This seminar is the summary of our findings from about 12 books we read as part of our journey toward understanding the causes and cures of cancer in our family. We developed this seminar so people could read for themselves what we had learned and put into practice. It is our hope that it will inspire you to also take control of your health and your future.
“Let your food be your medicine”. Hippocrates: 460BC – 370BC
“Question all paradigms” Dr Russell Baylack; Oncologist, neurosurgeon, nutritionist, neuroscientist
WHAT CAUSES CANCER?
Good question! Most scientists believe cancer is ultimately caused by mutations which are photocopying errors in DNA. Mutations are happening all the time and are a normal part of being alive. But a mutation is not cancer. A mutation is simply a genetic “seed” in the dry ground of your body and a seed in dry ground doesn’t grow. What you and I think of as cancer is well beyond a mutation. It is a growing “plant” consisting of millions of multiplying mutated cells inside your body that will often kill you if left unchecked. I want you to understand the difference between the cancer seed and cancer plant before we talk about cancer in depth.
Cancer Seeds
The very starting point of the cancer trail is DNA corruption. What causes these mutations is the big question. The whole process of obtaining energy from food boils down to our unbelievably intricate and balanced chemical digestive and processing system pulling electrons out of the chemicals from our food and circulating them through to our cells. Free radicals are atoms or molecules that have lost one of their electrons which make them very unstable. Most substances that cause cancer attack the body by turning some of the atoms or molecules inside your cells into free radicals and this can damage our cell’s DNA. Excessive amounts of free radicals can lead to many diseases such as cancer, stroke, myocardial infraction, diabetes and other major lifestyle and degenerative disorders. Many forms of cancer are thought to be the result of free radicals corrupting the DNA.
Here are some of the more common triggers of free radical damage, as well as some other causes of cancer that I have been able to find in the scientific literature:
1. Many of the 100,000 or so chemicals used in commerce and industry are free radicals and can corrupt the DNA as it replicates in the cell. In our modern world they are now an integral part of our lifestyles so we cannot escape them. For example, the fumes of the metals cadmium, nickel, and chromium are known to cause lung cancer. Vinyl chloride can cause liver sarcomas. Exposure to arsenic increases the risk of skin and lung cancer. My father now has bladder cancer because of the chemicals he was exposed on our farm for many years. Chemically-induced cancer generally develops many years after exposure to a toxic agent. For obvious reasons, ingestion of chemicals in food and drink, especially brightly coloured, long-life highly processed food, is of greater concern than those in the environment.
2. Radiation is another cause of DNA corruption. It is also becoming a huge part of the modern lifestyle through the use of mobile phones, computers, transmission towers, excessive sunlight, nuclear fallout, ultra-violet sunlight, X rays, mammograms, radon in the ground, house wiring etc. Radiation is the cause of about 10% of all cancers and is strongly linked to melanoma and leukemia. Radiation disrupts the electron balance in cell molecules which leads to the creation of free radicals. It is worth noting that after only ten years of widespread use the World Health Organisation has already upgraded mobile phone radiation on the IARC scale into Group 2b, which means possibly carcinogenic. Let’s hope it stays at this level.
3. Viruses can also disrupt the duplication of DNA leading to cancer growth. About 10-20% of cancers are thought to be caused by viruses that infiltrate the cell and disrupt the DNA transmission process. For example, the human papilloma virus has been linked to cervical cancer while the Hepatitis B and C viruses have been linked to liver cancer. Most viral infections however, do not lead to tumor formation as many factors influence the progression from viral infection to cancer development. Some of these include the person’s genetic makeup, mutation occurrence, exposure to cancer causing agents, mental strength, level of health and the strength of their immune system. Viruses usually initiate cancer development after suppressing the host’s immune system and causing inflammation over a long period of time. In 20 years from now liver cancer caused by Hepatitis B will be one of the biggest killers in the world. This is because 10% of those who get Hepatitis B will go on to develop liver cancer and according to the World Health Organisation, about 2 billion people have Hepatitis B, mainly in Asia. The death rate from this cancer is currently around 95%.
4. Another significant yet little understood cause of DNA corruption is fungi. Think moldy foods and moldy environments. The job of fungi in biology is to decompose organic substances and this may include us if they get the chance. Mycotoxins are the waste created by fungi and these wastes can be carcinogenic. Alcohol is the most famous mycotoxin and unfortunately it too is carcinogenic. A mycotoxin called aflatoxin, found in 20% of the world’s grain crops, as well as meat and dairy products, is one of the most carcinogenic substances known to man. It is estimated that a person on the average grain diet is consuming between 0.15 and 0.5g of aflatoxin per day. In 2000 The British Medical Journal stated that “The prime chronic effect of many mycotoxins is the induction of cancer, especially of the liver. Some toxins affect DNA replication, and hence can produce mutagenic or teratogenic effects”. Teratogenic simply means medical nasties.
Note: Some researchers even have a radical theory that cancer itself is a fungal growth rather than the result of a mutation. The theory goes that when toxins or free radicals compromise the integrity of the immune system, parasites and fungi are able to enter the cell. Once the parasites and fungi are inside the cell, the cells metabolism changes from aerobic to anaerobic. Parasites and yeast flourish in this anaerobic environment and when a group of these cells clump together they create a host base for the fungi to grow. As an example, leukemia is almost always associated with a fungal growth. This is a radical theory but there seems to something in it as some doctors are getting good results with their cancer patients. I will explore this more later.
