A poor diet can encourage the re-growth of cancer tumours from the cancer stem cells at their heart, while a good diet containing Biotic compounds like sulforaphanes, curcumin, piperine, EGCG and others can prevent this, according to findings by Dr. Young S. Kim, Head of Nutrition and Cancer at the National Cancer Institute.
Some foods help cancer stem cells re-grow; while others stop them
Contrary to popular belief amongst UK doctors, there is a lot of research showing that good nutrition and supplements have a role to play in fighting cancer. The one person who should know is Dr. Young S. Kim, Head of Nutrition and Cancer at the National Cancer Institute in America. Her job is to commission exactly those studies.
Kim is a Biochemist and Epigeneticist, and one of her areas of study is cancer stem cells. Over the last decade scientists have proven that at the heart of all cancers there are ’cancer stem cells’. Sadly, there are absolutely no drugs known to man that kill them, standard drugs only serving to attack the mass of the tumour, not the 3% of cells at the heart; cells that regrow and start the tumour all over again.
Kim seems to have found a simple solution. Consume more foods with bioactive ingredients because they can stop cancer stem cells regrowing.
Kim has found in the research she has commisioned for the NCI that a number of natural compounds can prevent tumour re-growth and even ultimately kill off cancer stem cells, through a number of studies she has commissioned on Epigenetics. Indeed, she went on in her research to state that if you could not consume these particular natural compounds in your foods, then you should take them in ’quality supplements’.
Epigeneticists argue that the 80-year old Somatic theory of cancer (that there a mutation at the heart of a cancer - a mutation is a sequence change inside of the DNA strands) is out of date and actually wrong. Instead, the DNA, rolled up into a tiny ball, becomes blocked by ’histones’ that surround it following an increase in homocysteine in the blood stream. The genes in the DNA are thus covered and are 'silenced', and crucial messages are lost.
Expert scientists, called Epigeneticists, now know that there are 60 or more Natural Compounds that have an unblocking effect.
Cancer Stem Cells at the heart of cancer
You have stem cells all over your body. They originate in your bone marrow and are your cellular repair mechanism moving to any point of damage where they convert into new liver cells, kidney cells, colon cells or whatever you need.
Back in 2004, Wang and his team at British Columbia Cancer Center found that stomach cancers could be caused by these stem cells, which are rapidly dividing and becoming ’stuck’ in that state because of localised oestrogen. Result cancer. He claimed this finding was a 'Breakthrough' and that cancer text books would have to be rewritten. Maybe. But this discovery was originally made by a Mancunian embryologist almost a hundred years before, Dr. John Beard, whose work was ignored.
No drugs currently kill cancer stem cells
We now know that cancers from stomach to brain tumours, and breast to myeloma, all have ’cancer’ stem cells at their heart. While current drugs can knock tumours back 40 to 70 per cent, no drug exists today that can completely wipe out the 3 per cent of cells (the cancer stem cells) that lie at the heart of a cancer.
What has become clearer by the day is that cancer stem cells act just like normal stem cells in that they have the properties of self-renewal and differentiation, according to Young S. Kim, M.D. of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda and her team(1).
In other words, these cancer stem cells can simply grow back and reform the tumour.
Bioactive compounds stop tumour regrowth
Importantly Dr. Kim also reported that bioactive food components, which are available in foods or as dietary supplements, may have a capacity to suppress cancer stem cells or prevent them from self-renewal. As Chris Woollams told you in his best-selling book ’the Rainbow Diet’, certain natural compounds have the ability to protect and correct.
The researchers say "eating inappropriate foods and their ingredients may result in the loss of regulatory molecules and promote the aberrant or uncontrolled self-renewal of cancer stem cells. But eating other foods containing specific natural compounds can stop the self-renewal".
A bad diet can make the tumour re-grow. But a good diet containing certain Bioative compounds can stop this.
In highly technical terms Kim stated, ’The ability of these bioactive food components to influence the balance between proliferative and quiescent cells by regulating critical feedback molecules in the network including dickkopf 1 (DKK-1), secreted frizzled-related protein 2 (sFRP2), B cell-specific Moloney murine leukemia virus integration site 1 (Bmi-1) and cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6) may account for their biological response.’
What bioactive compounds and supplements can stop tumour re-growth?
The natural compounds that came top of her list for fighting cancer included:
sulforaphanes, curcumin, piperine, theanine and choline plus vitamins A and D, genistein, and EGCG from green tea.
All of these, according to the researchers, have been demonstrated to be able to modify self-renewal properties of cancer stem cells. They termed these compounds Biotics and stated that all could be found as quality supplements.
"If you are considering buying supplements, why not have a look at the quality products chosen by the team in Our Natural Selection (Click here)."
Go to: the Rainbow Diet and how it can help prevent and correct cancer
References
1. Kim et al., Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry; July 2012