A cancer diet, and cancer nutrition, that would help the average person on Chemotherapy. By Chris Woollams

Originally published in December 2003 icon

In 2003, one of our readers was in the Royal Marsden. She came across a booklet of their recommendations for what to eat when undergoing chemotherapy, and she was horror-struck.

"I thought it was some sort of April Fool", she wrote in her letter to us.

Small pictures of a cheeseburger, a milkshake and a sticky bun or cake on every page, with recommendations to eat dairy; sugar and fats commonplace. Is this really a ´cancer diet´ for cancer patients? Is this cancer nutrition at its best? A Diet to beat cancer?

We wrote to the Royal Marsden, a hospital for which we have the greatest respect, and received a reply which basically said that the recommendations were made by Government approved dieticians (as opposed to non-approved nutritionists like Lawrence Plaskett, vice chair of the Nutritional Council). And dieticians have no vested interest in selling books, for example, via their recommendations, and the sole issue during chemotherapy was to keep up body weight, hence the diet laden with calories.

We replied with a couple of factual points, but said we had no intention of falling out with the Royal Marsden and that we would conduct a survey of various bodies to try and glean some in formation to help our readers. Already another cancer patient had written in complaining about the same booklet, but from a different NHS hospital.

A survey of expert views on cancer nutrition.

In October 2003 we published the results of that survey and you can read it by looking to your left at ´A diet for Chemotherapy, various expert views´. The spectrum of views was astonishing. Christie Hospital in Manchester had roughly the same ideas as the Royal Marsden from their dietician, while the other contributors - nurses, doctors, nutrftionists - had quite conflicting views. The biggest problem is that the Hospital Dieticians are so pushed for time that they only see a limited number of patients - the worst case patients. And these are suffering cachexia - severe weight loss and weakening  - BECAUSE OF THE CANCER DRUGS. and it wouldn´t do for the cause of death to actually be the cancer drug, would it?

The review contributors - nurses, doctors, nutrftionists - 
                                                had quite conflicting views

By now we, and that must include the people who matter, the cancer patients - were totally confused and bemused. So here we try to give you our CANCERactive views as simply as possible, remembering that we have a team including a biochemist, nutritionist, nurses and doctors available to us.

Trying to build a cancer diet that will help your oncologist kill your cancer cells

1 Cancer cells are different

The first point to remember is that chemotherapy drugs over the last fifty years are, by and large, like unguided missiles. They tend to kill off good cells as well as bad cells - indeed most rapidly dividing tissues. This is why your hair can fall out and you can feel sick as hair follicles are constantly producing new cells, as is your intestinal lining. Newer, smarter drugs are coming which will only target some particular uniqueness of a cancer cell, leaving healthy cells untouched. However there is little sign of the cancer drug without side effects yet!

Much of the uniqueness of cancer cells stems from their power stations, or mitochondria, which have unique enzymes and energy producing systems not found in normal cells. For example, a cancer cell´s power station cannot use oxygen - in fact oxygen will kill it, a fact we have known since Otto Warburg won his Nobel Prize. Cancer cells produce lactic acid as a by-product or waste product from this process and this can only be detoxified and neutralised by the liver. Finally, unlike normal cells which feed off carbohydrate substances, cancer power stations prefer common or garden glucose. The energy production system is very inefficient, yet the cancer wants to grow quickly. This commands glucose in great volumes.

Chemotherapy drugs over the last fifty years are like unguided missiles

That it has taken the pharmaceutical companies so long to produce "smart bombs" is a mystery, but they are trying.  Some newer drugs (Biologics and mono-clonal antibodies) look to tackle unique proteins made by these cancer power stations. A lot of work, but, in truth, few results of real note yet.

However, we do know that there are other unique factors to a cancer cell. For example it has more receptor sites than a normal cell for vitamin D. And vitamin D seems to kill it. We have an extensive review on vitamin D on this site. Recent Clinical Trials on a concentrate of Vitamin D are being heralded as amazing. You could always join the sun worshipers and also eat more oily fish.

2 Typically British - a cancer diet for the minority, lead the cancer nutrition of the majority!

The problem is simple. The vast majority of cancer drugs in use today are still indiscriminate and kill all rapidly dividing cells - hair, nails, intestinal linings - and some people face serious weight loss, which can kill them.

Jane Sen of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre set the tone in the previous piece when she talked of dieticians not having time to see all the chemotherapy patients in a hospital. Our research backs this up. Dieticians are called in for the worst cases of indiscriminate "bombing". For people whose weight is falling badly, (cachexia), for whom chemotherapy drugs are more likely to be the cause of death, not the cancer. They have an uphill battle trying simply to get calories, any calories, and nourishment, any nourishment, into the patient.