5. As we age you become a less perfect DNA copy of the “perfect” you that entered the world. Each time our cells are replaced it is like making a photocopy of a photocopy and things can go wrong. As we age our genetic code gradually switches off, bit by bit. For example, the gene for hair will switch off in some older men. In older people the genes that protect them from diseases such as cancer can also be switched off. This is one reason why cancer is usually a disease effecting older people. However, poor diet and lifestyle will have a huge effect on how many of these genes will be switched off. Chemicals and toxins are also known to switch genes off.
I am sure there are other triggers for mutations as well, but I think I have covered the main culprits. It’s thought that our bodies are producing up to several hundred of these mutations a day. Some are destroyed by the body and a few develop into micro-tumors. But only when mutations or micro-tumors start multiplying can the seed of cancer germinate and the cancer plant begin to grow.
Cancer Plants
In nature seeds can only grow if they are getting water and fertilizer. The water and fertilizer needed to promote growth in cancer are controllable and this is where we fight the cancer. Listed below are some of the cancer growth triggers that will turn a mutation and micro-tumor into visible cancer:
1. Animal protein is a key fertilizer causing cancer growth in the western world. If you remove animal protein from the human diet you can stop most cancers from growing.
2. Stress is also another trigger for cancer growth due to the suppressive effect it has on the immune system. Removing stress from your life will increase your white blood cell count and cancer survival rate significantly.
3. Lack of cellular oxygen is associated with cancer. Cancer growth takes off when the Krebs cycle which takes oxygen into the cell is compromised by at least 35% and anaerobic fermentation begins. Re-oxygenating the body is a key cancer treatment.
4. Cancer feeds on sugar (glucose) so this is yet another fertilizer for its growth. If you remove sugar you can starve cancer.
5. Acidic forming drinks and foods create an acidic internal environment and cancer can only grow in an acidic environment. Acidity is the chief cause of lack of cellular oxygen.
OK, so now you have a quick but fleeting picture of what causes cell mutations and full-blown cancer. Next I am going to drill down into these topics in detail and help you understand more of the science behind the healthy food in the following chapters. But first, a few words about the business end of cancer.
CANCER AND MONEY
“All the research into the causes of cancer has been done”.
Colin Campbell: Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry, Cornell University.
Pharmaceutical Companies.
Yes, the above statement is a little provocative, but only because of the way we have been taught to think about cancer by those who control the cancer industry. The problem is not that society doesn’t know what causes cancer and what we need to do to cure it. The problem is that the answers are not palatable to most consumers and especially to the cancer industry. By cancer industry I mean the large pharmaceutical companies and the millions of health professionals who make their living from treating cancer. Cancer is now one of the world’s largest industries. It is growing rapidly so in the next few years it will become the largest industry on the planet. In 2010 cancer was a $200 billion dollar industry in the USA with half of that going into chemotherapy. So there is a lot of money to be made giving people answers that treat symptoms instead of causes. Treating causes will kill the golden goose. I personally know of at least 4 different ways an oncologist can be financially rewarded for prescribing chemotherapy. The cancer industry is so big it has become the knowledge gate keeper to so much of what we know about cancer. It has been able to control the university system of training, the medical profession, the media, cancer charities and government funding through the deceptive mantra of “evidence-based medicine”, funding, lobbying and advertising. Medical professionals who stand in front of this machine simply get run over through the ruin of professional reputation. If you doubt the link between big pharma and local doctors then simply ask your GP how many cash and non-cash benefits they are offered by pharmaceutical companies each year. If big business found a cure for cancer then their multi-billion dollar revenue streams would dry up rapidly. They want to prolong your life but not cure your cancer, because the cure for cancer cannot be patented. To add insult to injury they have been able to create their wealth through milking us of our taxes via the hospital system.
Doctors
The cure for cancer relies on nutrition and so cannot be patented. Therefore it will never become a pharmaceutical drug. The pharmaceutical industry relies solely on patents to protect their intellectual property, which means their profits. Now if solving cancer relies on diet and not drugs, then the solution for cancer cannot be prescribed by a doctor. Doctors are in the drug business, not the nutrition business. Western medicine is brilliant at trauma treatment but very poor at treating lifestyle diseases because the answer to these diseases is in the area of nutrition. Most doctors and oncologists are sincere, good at their jobs and genuinely try to help cancer sufferers. The problem is the philosophical paradigm they work within. Paradigms are very resistant to change and challenge. The old saying; “if you know what’s good for you, don’t stand between a person and their income” is true for medicine as well as any other trade. So if you challenge a doctor’s faulty medical paradigm of treating effects instead of causes for lifestyle diseases like cancer, they will often become very defensive. Doctors have invested a lot of time and money to get onto the highly elevated social pedestal where they are today. It is a very proud and socially privileged profession which likes to be seen as the gate keeper for all disease treatments. To show them that half their career was built on the wrong foundation is very challenging and threatening to them. We know how it feels as Annette personally questioned her oncologist on the validity of radiation and chemo treatments and was shaken by the wrath that followed.
Charities & Culture
Cancer charities are some of the richest in the world and are also part of the existing pharmaceutical paradigm of disease. This means all the money you donate to them is not going to find a cure for cancer. In fact donating to them is a waste of money. They only pay lip service to the real cause of cancer. Their pamphlets on breast cancer that we read when Annette was diagnosed told us that diet was a non-issue but eating lots of sugar and animal protein would help to keep our weight up while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation! The biggest sources of donations to cancer charities in America are the multi-national pharmaceutical companies? It is no coincidence that one of the very few breast cancer charities in the USA that refuses to take Pharmaceutical money, “Breast cancer Action” in San Francisco, has been labeled as “militant” because they insist on the science of cancer, not the PR.
