coconut oil and soybean oil. There were significant genetic changes but also an increase in levels of the pathogen E coli, and a decrease in pathogen suppressor bacteria Bacteroides. If you are thinking of a Keto diet, think again.
For most cancers, patients on a low fat diet survive longer and people with high blood fats, develop more metastases and survive least. For example, women with breast cancer who switch to a low fat diet are 22% more likely to survive 10 years than those don't change their diet. Yes, changing their diet increases their survival.
High blood sugar and high blood fats can feed and spread cancer. Full stop.
Oncologists should be encouraging patients to get this right, not discouraging them
4. To beat cancer you need a strong microbiome.
The Human Microbiome Project was a huge American study. 40 Medical Schools, 200 scientists, 3 years, $178 million. And the overall conclusion was that your gut gets ill first, then you get ill. And, you can't get better until it gets better. This finding came roughly 2500 years after that man name Hippocrates said the same. And doctors swear the Hippocratic oath?
The microbiome has a major impact on inflammation, the immune system, cancer recurrence and survival times.
The aim at CANCERactive for increasing survival in cancer patients and ideally beating cancer completely has always been to rebuild the patient's health starting with their gut microbiome.
They built a body conducive to cancer; we aim to give them the healthy body they should have had in the first place.
What we know is that before any chronic illness the volume and diversity of your microbiome falls; and this causes a fall in your adaptive immune system - your antibodies. This is the second common reason your immune system can be weak.
The third big 'low immune system' reason for developing cancer is a lack of vitamin D. Women with low vitamin D levels (below 50 nmol/L have a six times greater risk of breast cancer. And research is also clear that if you have cancer and maintain low vitamin D levels, your chances of survival are less than a person who fixes theirs (target blood level: 125 nmol/L.) Public Health, England has told everybody to go in the sun and, if they can't, to supplement.
In the USA, the Government is clear. Vitamin D levels below 80 nmol/L are deficient. Harvard say 88 nmol/L. But Professor Michael Holick of Boston Medical school and the Endocrine Society say that to be truly healthy, you need to be between 100 and 150 nmol/L.
Few people understand what Vitamin D actually does:
* Vitamin D is a hormone. There are receptor sites throughout the immune system, for example on T-cells and B-cells. Without adequate vitamin D in the bloodstream, the patient does not have an active immune system. It just doesn't work properly. But the good news is that every patient can fix their vitamin D levels and generate an active immune system. Diet is almost useless on this score - a cod liver oil pill can help, as can mushrooms grown outdoors. You need to supplement. Holick told the world to supplement or go in the sun. To supplement, take 5,000 IUs or 125 ug a day. Even just a daily 400 IU pill of vitamin D increase women's breast cancer survival by 7% according to new research (3).
* Vitamin D also has a significant effect on the microbiome (4), creating a greater immunity to cancer by altering the membership of the microbiome for the better.
The microbiome has a crucial role in every cancer. There's a gut-lung axis, a gut-bone marrow axis, a gut-brain axis, a gut-skin axis etc. etc, For example, in almost all cases of colorectal cancer, the bacteria making a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate have been lost. Butyrate actually kills off colorectal cancer cells as they form in the gut wall. Diet - particularly a high soluble fibre diet (pulses, nuts and seeds, oats and vegetables), can restore good numbers of the bacteria that make butyrate.
Hardly anybody I know has heard of Urolithin A. It is a very important compound made only in the gut. Recent research shows it is anti-inflammatory, boosts the immune system alongside CAR-T immunotherapy, can reduce colorectal cancer tumour growth, restore p53 the tumour suppressor in prostate cancer, it ensures healthy mitochondria, and is anti-ageing. You can only make it in your microbiome from ellagitannin - found in pomegranate, berries, walnuts.. In research (9) with mice and CRC, Urolithin A, reduced the number of tumours, the size of tumours, improved the immune system and increased survival. About 60% of the population has no Urolithin in them - they don't eat the foods.
All people who develop cancer have lost volume and diversity in their microbiome and this puts any pathogens in the ascendancy - parasites (like fluke or Helicobacter pylori), bad bacteria (like E. coli) and viruses (like the Herpes family). For example, we know that many women with breast cancer have often lost all their Lactobacillus members and have a heightened level of E coli infection. We know in lymphoma that no one with the disease has a bacterium called Lactobacillus johnsonii. We know that people with colorectal cancer all have a bacterium called Fusobacterium, a bacterium from the mouth; we know that people with pancreatic cancer all have a yeast with a carcinogen on its surface called Malassezia. Would it not be a good idea to try to fix this? Diet can help achieve this.
We also know that yeasts come into our bodies with our food. At night time our good gut bacteria consume them all, before they do any harm. But if a patient is having chemo, the numbers of good bacteria take a big hit. Yeasts can then colonise the gut and get into the blood stream. They colonise areas of the body and are anaerobes lowering the oxygen. Their presence makes you feel tired; and their low oxygen colonies attract cancer spread. Wouldn't it be a good idea to consume garlic, oregano and fennel to kill them off and restrict the cancer's ability to spread?
