Alternative Cancer Therapies Nutrition 

Diet as a cancer remedy and alternative cancer therapy

It has taken a long time for medicine to recognize the importance of what we eat in relation to cancer. Although it has long been recognized in the animal experimental literature that diet has a huge impact on the development of cancers many doctors have not yet caught up with this knowledge. They do not think of food as a cancer remedy and if they think of it at all would label it one of the alternative cancer therapies.

I was having a conversation with a much loved Professor of Medicine and telling him about the poor impact of chemotherapy. He asked me what alternatives were possible? When I mentioned the impact of food on tumor growth and prevention he stiffened perceptively and said with great aloofness, “I very much doubt it.” I was spurred on to find out more.

In addition to the journals that publish animal experiments there are now a number of journals which publish the research findings about food and cancer, such as Nutrition and Cancer and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition..

To start with there was a huge amount of research done around the effect of fat in the diet. It was understood that a diet high in animal fats would increase the risk of cancer. However decades of study have shown that animals fats are not the problem they were thought to be in the early stages of this research.

Currently the research is focusing around vegetables and fruit and the results are excellent or promising depending on the type of studies you require for proof. It must be remembered however, that anti-cancer foods are not to be thought of as the cancer equivalent of antibiotics - they are not a quick fix answer to the problem of cancer, but just one aspect of good health care, albeit a good one.

Cruciferous vegetables are some of the better known anticarcinogens. Broccoli and cabbage are well known but other examples include arugula, beet greens, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, garden cress, horseradish, kale, kohlrabi, radishes, rutabaga, Swiss chard and turnips. One meta-analysis (study of all the studies) concluded that with every 10g (1/3 oz) of cruciferous vegetables consumed every day you could expect a decrease of 8% in the risk of colorectal cancer. They have been shown both to prevent a variety of cancers from starting and to reduce their growth and spread.
Murillo, G, Mehta, RG. Cruciferous vegetables and cancer prevention. Nutrition and Cancer 2001;41:17-28

Tomatoes have been shown to reduce the risk of various cancers including prostate, lung, gastric, and pancreatic cancers. One interesting animal study compared the effect of tomato juice and lycopene (one of the active components of tomatoes) and the tomato juice was much better preventive than the lycopene on its own. In other words you need the whole tomato (or juice) and not a pill version.

Onions, garlic and other allium vegetables (e.g. leeks, chives) seem to have one of the strongest effects on reducing cancer risk when eaten daily, beating even the cruciferous vegetables. They have been shown both to inhibit the initiation of cancers and their growth.
Galeone, C, et al. Onion and garlic use and human cancer. Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:1027-32.

Lettuce, carrots, summer and winter squash, oranges, lemons, blueberries, dark raspberries, grapes, tumeric, mushrooms and herbs (e.g. rosemary, oregano, thyrme) are also all mentioned in the medical literature as having anti-cancer properties. If you are really interested you can go to Google Scholar and search for medical journal articles to check these out. I have included a few references above but decided when it came to looking at the research on tomatoes that there were just too many papers to reference.

Basically, what it comes down to is this. Traditional fruit and vegetables, eaten raw or lightly cooked are healthy and most of them have been shown in animal and human studies to both reduce the chance of cancer starting and to reduce its growth. Go for the deepest coloured vegetables that you can. Buy them fresh where possible, and eat them fresh at least twice a day. They should cover about three quarters of your plate.

Although many doctors are not yet aware of it, the medical research has shown quite clearly that animal fats are not the problem they were once thought to be. (The reasons this mistake was made was that people who ate a lot of fat also didn't exercise - and it was lack of exercise which was causing the deaths, not the fact. In this case exercize is what they call a confounding factor.) Fresh meat has also been shown to be fine, even red meats. As a result you can be quite comfortable in eating range fed red and white meats, fat and all.

This permission to eat fat from red meat does not apply to lot fed animals which live on corn and soy. Look at the page, Do I have to turn vegetarian?

Tidying up your diet is the first aspect of a range of alternative cancer therapies that most natural health practitioners would advise. We have got so far away from nature than many people do not eat fresh vegetables at all. Science has caught up with the importance of improved eating; medicine is a little behind in considering the importance of brightly coloured vegetables and fruit as a cancer remedy.