We as a culture are also to blame for the cancer epidemic and the lack of solutions. Most of us go along with the cancer industry’s misinformation because it allows us to live as we please, to eat, drink and be merry, with the assurance we are not responsible for the consequences of our actions. We are getting the diseases we deserve, just as we get the government, environment, economy and laws we deserve. We love our high-fat, high-sugar, high-meat, high-processed food, high-dairy diets and still want to believe we are not killing ourselves. We want to believe it is not our fault. We don’t want to take ownership of our problem and the medical profession is only too happy to oblige. We live the lie. We want the pills.
Cancer Treatments
So what tools does western medicine use to “cure” cancer? Basically there are three main weapons. The first line of defense is surgery, which is like pulling out the unwanted cancer plant. Surgery will work if the cancer is detected early and the roots have not spread. However surgery is invasive and all invasions of the body are dangerous. Surgery induces immune suppression while initiating an inflammatory state that provides any remaining cancer with biological fuel to propagate. After surgery the body also secretes growth hormones for the healing of the wound and these growth hormones will stimulate cancer growth if it wasn’t all cleaned up. Even the act of taking a biopsy can help spread liver cancers.
Chemotherapy primarily refers to the treatment of cancer with drugs. It is like spraying the cancer plant with weed killer to suppress it and by definition it doesn’t deal with the cancer’s roots, only its branches. This is why success rates from chemotherapy treatments for people with stages 2-4 cancers are very, very poor. These stages mean the cancer has roots and is beginning to travel. An Australian study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology titled “The Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy to 5-year Survival in Adult Malignancies” found that chemotherapy only increases survival rates out to five years by just 2%. The cancers that will respond at a higher rate to chemotherapy are testicular cancer, Leukemia and some types of lymphomas. That’s the good news. The bad news is that chemotherapy not only attacks cancer cells, it also attacks bone marrow leading to lower blood cell production which is the source of our immune system. Some of the other side effects of chemotherapy can include brain damage, heart muscle disease, kidney failure, liver failure, lung fibrosis, devastating fatigue, anorexia, osteoporosis, severe rashes and even death. Chemotherapy is a good example of medieval medicine pretending to be modern.
Radiation therapy is like putting a blow torch on the cancer plant to burn it. However it also has the side effects listed above with the added dangers of anaemia, nausea, vomiting, external and internal burns and sterility. We often hear about the dangers of radiation in our environment but are strangely enthusiastic about its use as a cancer treatment inside our bodies. If having a mammogram every two years gives a woman up to a 30% increased chance of contracting breast cancer by the time she is fifty, imagine what intensive radiation as a cancer treatment is doing. We have personally witnessed one friend who died from fluid on the lungs after radiation. We have met another who has had her oesophagus burnt out so she could not speak or eat for the rest of her life. Yet another now has a weakened heart and another has permanent symptoms of emphysema. Some fast growing cancers do respond well to radiation. However this is a catch 22 situation as it means they may have metastasized (spread) earlier so often escape targeted radiation. Finally, since radiation can cause cancer, you are left wondering if the radiation itself will induce cancer in another organ near the target area in a few years’ time.
Now let’s look at a better way of treating cancer using your fridge, pantry, local gym, vegie patch, the sun, your loved ones and your mind.
CANCER AND ANIMAL BASED FOODS
Colin Campbell, who I quoted above as having said that the research into the causes of cancer has been done, has conducted perhaps the most thorough research on nutrition and cancer in the world. The study was described by The New York Times as “the Grand Prix of epidemiology.” That is no light statement. Professor Campbell has spent more than 40 years at the forefront of nutritional research. He has authored or co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed scientific papers. In 2007 he distilled a lifetime of research into a highly readable book called “The China Study”. In the book he references over 750 peer-reviewed scientific research papers to back his own voluminous research findings. Please get this book and read it. Here are some of his findings for the USA, which would transfer directly to the Australian medical environment:
1. Diet is the overwhelmingly largest cause of cancer and changing your diet is the most effective cure for cancer. It is all about garbage in and garbage out, cause and effect.
2. The current cancer treatment paradigm is broken. Death rates per 100,000 for cancer have only dropped about 10% since the 1970’s, and this is largely due to the large drop in death rates from lung cancer, the most prevalent cancer of that era accounting for over 30% of all cancers. The increased survival rates that we are told about are not really decreases in deaths from cancer. To qualify as a cancer survivor these days you only have to avoid death for five years after diagnosis regardless of whether you still have cancer lurking inside you or not. Between higher social awareness, earlier diagnoses and targeted treatments, more people have simply been kept alive till the five year gong, but many are still dying of cancer later on. Survival rates have nothing to do with actually curing cancer.
3. The leading causes of death in the USA are heart disease (600,000), cancer (560,000) and improper medical care (200,000). All three are largely preventable with a change of diet.
4. A diet of plant-based foods will usually cure cancer. This involves removing almost all animal products from your diet. This includes all meats, eggs and dairy products! The proteins from these animal products are the biggest food-based cause of cancer in the western world.
5. Removing animal products from your diet can also help cure or control diabetes, hypertension, eye cataracts, macular degeneration, arthritis, type l and ll diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, impotence, obesity, some autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, fatigue, high cholesterol, heart disease and menopause.