Do doctors and nurses in hospitals have any idea how much damage antibiotics do? One group given a Fecal Microbiome Transplant returned to 75% of 'normal' within days. When the other group was measured, only 27% had returned to 'normal'. To get a decent microbiome, the patient needs to take positive action to replenish the microbiome (5).
And, of course we have research on this. Where a women truly rebuilds her microbiome (e.g. using complete probiotic foods like raw cheese, alongside butyrate (consume soluble fibre foods - pulses, oats, vegetables, nuts and seeds) after their conventional treatment finishes, they live considerably longer that women who don't. Indeed, if they don't rebuild their microbiome, they have more changes in their breasts and more likelihood of recurrence and lowered survival (6).
Yes, if you eat those foods you will increase your survival and be less likely to have recurrence.
5. Diet can nourish the microbiome, and the microbiome nourishes you
How many oncologists and nurses tell women of the necessity to rebuild their very low levels good (commensal) bacteria after conventional treatment? What if I said that changing her diet could alter her microbiome and increase her survival times. Or that giving her Lycopene from tomatoes can kill her dangerous E coli?
What if I said a probiotic pill containing members of both the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families has been shown to make chemotherapy and immunotherapy more effective in about 8 research studies?
What if I said that there is good research that the Rainbow Diet on its own can increase the level of the family Lactobacillus in the body?
What if I said that increasing Lactobacillus levels lowers BMI and adipose tissue fat levels, waist circumference and that the presence of both Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families lower oestrogen levels in Er+ve women with breast cancer?
What if I said that women consuming grapefruit, its juice, pomelo and/or large Seville oranges screw up the performance of Paclitaxel? Or that peanuts actually contain a compound that cancer needs to make in order to spread?
What if I said that we have something like 14 studies that all show Turkey Tail organic mushroom powder increases drug effectiveness, keeps white cell levels up during chemo and improves survival times?
What if I said that we have two research studies from Holland . The first - the Dutch Microbiome Project - shows that only 13% of your gut taxa are inherited. The rest come from your lifestyle, including your diet and early life exposure (7). The Researchers found more than 2800 illnesses which had signatures in the microbiome membership, many of which were common between different diseases. It's clear that when conventional medicine destroys the microbiome they must be replaced and diet is the main way of rebuilding the membership.
The second study from Holland (8) showed that your health is totally dependent upon the foods your gut microbiome members receive!
If you feed a person certain poor food choices - high saturated fats, high sugar, refined, processed or packaged foods, these will increase the numbers of bacteria making highly inflammatory compounds, increasing inflammation and reducing survival times.
Whereas, if you feed patients a colourful Mediterranean diet including foods like extra virgin olive oil, oily fish and walnuts, plus soluble fibre, nuts and seeds, vegetables and berries, you produce more gut bacteria that make anti-inflammatory molecules, resulting in much better health results across all chronic illnesses?
Do you still think that changing your diet has no effect on survival times?
Go to: The Best Foods for Gut Health
"At last the definitive book on a diet to fight cancer". Mrs BS Devon.
GO HERE: TO READ ABOUT THE RAINBOW DIET
Important diet articles on the CANCERactive website
So to help all readers of our web site to get started in this area, we have detailed many articles on this website about diet and cancer. Here is a list of those articles:
1. Calorie Restriction and Fasting have been shown to improve the outcome of chemotherapy and even to stop cancer progression.
2 The Ketogenic Diet is a variant of this where you do get to eat food - but fat and oils more than carbohydrate and protein. It is important to understand that glucose (and high fructose corn syrup) are the prime fuel of a cancer cell and you should avoid feeding your cancer!
3. Then we have Diet Therapies (Click Here) For example The Gerson Therapy, The Plaskett Therapy, The Gonzalez Therapy, The Hoxsey Treatment, the Pfeifer Protocol. These might be used as alternative therapies, but are more commonly used as complementary therapies.
4. There is a popular article entitled 12 Foods that fight cancer (Click Here)
5. And an article on 20 Herbs that Fight Cancer (Click Here)
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References
- Fat: A matter of disturbance for the immune system; Alessandro Federico, et al; World J Gastroenterol. 2010 Oct 14; 16(38): 4762–4772.
- Impact of various high fat diets on gene expression and the microbiome across the mouse intestines; Jose Martinez-Lomeli et al; Scientific reports; 27 Dec 2023
- Women's Health Initiative - https://sp.whi.org/about/SitePages/Calcium%20and%20Vitamin%20D.aspx
- Vitamin D regulates microbiome-dependent cancer immunity; Science 25 April 2023
- Fecal transplants restore gut microbes after antibiotics - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/fecal-transplants-restore-gut-microbes-after-antibiotics
- An unhealthy gut helps spread breast cancer; - https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-health-discovery-unhealthy-gut-helps-spread-breast-cancer
- The Dutch Microbiome Project defines factors that shape the healthy gut microbiome; R Gacesa et al; https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.27.401125v1
- Gut microbiome study links Rainbow Diet foods to good health - https://the-rainbow-diet.com/articles/the-colourful-mediterranean-diet/study-links-rainbow-diet-foods-to-good-health/
- Metabolite from Pomegranates may help fight colorectal cancer - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/metabolite-from-pomegranates-may-help-fight-colorectal-cancer#What-the-study-did
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