Correcting
Cancer
The best way to correct the problem is through therapeutic use of
nutrients. But, as a word of caution, while nutrition should be an
integral component of every cancer patient's treatment program, nutrition
therapy alone is probably insufficient for most advanced cancers.
The reasons for using therapeutic nutrition in cancer treatment are
numerous and include the following:
*
Malnutrition: Undernourishing your body can have devastating, even
fatal consequences. In fact, more than 40 percent of cancer patients
die from malnutrition, not the cancer itself. Cancer induces a metabolic
abnormality akin to getting your car stuck on ice--the wheels spin
and the engine guzzles gas, but you don't go anywhere. Yet, cancer
patients often eat less food than they did before their illness began.
One reason is that tumors induce a hypermetabolic state and secrete
a substance called cachectin that suppresses appetite. Chemo and radiation
therapy can also cause anorexia and alone are sufficient biological
stressors to induce malnutrition. Because cancer patients need more
calories than healthy people, they eventually waste away, a condition
called cachexia. Weight loss increases the mortality rate for most
types of cancer, while also lowering the positive response to chemotherapy.
In addition to proper eating, nutrient-dense " shakes, "
canned nutritional formulas, protein powders, hydrazine sulfate, enzymes,
DNA loading and other therapies can reverse the weight loss that consumes
far too many cancer patients. If cancer patients lose 10 percent or
more of their body weight after cancer diagnosis, all other nutrition
strategies are irrelevant until this problem is addressed. A word
of caution: Do not fill up a fragile stomach with vitamin pills when
nutrient-dense foods are more important.
*
Optimum nutrition: Eating dense concentrates of nutrients can enhance
the effectiveness of medical therapy. Some people worry that antioxidants
such as vitamins C, E and beta-carotene might neutralize the tumor-killing
ability of chemo and radiation, which are pro-oxidant therapies. This
doesn't happen. In both human and animal studies, antioxidants enhance
the tumor kill of chemotherapy and radiation while protecting the
host tissue from harm.
In fact, antioxidants greatly benefit chemo and radiation therapies.
While both treatments can reduce tumor burden, they can also harm
normal tissues such as the heart, kidneys, intestinal lining and bone
marrow (the cradle of the immune system). Fortunately, vitamins can
often help spare normal tissues. For instance, animal studies show
that vitamin E protects the heart against the damaging effects of
adriamycin chemotherapy while allowing the drug to continue its cancer-fighting
effects. Vitamin E also has a unique and unexplained anti-cancer activity.
In mice with induced liver cancer, vitamins C and K augmented the
tumor kill while reducing organ damage from six different chemotherapeutic
drugs. Vitamin A (isotretinoin) enhanced the tumor-killing capacity
of the chemotherapy drugs vincristine and daunorubicin in 24 patients
with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In animal studies, injections of
vitamin C prior to radiation therapy provided host protection without
affecting tumor kill, suggesting that vitamin C given prior to radiation
therapy can help patients tolerate the treatment.
Preliminary human studies also show promise for vitamin therapy. Finnish
oncologists used high doses of nutrients (to replenish deficiencies
identified by blood tests) along with chemotherapy and radiation for
lung cancer patients. Normally, lung cancer carries a poor prognosis,
with a paltry 1 percent expected survival after 30 months of routine
medical treatment. In this study, however, eight of 18 patients (44
percent) who were given nutritional supplements were still alive 72
months after chemo and radiation therapy. The oncologists concluded
that patients who started antioxidant therapy earliest were most likely
to live longer or experience remission.
*
Bolstered immune functions: The immune system is a complex collection
of 20 trillion diversified cells that patrol the body looking for
invaders such as bacteria, virus and tumor cells. When doctors say,
" We think we got it all, " they mean, " There are
less than a billion cancer cells in your body that are undetectable
with current diagnostic equipment. Now we must rely on your intact
immune system to find and destroy the remaining cancer cells. "
Fortunately, an abundance of data links nutrient intake to the quality
and quantity of immune factors that fight cancer.
*
Selectively starving tumors: Whereas essential nutrients support the
patient's healthy tissues, junk foods can nourish the cancer. For
instance, sugar intake feeds the cancer and suppresses a patient's
immune system. Tumors are primarily what are called " obligate
glucose metabolizers, " meaning they must feed on sugar. Americans
consume about 20 percent of their calories from refined sugar, but
don't tolerate it well due to stress, obesity, sedentary lifestyles
and low chromium and fiber intake. An epidemiological study of cancer
victims in 21 countries suggests that high-sugar intake is a major
risk factor for breast cancer. When animals were fed diets equal in
calories from carbohydrates, the group eating more simple sugars developed
significantly more mammary tumors than the group fed complex carbohydrates
(starches).
Cancer patients can blunt the rise in blood glucose by eating foods
with a low glycemic index (meaning the sugars are more slowly absorbed
into the bloodstream). From best to worst, glycemic indices are meats,
nuts, seeds, oils, vegetables, legumes, fructose, whole grains, refined
starches (i.e., white flour), fruit and refined sugar. It is best
for cancer patients to avoid white sugar and sweet foods in general
and never to eat anything sweet by itself. For instance, a patient
may only eat a small piece of fresh fruit after a mixed meal of protein,
complex carbohydrates, fiber and fat.
In a non-randomized clinical trial at the Hoffer Clinic in Victoria,
British Columbia, Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D., and Linus Pauling, Ph.D.,
instructed cancer patients to follow a diet of unprocessed food low
in fat, dairy and sugar coupled with therapeutic doses of vitamins
and minerals. All 129 patients received oncology care. The control
group of 31 patients who did not receive nutrition support lived an
average of less than six months. The 98 cancer patients who did receive
the diet and supplement program were categorized into three groups:
poor responders (19 patients or 20 percent) who lived an average of
10 months--a 75 percent improvement over the control group; good responders
(47 patients or 48 percent), who had various cancers including leukemia,
lung, liver and pancreas and who lived an average of six years; best
responders (32 women or 33 percent) who had reproductive organ cancers
(breast, cervix, ovary, uterus) and lived more than 10 years. In other
words, nutrition support increased average life span by 12 to 21 fold
for 80 percent of these patients.
Retrospective analyses show that therapeutic nutrition helps cancer
patients. Of the 200 cancer patients studied who experienced "
spontaneous regression, " 87 percent made a major change in diet
(eating more vegetables and less meat), 55 percent used some form
of detoxification (herbs, enemas, chelation therapy or other methods)
and 65 percent used nutritional supplements. 22 Of 1,467 patients
with pancreatic cancer who made no dietary changes, 146 (10 percent)
were alive after one year, while 12 of the 23 matched pancreatic cancer
patients (52 percent) consuming macrobiotic foods (primarily brown
rice and vegetables with small amounts of fish and poultry) were still
alive after one year.
Source: www.althealth.co.uk
and www.4nutrition.com