Early in his career Professor Campbell found he could turn cancer on, then off, and back on again in rats simply by changing them over from a plant-based diet to an animal protein diet and back again. The key danger level was found to be more than 5% of all calories coming from animal protein. The China Study, the largest nutritional survey in the world, confirmed this to be the case in humans, with rural Chinese eating a mostly plant based diet and suffering a cancer rate sometimes over 200 times less than their city cousins who had transferred to a diet high in animal protein.
How does animal protein promote cancer? Campbell knew that the cause of cancer is generally attributed to mutations. But these mutations will stay dormant or extremely slow growing unless animal protein is present to speed up the enzyme activity that allows these mutations and micro-tumors to grow. He also found that even after full-blown tumors had already formed due to a diet high in animal protein, removal of animal protein from the diet will often destroy the tumor by slowing it down so much that the body’s natural immune system can clean it up. That is good news for us aging westerners. Campbell goes on to demonstrate the superiority of his diet-based cancer thesis over the current research fad which sees all cancer as a result of genetic disposition with the following points:
1. The cancer rate of Africans is very low, but when they move to the USA, their cancer rate skyrockets in line with the rate they take up American dietary habits.
2. The cancer rate of Chinese, who are even more genetically similar to each other than Africans, also skyrockets when they move to cities and move off a plant-based diet and onto an animal protein diet. So with rising affluence, expect a surge in cancer rates in China in a decade or two from now.
3. Next, there could not possibly be enough change in the genetics of western people in the last 50 years to account for the dramatic rise in cancer rates.
4. Finally, Seventh Day Adventists are identical to other western citizens; same genetics, geographic spread, exposure to chemicals etc. But with the removal of meat from their diet they have a cancer rate that is 30-40% lower than the rest of society. What is truly amazing is that they have achieved this result without removing dairy and other forms of animal protein.
So a major growth factor for the cancer plant is a combination of carcinogenic disruption to our genes AND a high animal protein diet. This means eating a diet high in animal protein is one of the most cancer fertilizing habits we could indulge in. The human body is very resilient and can cope with this abuse while young. It is as we age that the cost of our eating habits has to be paid in terms of the diseases of affluence.
Plant foods on the other hand contain a huge array of chemical compounds that contain or destroy genetic mutations and tumors. So it is simply a matter of tipping the scales in your favour. Why are plants so much better for you? Perhaps it is because they don’t have legs. This means they have been designed to ward off insects, bacteria, fungi, animals, UV exposure and poor weather using static defense systems. We humans gain from these design features. For example, plants have inbuilt shields for controlling free radicals which are sometimes created during the process of photosynthesis. These shields are usually brightly coloured because these bright colours soak up the spare electrons. We call these shields anti-oxidants and they do the same job in us. So the brightest, most attractive vegetables are the best for us. Wow!
Why isn’t the link between animal products and cancer front page news? It is because the western world is intellectually, emotionally, politically and financially wedded to a pharmaceutical solution to lifestyle diseases. Because foods cannot be patented, they cannot make a profit for medical businesses. This is why we never see the expensive clinical trials for cancer fighting foods. Hence they can never become part of the “evidence based medicine” regime. But it is not just the fault of pharmaceutical companies. As a culture we have decided we want pills, not self-control. If we switched our health paradigm to fully embrace diet, 50% of the western medical and food industries would disappear. That’s a lot of workers and vested interests. We don’t do it because we are addicted to foods that are killing us. We are junkies and breaking the habit is an emotionally costly exercise.
Health Rule One:
Try to get as close to a vegan diet as you can. Less than 5% of your calorie intake from animal products is the minimum target. This will be less than 5% of your food because animal products are calorie dense.
CANCER AND OXYGEN
Otto Warburg was a prodigious German researcher who earned doctorates in both medicine and chemistry in the early 1900’s. In 1924 he made the ground-breaking discovery that cancer cells can only survive in the absence of oxygen. In explaining his discovery he said: “Because no cancer cell exists, the respiration of which is intact, it cannot be disputed that cancer could be prevented if the respiration of the body cells would be kept intact.” Read that sentence again and let it sink in. He found the one thing all cancers have in common is that something takes away the cell’s ability to breathe. He therefore believed the prime cause of all cancer growth is impaired cellular respiration. For this discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1931. At the time his discovery was considered the defining breakthrough in the fight to find the cause of cancer.
However, after the evolution of molecular biology as a scientific discipline between the 1930’s and 1950’s, the current understanding of the cause of cancer moved on to mutations and altered gene expressions. Whichever explanation is correct, lack of respiration or mutations is irrelevant to our ability to fight cancer because Warburg’s breakthrough definitely gives us a fantastic second weapon for fighting cancer.
Follow Warburg’s logic with me: Just like a combustion engine, cells also need a fuel, and oxygen to burn the fuel. When any newly-formed cell is denied 35% or more of the oxygen it needs its cellular respiration, which involves glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain start to shut down. Impaired cellular respiration occurs if the respiratory enzymes that transfer oxygen into the cell are missing. Enzymes are remarkable proteins that greatly speed up chemical reactions in the body. Without them we would die very quickly. Running a cell with reduced oxygen is like running a car engine with a clogged air filter. As its respiration level falls, the cell struggles and can’t keep up the high aerobic-based glucose-to-energy (ATP) production levels needed to do the job its genetic code told it to do. In its struggle to stay alive the distressed cell will begin to anaerobic fermentation of the glucose to get the missing energy. Fermentation is a simple process that converts glucose into a small amount of ATP energy in the absence of air. This process produces a lot of lactic acid in animals and alcohol in plants. This is why we sore muscles when we exercise beyond the ability of our lungs to get air to all our cells. Fermentation is so inefficient it chews up about 8-10 times more sugar to get about 5% of the ATP energy of a normal cell so it only allows cells to grow, but not develop. That’s the science.