This diet booklet from the Royal Marsden is only justified in extreme
cases

Thus we understand the predicament of the dietician in a hospital. But then maybe it would be wiser not to publish a booklet in the first place. Because this diet booklet from the Royal Marsden is only justified in extreme cases, the 10 per cent of all patients they usually have to deal with. And it is unhelpful, and represents a poor understanding of the science of cancer, for the people at the other end of the spectrum, the majority of cases.

 Click here to read about The Rainbow Diet

3 Have high blood glucose at your peril

Let´s get a few facts straight. There are lots of different types of sugar. Fructose, sucrose, plant sugars, poly-saccharides that aid your immune defences, and intra- and inter-cellular messaging. But common or garden glucose is tantamount to a chemical toxin. It causes diabetes when in excess in our diets, and high blood glucose in people results in higher levels of cancer and less survival if you already have cancer. There are three or four studies in the last couple of years in Cancer Watch. If you have cancer, you need low blood glucose - it will increase your survival times.

Cancer cells are already making enough anyway - without you adding to it. The by-product of a the power stations burning glucose in the absence of oxygen, is lactic acid. This can only be de-toxified in the liver. And the end product of the detoxification is glucose, which passes back round the body to feed the cancer!!! Alien has taken over the mother ship. (Readers might like to use our search engine and look up Hydrazine Sulphate - a compound that has the potential to break this glucose producing cycle)

WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO GIVE YOUR CANCER MORE GLUCOSE?

4 Your Liver is clogged up with fat

Your liver is your centre of detoxification. It plays a major role in your energy supplies to the cells, and in your immune system.

The liver of a cancer patient is ´full´. Clogged up with dead cancer cells, maybe dead yeasts and bacteria, cholesterol, dealing with cancer drugs, and lactic acid, it is grossly overworked. Often the cholesterol sticks around the outside of dead cells and forms gallstones (rather as oysters form pearls). If your liver is blocked you stagnate your whole immune system.

Eating more fats, especially those in cheeseburgers, and you will clog up your liver even more which messes up your glucose levels and weakens your whole immune system and detoxification system. Ror the great majority of cancer patients consuming any fat, but especially saturated and polyunsaturated fats, is like throwing petrol onto a bonfire.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GIVE YOUR LIVER MORE FAT?

5 Cellular division.

Cancer cells grow rapidly. And that requires fuel and hormones. Already Doctors in several cancer centers have noticed that breast cancer cells often go to the bones and bone marrow, To fight them off the defences produce growt hormones in the bone and marrow. The trouble is that these hormones end up helping the cancer grow. The NCI in the USA has shown clearly that dairy, through insulin-like growth factor (IGF), is implicated in cellular proliferation, metabolic change and even cancer itself and The Gerson Therapy recommends consuming no fat at all, as does The Plaskett Therapy. Similar recommendations against fat and dairy come from Penny Brohn (formerly the Bristol Cancer Care Centre).

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO INCREASE YOUR CANCERS´ GROWTH HORMONE LEVELS?

For this reason cheeseburgers and milkshakes are positively no-go foods. Animal fat should be reduced, meats substituted by a little fish and protein from pulses. But this brings us to the positive things you can do to help yourself with cancer treatments such as chemotherapy.

Cheeseburgers and milkshakes are positively no-go foods

The World Health Organisation is quite clear that 70 per cent of all cancers can be attributed to poor diet. Dr Max Gerson concluded that over fifty years ago. My book, The Rainbow Diet, looks at foods that protect against cancer, many of which we have simply stopped consuming in the modern world.

So let us try to build up a plan, based on science, to give patients a strong route forward.

1. Clean Your Liver

Before and after chemotherapy, clean out the fats, the gallstones, the dead cells, the lactic acid build up. For if the liver is inefficient the whole immune system is affected. Take milk thistle, boldo tea, dandelion or a proprietary detox. Add turmeric to some meals, drink two litres of clean filtered water a day (not from tap or plastic bottles). Think about a serious liver flush and coffee enemas to remove gallstones and clean out some of the dead cells and fats. Click here for info on  the liver flush.

2. Prepare Yourself

a) Boost your immune system: ´Cancer herbs´ like Astragalus, Cat´s Claw, and echinacea are extremely effective. Add curcumin, total vitamin E and Chlorella. You can read about all of these on our web site, but most impressive is astragalus. All have all been shown to be excellent immune boosters but astragalus has been shown by the University of Texas Cancer Center in Houston to be an excellent anti-cancer agent lighting up the cancer cells to be ´spotted´ by the immune system..

