Diet as cancer prevention and cancer treatment support?

Alternative treatments for cancer struggle with scientific proof and recognition. Yet research is progressing quickly, and there are some widely recognized insights about foods and carcinogenic substances in food and in our environment, which are helpful in preventing cancer and supporting cancer treatments.

Cancer does not come out of the blue. It is a chronic desease and there is a lot you can do to slow down or push back its development. Furthermore you can support conventional therapy in a way that rises chances for survival and quality of life.

One reason why it is hard to show the effectiveness of cancer diets lies in the chronic nature of cancer. Cancer can develop over 10 or up to 40 years. Junking every now and then does not do much harm. It is the every day junking and regular avoidance of healthy foods like vegetables and fruits that make you ill over time.

The challenge for cancer treatment diets is the complexity of the matter. There are many different types and subtypes of cancer reacting in different ways to environmental challenges and food ingredients. The effects of a diet depend on your specific disposition or diagnosis, interact with various factors and may even in conflict with each other.

For example if you choose to follow a low carb diet in order to “starve” aggressive cancer cells, you run the risk of depriving our body of energy (which it badly needs during chemotherapy in order to avoid excessive weight loss) and other important nutrients to support your immune system and to fight cancer cells. Such imbalanced diets may constitute a risk as much as a chance, and should be discussed with your doctor in the context of your specific diagnosis and treatment.

Such effects make it difficult to present focused alternative cancer treatments, which can pass rigorous scientific testing, and many doctors still tend to restrict the benefits of a healthy or anti-cancer diet to “it won’t do harm”, by which they often mean “it won’t help”.

What does this mean for us? It means that we get the best balance between benefit and harm if we follow a balanced diet with some general rules to avoid carcinogenic environments. Most of these may be “stuff you already know”, however, that does not make them wrong. Much on the contrary we would be much better off just following them as well as our common sense. A balanced healthy life-style will help you indefinitely more than junking in front of the TV.

According to research by Dr. Richard Béliveau nutrition and tobacco consumption constitute a risk to cancer of 30% each. Add a 5% risk through obesity, 3% through alcohol, you can see that cancer risks are approx. 68% lifestyle induced. And this is something we can change.

To keep it short and simple: avoid what is harmful and eat what is healthy, on a regular and long-term basis. Complement your diet with regular physical activity. Avoid stress, depression and toxins as much as possible. If you cannot do this alone, seek help.

There is no way to be sure to prevent cancer, but we can certainly reduce the risk very significantly.

Occasional smoking, drinking and junking don’t do immediate and visible harm, the consequences, however, may hit you decades later. Avoid smoking and keep your alcohol consumption to a minimum. Red wine is said to promote cancer prevention and cure: however, research suggests that this is due to the non-alcoholic substances in the red wine rather than the alcohol. Alcohol abuse actively promotes most cancer types. The average recommendation for Westerners is 1 glass of wine per day for men and half a glass per day for women, depending on your genetic constitution. This is less of what many of us drink as a social evening evolves.

Junk food combines sugar, sweets, refined white bread, fat meat or sausage and ready meals. Excessive consumption of junk food and sugar may lead to obesity, under-supply of essential nutrients and it may start to harm inner organs.

Air pollution, cosmetics, household cleaners, cell phone radiation and other environmental sources can potentially aggravate the risks. While scientists and scholars have no “scientific proof” of the harmfulness of some of those items, they admit that most research studies in the areas are not long-term enough in order to exclude the risks. Longitudinal studies regarding cell phones cover a maximum of 10 years, whereas it is supposed that cancer can develop over 10 – 40 years.

So, even if cancer causing effects cannot be proven yet, this does not mean they won’t be discovered over the next years!

Instead following the general advice of increasing your intake of fresh vegetable and fruit, wholegrain bread and pasta, fish and meat from naturally raised animals will provide your body with nutrients necessary to promote a healthy body and a functioning immune system. If possible choose organic food, especially for dairy foods. If your fruit and vegetables are not organic, wash and rub them well or peel them. Following this advice does not only help to prevent cancer but many other illnesses and unpleasant side effects as well, among which heart diseases and obesity.

Green tea is a good thing to drink for cancer prevention. Coffee has preventing effects for many types of cancer as well, but also potential side effects, so please check carefully whether this is for you and do not start to over-dose your coffee-intake. Try to stay off sugary or alcoholic drinks. Water (mineral water or filtered tap water) is a better alternative.