The existence of fermentation in human cancer cells is where the fungal theory of cancer noted in my introduction comes into play as fermentation is caused by fungi. The mycotoxins that are produced by the fungi are often carcinogenic. Many are also immune-suppressive. Mycotoxins are much more wide spread and of much more concern in human food supplies than was believed even a decade ago. Watch this space for future research developments.
Regardless of whether the cancer cell lost its ability to breathe through mutation or a fungi, if the cancer cell can be re-oxygenated then the cancer can be reversed. The key to this process is our remarkable respiratory enzymes, whose job is to get oxygen into the cell. Plant-based foods are full of these essential enzymes while animal based foods have none! Now you can see yet another reason why Colin Campbell’s research results with cancer and animal protein consumption were so astounding. Westerners are eating a diet of mostly processed and cooked foods rich in animal products. Enzyme consumption is severely lacking to say the least. However, it is very simple to find these respiratory enzymes in natural foods. Pineapple’s bromelain, paw-paw’s papain, riboflavin from leafy green vegetables (vitamin B2), niacin from avocados (vitamin B3) and chlorophyll from all green vegetables are examples of respiratory enzymes. There are many others in a diet high in vegetables and fruit. In addition to all this, cancer cells can also be up to 15 times thicker than normal cells. Adequate enzyme consumption can also attack these cell walls and so pave the way for their destruction by the body’s natural killer (NK) white blood cells, whose job is to seek and destroy dysfunctional cells.
So now you can see that a plant based diet will give you a lot more respiratory enzymes than a traditional western diet. But there is a catch. Plant enzymes are totally destroyed if cooked above 118 degrees Celsius for more than a few minutes. All cooked vegetables and fruit are devoid of their life-sustaining enzymes. So the majority of your diet should consist of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds which interestingly is the diet the ancient Hebrews gave us (Genesis 1:29). These foods contain enzymes that are intact and ready to help re-oxygenate your cells. Other ways to increase oxygen to your cells include aerobic exercise, getting fresh air, avoiding pollution, drinking alkaline water, eating alkaline food, drinking oxygenated water, consuming oxygen supplements, eating only foods naturally ripened, and breathing deeply several times a day.
Health Rules Two, Three & Four:
Try to get as the majority of your food from plants. This will include fruits, vegetables and nuts.
Eat over 50% of this plant food as in its raw form rather than cooked.
Get moderately fit!
CANCER AND ACIDITY
First a little background information to help you understand this section. The pH scale is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. Specifically it is a measure of potential (p) hydrogen (H) ion concentrations, hence the “pH”. An ion is an atom or molecule with a level of electrons that is not equal to its number of protons. The pH scale is measured on a scale from 1-14, with 7 being neutral. Substances with a pH below 7 have more positive hydrogen ions (H+) which we call acidic. Substances with a pH above 7 are called alkaline because they have more negative hydrogen ions (OH-) which, just to confuse us, are called hydroxide ions. In addition, it is important to understand that the pH scale is logarithmic, each number further above or below 7 being 10 times more acidic or alkaline than the number before it.
Acidic Liquids
Now you may recall that I have previously mentioned that alkaline water and food will help oxygenate your body. Oxygen and alkalinity sit on one side of the chemical fence, while lack of oxygen and acidity sit on the other. Let me expand. Water normally has a beautifully neutral pH of 7 at 25 degrees. But acidic water has extra positive hydrogen (H+) ions. Two of these extra positive hydrogen ions will bind with any freely floating oxygen ion to make two hydrogen and one oxygen molecules combined or H2O, which for the non-chemists is water. This robs the water of one free floating oxygen ion. On the other hand alkaline water has a lot of free oxygen ions because its excess negative hydroxide ions (OH-) combine with each other to form H2O and have to release the spare oxygen molecule in the process (OH- + OH- = H2O and kick out the spare O). This is why alkaline water is good for you and the environment and acid rain is bad. Acid rain is simply pollution-tainted rain that is slightly acidic and robs plants, rivers and lakes of oxygen so life begins to suffocate. So get your tap water checked, if it is acidic it will have a slightly sour, mineral taste to it.
Acidic Drinks & Foods
Now we that we are though the boring science it gets interesting. Adult humans are approximately 60% water so what you put in affects your pH level. Most recreational drinks such as soft drink, alcoholic beverages and coffee are very acidic. Joe Average consumes a lot of these types of liquids so this area of fluid intake is probably a bigger issue than your water intake. The Davis family has stopped consuming most of these drinks and we have installed a water filter in our home to guarantee a reliable supply of alkaline water. Every glass we drink now has a pH of 8.5 and we even have a mobile filter for travelling.