Cut sodium from your diet

b) Cut sodium from your diet. Increase potassium and magnesium. Sodium displaces potassium in the power stations of your cells, making them more toxic and more acidic. Cancer thrives in acid bodies. Cut sodium foods like salt, soy sauce, gravy granules, hams, cooked meats, salami, turkey roast slices, sliced bread, breakfast cereals, sausages, bacon, processed food, prepared meals and Chinese meals. Consume high potassium and magnesium foods like fresh nuts in moderation, jacket potatoes, whole grains, green leaf vegetables, carrots, fresh apples, bananas, whole brown rice, broad beans, peas and pulses. A little rice milk or soya milk is acceptable.

Take a good, ideally liquid vitamin and mineral supplement, plus the anti-oxidants beta-carotene (use chlorella, which is natural, rather than the synthetic form, which anyway is not advisable if you have lung cancer), natural vitamin C with bioflavenoids and natural total vitamin E, zinc, selenium and co-enzyme Q10 (if you are over 30). A good B complex vitamin containing choline and inositol (also in soy lecithin), biotin and folic acid would be very protective prior to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Take long chain omega 3. For example, a good source would be Seven Seas Pure Cod Liver Oil. We have known since 1982, and a Nobel Prize by Sir John Vane, about the positive benefits of omega 3 in the cancer process. The Pure Cod Liver Oil will be reinforced with vitamin D, another essential anti-cancer agent whose importance is only now being fully appreciated.

Ask if your cancer is hormonally-driven

Ask if your cancer is hormonally-driven - it is not just breast cancer that can be driven by oestrogen. There is clear research evidence that ovarian, colon, melanoma, brain tumours and prostate cancer are all driven by oestrogen. In which case women should avoid the pill and HRT, men and women should avoid recycled water, fatty foods and eating big meals - eat five or six smaller meals a day not two big ones. Big meals, starchy or carbohydrate rich meals stimulate insulin production and this has a knock-on effect to oestrogen. Oestrogen mimics (xeno-oestrogens) should be minimised too. These invade our bodies in perfumed products, nail polishes, cosmetics and toiletries; and via volatile organic carbon gases from glues, dyes, dry cleaning, bleaches and disinfectants. Ring 01280 815166 to find out more about cleaning these toxins out of your life.

3. Eat to Beat Cancer

Incorporate protective foods into your diet like -

Fresh garlic, leeks, onions, radishes - garlic is known to contain a number of anti-cancer agents and is believed to help stop cancer spreading.

Pulses - for thousands of years we have eaten broad beans, peas and pulses providing phytoestrogens to protect us especially against the spread of hormonallydriven cancers.

Carrots and Apples - sources of anti-oxidants, the focus as juices of Gerson and Plaskett. Apples (and onions) are now known to contain quercitin a strong anti-cancer agent. Go organic too!

Glycoproteins - Four Nobel Prizes for medicine in the last six years have been won for discoveries on Glycoproteins. Foods include aloe vera, nony juice, echinacea, turmeric, pectins (e.g. apples and pears), arabinogalactins (e.g. in oats, psyllium, coconut, tomatoes, carrots, brown rice). Even red wine and mother´s milk contain these important protective factors that encourage better messaging between cells. In the US they are now called "Super carbs" or monosaccharides but are neither. Probably the best studied are Japanese medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Maitake, Cordyceps which are beta-glucan polysaccharides. (see below).

Bitter foods - like watercress, gooseberries, cranberries, blackberries, wild strawberries. Or almonds, cashew nuts, millet, buckwheat and apricot kernels all of which contain B17 which Dr Contreras referred to as "nature´s chemotherapy".

4. Certain Supplements Improve Treatment Success

Selenium (Brazil nuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, fish), and/or soya/fruit isoflavones and/or astragalus improve the action of radiotherapy.

MGN-3 (Biobran) reduced side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in Japanese Clinical Trials. It is a rice bran and Japanese medicinal mushroom formula. The same trials show improved survival rates. Another product to consider is Imm-Kine. The Indian herb Carctol also appears to reduce side effects.

Finally if losing weight is a problem, try to eat more meals, even a small meal every three hours based around complete organic brown rice or whole grains to stabilise your insulin levels whilst providing calories. The majority of people, of course, start overweight anyway. In the UK 65 per cent of adults are overweight and 22 per cent are obese. Indeed being overweight increases your risk of cancer by 40 to 60 per cent depending upon the research study. With smoking the "risk" is 25 per cent.

Although outside the remit of this piece, if you have the energy, try some exercise, even the least strenuous forms of yoga. It will move your lymph, taking toxins from your cells; it will add oxygen into your blood by getting you to breathe better and it will reduce levels of toxins in the body and rebalance hormones. We do, however, understand that for some people on chemotherapy this is just impossible. It is simply that research shows exercise clearly helps improve survival rates. And, at Icon, that´s what matters most to us.