It does not mean you need to follow a strict dietary regime and get rid of all the fun! Remember the 80/20 rule? With 20% of the effort you can achieve 80% of the result. If you manage to get your nutrition 80% right, you are doing excellent in prevention, and still get your share of fun.

Research studies show that there is a positive relation between moderate yet regular physical activity and general health, including cancer prevention. Physical activity does not require you to go to the gym if you hate that. Moving around doing house errands, using the bike, going for a walk, taking the stairs and other activities preventing you from immobile sitting will do the job. Aim at a minimum of 30 – 60 minutes per day. Try to spend this time outside to catch enough vitamin D.

Of course cancer is nothing to laugh about, yet laughing and being in a good mood can help prevention as well as treatment. One of the risks of aggravating the course of cancer development results from the panic and depression the diagnosis can evoke. On the other hand, moments of joy, feeling supported and loved, exchanging thoughts with other cancer patients, spiritual calm and meditation can help you fight the illness in a positive way. Further we suspect that stress and depression may be one of the risk factors supporting cancer development.

If you are being treated, please do discuss all supporting measures with your physician. While a healthy body can cope with all kinds of foods, an affected body may not. Only your physicians can tell whether there are certain foods you should stay off.

While all natural and fresh foods are great to keep you healthy, the foods below have a scientific record to have specifically positive properties to fight cancer and accompany cancer therapies. Of course all those foods are also useful for prevention. The list is not exhaustive, research continuously produces results for other foods suitable to prevent or cancer or support treatments. The positive effect is not limited to the popular vitamins and minerals but includes a range of phyto-chemicals and polyphenols.

1. Cabbage, especially broccoli and brussels sprouts, kale reduce both the risk and the growth of cancer, and can even help to initiate cancer cells to suicide.
2. Garlic, onions, leech will act in a similar way based on sulfur and can help detoxify from some toxic substances and regulate sugar levels.
3. Turmeric (with curry or black pepper) has inflammatory effects, can decelerate tumor cell growth and will positively impact your immune system.
4. Green tea contains catechines that can inhibit cancer cell growth and interfere with the nutrition of cancer cells.
5. Red berries (strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, etc.) containing ellagic acid and anthocyanides are able to help you reduce the risk and growth of malignant cells as well as the supply of cancer cells and push them into natural suicide.
6. Omega 3 fats as found in cold water fish (salmon, herring, mackerel, sardines, linseed and linseed oil). These support your immune system and help work against growth and survival cancer cells.
7. Tomatoes are powerful fighters against growth and maintenance of cancer cells. The inherent lycopene is especially potent when tomatoes are cooked like in tomato soup or sauces. Ketchup contains too much sugar, which counteracts by promoting cancer growth.
8. Citrus fruits which act antitoxic and anti-inflammatory. They further enhance the effects of other anti-cancer substances and strengthen your immune system.
9. Red wine, grapes and grape juice contain resveratrol which can inhibit the initiation, progression and promotion of cancer development. Resveratrol is especially found in red wine, which is, however, not an invitation to drink this excessively. The limits of healthy wine intake are approx. 1 glass per day for men and ½ glass per day for women. Regular alcohol intake above the limits can increase the cancer risk!
10. Dark chocolate (more than 70% cocoa) is also a rich source polyphenols will can help inhibit the growth of cancer cells. 50g per day is plenty.
11. Soy beans and tofu contain hormone like substance genisteine and can inhibit the growth and nurture of cancer cells as well as push them into suicide, especially for hormone induced cancer types like breast and prostate cancer.

Do eat other fruits, vegetables, nuts and probiotica as well for a balanced vitamin and mineral intake. The list above is list of proven anti-cancer food, but not exhaustive. Other foods can also be effective to prevent and fight cancer, some with less efficacy, some with similar power, like herbs, pomegranate, mushrooms.

Avoid alcohol (except for a small quantity of red wine), sugar, processed food, white bread, red meat, dairy and hydrogenated (margarine) fats.

 You will find fervent pros and cons for both, and both have records of success and failure. My sources plead for a combination of both, and research shows that both forms of therapy can complement each other. The exact intervention will depend on the diagnosis, type of cancer and other physical circumstances. The food described above does not work in the same way for all types of cancer, evidence mostly supports positive preventive effects on colon, breast and prostate cancer. Other cancers and more foods need to be and are studied in order to offer a broader choice of prevention and treatment through anti-cancer diets.