Now let’s talk about acid forming foods. Your body was designed to have a slightly alkaline pH of 7.35-45. So if you are eating well then the majority of your diet as well as your fluid intake should be alkaline. Humans are born naturally alkaline and become increasingly acidic as we age if we live on the typical western diet. If your diet and fluid intake creates an acidic environment for extended lengths of time, symptoms of disease will occur such as bone weakness, heart problems, weight problems, allergies, kidney stones, cancer and fatigue, just to name a few. If you are a typical westerner then your diet will include lots of hot beverages, meat, dairy, carbohydrates and fats. These foods are acid-forming in your body. When your blood starts to become acidic, your body deposits acidic toxins into cells to allow the blood to remain slightly alkaline. This causes your cells to become more acidic and toxic, which results in a decrease in their oxygen levels, poor enzyme uptake and an increase in disease. This is the cause of the lack of cellular oxygen discovered by Otto Warburg. Because the typical western diet is overwhelmingly made up of these acid-forming foods, it is important to try and alkalinise the diet as well as your drinks so that your oxygen intake comes back to normal and your cells can get rid of their acidic toxins. This is a tough ask because most of us are addicted to sugar, salt, milk, meat, caffiene, alcohol, refined wheat products, chocolate, etc. Who doesn’t like their wine and cheese, their bacon and eggs or their chocolate-coated ice cream? All Annette’s favourite animal and sugar products had to go. Her blood was thick, which was a clear sign that her body was full of toxins, and her body temperature was low, a reliable cancer signal. She had to change or she would have died. The motivation was very strong. An understanding of acid foods is where Colin Campbell once again meets Otto Warburg. The protein from animal products is one of the chief reasons why most of us become acidic.
As a general guide, animal foods, manufactured or processed foods, and sugar-based foods are acid-producing. Natural foods, with a few exceptions, are alkaline forming. Analyse the shelves of your pantry and fridge to see how you rate. At least 60% of alkaline-producing foods should be eaten, although the ideal amount is 75–80% per cent alkaline foods. The abundance of alkaline foods in your diet will neutralise the acidic foods and help to build an “emergency store” of alkaline elements that the body can draw upon to help neutralise acids in the future.
Alkaline Foods
Here is a sample list of acid and alkaline foods to help you understand a little more about the foods we traditionally eat, and those we should be eating:
Highly Acid | Slightly Acid | Neutral | Slightly Alkaline | Highly Alkaline |
Barley | Beans | Oils | Rock melon | Lemons |
Bread | Red meat | Olives | Most greens | Watermelon |
Buckwheat | Cashew | Sesame | Limes | Ripe banana |
Honey | Coconut | Linseed | Brussels Sprouts | Dried peach |
Dry lentils | Eggs | Butter | Tomatoes | Plum |
Oatmeal | Fish | Cream | Avocado | Spinach |
Pasta | Millet | Leeks | Sprouted seeds | |
Peanuts | Mushroom | Apricots | Raspberries | |
Peeled potato | Chicken | Currents | Sprouted beans | |
Rice | Yogurt | Garlic | Dates | |
Rye grain | Coffee | Grapefruit | Figs | |
Walnut | Chocolate | Less sweet grapes | Prunes | |
Wheat grain | Cheese | Guava | Raisins | |
Alcoholic drinks | Blueberries | almonds | Kale | |
Soft drink | Cereals | Peaches | ||
Sweeteners | Biscuits | Nectarine | ||
Refined cereals | Milk | Pears | ||
Sugar | Most nuts | Peas | ||
Jam | Tomato sauce | Pumpkin | ||
Processed juices | Maple syrup | Sea Salt | ||
Tobacco | Oats | Apples | ||
Drugs | Pastries | Broccoli | ||
White flour | Beetroot | |||
Capsicum | ||||
Onions |
It is probably important now to explain why foods like lemon and lime are included on this list as alkaline forming when they taste acidic. Their effect on the body is alkalising because their citric acids are weak and the lemon’s overall nutrients are alkaline. The end product of metabolism and its effects on the body make it very highly alkalizing. In fruits such as the lemon the mineral content is also taken into consideration, and the lemon’s alkaline minerals are many; calcium, magnesium, potassium, and selenium. So, after the citric acid has done its job and is easily eliminated, your body is left with a very alkaline end product from the fruit. You can also see from the list that most animal protein foods are acidic, not only in their amino acid content, but also in their utilization by the body. They create uric acids as their waste product from their metabolism. This is why most big dairy and meat eaters have smelly breath and urine.
Finally, be sure to measure your pH before assuming your body is acidic. People with a strong sympathetic nervous system, the part of the autonomic nervous system that deals with daytime activities and stress, tend to be naturally acidic. Those with a strong parasympathetic nervous system, the part that deals with nocturnal body repairs and building, tend to be more naturally alkaline. Do a litmus test and find out where you are at before launching into a new diet.
This has been a quick summary of the importance of alkaline foods and liquids. You can learn a lot more by going online. The important thing to remember is that acid-forming foods will rob the body of oxygen, slow down enzyme function and deposit acidic toxins in your cells. While alkaline-forming foods will bring in extra oxygen transferring enzymes and drain acidic toxins from your body.
Food Rule Five:
Try to rebalance your pH by eating at least 75% alkaline foods. Less than 20% of your diet should be from the acidic food groups.
CANCER AND SUGAR
Normal cells can feed off glucose (sugar), fat or protein, but cancer cells can only feed off glucose. This was the other part of Otto Warburg’s breakthrough for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1931. Although a high level of glucose in the diet is not a cause of cancer, it is quite obvious that for a cancer cell to survive, it is going to have to maintain a reliable, large and consistent supply of glucose for its fermentation. Glucose is an A+ cancer fertilizer and the more you put on the faster it grows.
Starving Cancer
Because of the inefficiency of the fermentation process, cancer cells consume a lot more glucose than healthy cells. In fact the PET scans used to detect cancer inside the body are simply looking for places of abnormal glucose consumption. Once the tumor phase is of any size, the body is always looking for glucose to feed the cancer because the cancer is constantly on the verge of starvation and thus asking the body to feed it. When the glucose supply is cut off, the cancer will starve unless it can make the body produce glucose from muscle protein to feed itself. Advanced cancer patients lose a lot of weight and the wasting syndrome is the body producing glucose from its own muscle. The body finally dies of starvation, trying to feed the cancer. Reversing this process by removing glucose from the diet will not in itself kill the cancer as glucose was not the original cause of the cancer. But it slows it down dramatically and allows the immune system to catch up with the tumor and kill it. Increasing enzyme intake, re-oxygenating and de-acidifying the body will help dramatically in this process.
And there are other reasons why consuming glucose is bad if you have cancer. When you eat a lot of glucose, your body produces a lot of insulin and insulin growth factors (IGF’s). Insulin and IGF’s are natural hormones made by the body that tell cells to grow. In simple terms they rev up cell growth. For healthy cells, growth is a good thing. This is because the cells in your body grow, divide, die, and are replaced as part of the natural process of living. However, cancer cells are also encouraged to grow more when our bodies produce too much insulin and IGF. So while some insulin and IGF in the body is normal, too much of it, through a sugar-laced diet, will encourage cancer cells to grow faster. Studies from Harvard University, The University of California San Francisco and Magill University in Canada found that cancer rates for those who consume foods high on the glycemic index and have very high insulin/IGF levels are to seven to nine times higher than those with low insulin/IGF levels. So check out your normal diet for where it stands on that index. In addition to these problems, with extra insulin in the body, chemotherapy is less effective.
Sugar (mainly glucose, fructose and lactose) consumption in the western world has risen from a few kilos a year in 1900 to around 60-80 kilos per year now. This is bad, really bad! From before we ever became aware of sugar as a food most of us were addicted to it through our baby food. As adults we crave it and it drives so much of our eating culture. You probably already knew that sugar was bad for you in mega-doses, leading to tooth decay, obesity and type-two diabetes. Now you can add cancer to that list. In fact diabetes is the second highest indicator of potential cancer behind smoking. Armed with this knowledge, does it make sense to feed your body and your family chocolate, ice cream, sweet biscuits, sugar infused fast food, soft drink, alcohol and the rest of the mountain of sugar-laced foods we all love? Unfortunately, if you switch from sugary foods to carbohydrate foods such as bread and pasta you are still in trouble because carbohydrates turn to sugar if they are not consumed through exercise. This is especially so for refined white flour products.
Making the Change
Right about now you are probably thinking you will starve if you miss out on animal products, carbs and sugar. If this is the case then it is an indicator of how poor your diet really is. No, you won’t starve if you remove these foods from your diet, but it will not be easy. However, the consolation is you will feel great! The hardest part is perhaps breaking away from our culturally-conditioned concept of what food is, and moving into a new paradigm of eating, the Asian one. Westerners think of food as fuel, whereas Asians think of food as health. You’ll have to start thinking like an Asian. If you do choose to give up sugar foods then within a month you will find taste buds you never realised you had. Foods whose tastes were being drowned out by the sugar will suddenly taste beautiful again. A further bonus will be weight loss. Ordinary table sugar is half glucose and half fructose. The fructose half is unique in that the human body immediately digests it without you ever feeling full. It is also addictive and if you are addicted to a food that cannot fill you up, you are in trouble. Fructose goes straight through the liver and comes out as fatty acids and goes from there to your fat storage cells, straight to the hips or gut. This is the prime reason why we have both an obesity and type ll diabetes epidemic. It is also why heart disease is the leading killer of Australians. But fructose from fruit is fine as it comes packaged with lots of fiber and liquid. It is the soft drinks, alcoholic beverages, nearly all packaged foods and dairy products that are so dangerous for us. Start reading the contents labels of all the foods in your pantry and you will be shocked to see how much sugar you have been consuming.
Annette’s first saw the link between sugar and cancer when she successfully reduced her mother’s multiple myeloma (bone cancer) count three months in a row by removing sugar from her mums diet. The doctor had no explanation for this result, and didn’t want to hear the reason why it occurred. Yet she told Annette to continue whatever it was she was doing. Astounding professional ignorance! This experience gave Annette the seed of confidence to turn her back on oncologists, chemotherapy and radiation when she was diagnosed with her own cancer two years later. She went through with the operation but then found the cancer had spread (metastasized). Her surgeon was so terrified by Annette’s decision to forgo chemotherapy and radiation that she told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would die if she didn’t undergo standard western medical treatment. In the same conversation the surgeon admitted she knew absolutely nothing of the relationship between diet and cancer.
Health Rule Six:
Remove nearly all sugar from your diet for both the treatment of cancer, weight gain, and all the diseases associated with weight gain. This will be hard initially, but thoroughly worth it when you see the results.
CANCER AND STRESS
As just mentioned, Annette’s cancer was diagnosed about two years after the monumental stress of having her cancer-stricken mother in our home for six months and being determined to move heaven and earth to fix her. A study by the University of Helsinki found that the loss of an important emotional relationship will double the incidence of breast cancer in women. Spot on!
The Cancer Personality
A little stress can do us good and it’s called motivation! But chronic on-going stress lowers the immune system and increases the risk of depression, heart attack, cancer and a wide range of sicknesses. Of importance in this discussion is an understanding of the types of people who allow stress to consume their lives. Believe it or not these people are described as having a “cancer personality”. Most people handle stressful situations very well however this minority do not. They allow stress to consume them as they lack the coping skills the rest of us develop as part of our early experiences of life. The cancer personality worries a lot and constantly paints a negative picture in their mind as to the outcome for most of their particular worries. They then internalise rather than externalise their stresses. They hold them in. They also have a deep seated need to make others happy and are often a people pleaser. They are very overly dutiful and will sacrifice their own well-being for the sake of others, to an extreme.
A major reason for this way of thinking is that the cancer personality lacked closeness with a parent when they were young. They did not receive unconditional love from their mum or dad. They were rejected and are subconsciously still looking for this unconditional love through pleasing others. This unresolved issue becomes a deep-seated hole in their heart. These people tend to hide away this sadness and grief behind a brave face. They appear “nice” and avoid open discussion of the root causes of their emotional issues. Some are not even aware of their emotions, and are therefore not only isolated from other people, but also from themselves. If we live our life in emotional isolation, our emotional centre will be under constant stress. If we then add in a major conflict in adulthood which we are not able to cope with, then the emotional centres of our brain can begin to break down. This can be easily observed in MRI tests. These people are called type C personalities in the scientific literature. All this ongoing internalised stress pumps adrenaline into the body for a prolonged period of time which damages the immune system. Studies in rats show that learned helplessness lowers the immune system to such an extent that cancer rates will double. Unless the psychology of helplessness is dealt with then the cancer patient will often see death as an escape from pain and quickly lose the will to live.
Coping With Stress
Annette was taught a very simple and powerful way to deal with her own stress by our very wise naturopath, Brian Morley. He told her that the churning of the worried mind needs to be externalised, taken out of the head and heart and put on paper. Writing allows the mind to see the externalisation. Once fear and worry is externalised then the subconscious thinks the issue has been dealt with. Doing this once a day is enough and before bed is best as it greatly assists with sleep. A University of Auckland study went even further and asked people to write down and externalise in detail the 10 worst things that ever happened to them. Doing this little exercise had a significantly positive effect on the level of antibodies in their blood. Stress also disturbs sleep and if you suffer from disturbed sleep you will also have far less melatonin than normal. Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant and cancer fighter. However, it is only produced when we sleep. The darker the room and the more peaceful the mind, the more melatonin you will produce at night. Lack of melatonin is a major reason why shift workers have a much higher rate of cancer than average.
Paradoxically moderate exposure to bright sunlight during the day is also good for your stress levels. Exposure to sunlight early in the morning will give you a natural high and also lower stress levels. It will also give you better sleep that night. Sunlight also supplies vitamin D to our skin and about 20 minutes a day helps greatly in preventing cancer. The Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Catalyst program reported in 2003 that over 25% of Australians are seriously lacking in vitamin D and there now seems to be a connection between breast, colon and prostate cancer and a lack of Vitamin D. Even more amazing, one expert believes 25 per cent of breast cancer deaths could be avoided if the women had maintained adequate vitamin D levels throughout their life. Vitamin D stops cell membranes from breaking down and mutating through exposure to ultraviolet light. A serious lack of vitamin D will also put you in grave danger of getting osteoporosis. So do yourself a favour and spend 20 minutes a day stripped off and enjoying the sun, you’ll beat stress, feel great, get a tan and fight cancer at the same time. Beats chemo!
From her psychologist Annette learnt another key for handling stress. Stress is negative emotion. Negative emotion comes from negative thoughts. If you can change a negative thought about an issue, into a neutral or positive thought then negative emotions subside. This takes training, especially for those who internalise stress and who suffer from learned helplessness. Negative thoughts are like growing branches on a tree. Each negative thought leads to a negative emotion and a new twig grows on the tree of our belief system. If you can change a negative thought into a positive or neutral thought then the twig is broken. Do this enough and your belief system will change for the better after a few months. Annette now sees her cancer has been a blessing. It has allowed her to become very healthy, less stressed, fitter, and given her a desire to help others through their own cancer journey. She now recognises that cancer was her body’s last cry for help to change the way she had programmed her beliefs about life. Annette was a Type C personality because of the rejection she felt from being sent to live with her grandparents for a year at the age of 2. She then experienced her father’s death at the age of 4. After this her mum not being able to cope with his loss so Annette was sent to a foster home for a time.
In his excellent book “Anti-Cancer” Dr David Servan-Schreiber describes another way of dealing with stress. He suggests a significant change in lifestyle from stress creation to relaxation helps greatly for cancer sufferers. One of his tips includes taming the incessant electronic gadgets that now wire us to the world. He suggests they have removed from many of us the ability to be still and connect with our inner self. They must be chained to a very short leash so we can spend more time alone or in nature. He also suggests time spent alone each day to reconnect with our real self and the natural world. This slowing of the heart and mind through thinking, praying or meditating allows us to confront our deepest fears, reconnect to our passion and discover the real reasons why we are here. With a renewed vision for living we generate a stronger will to live. As a 20 year survivor of what was considered a terminal cancer at diagnosis, Servan-Schreiber taught people how to experience deep relaxation through meditation as a means of dealing with fear. A lot of the stress we experience in our lives comes from fear. On a mental level knowledge dispels fear, while at the emotional level love conquerors fear. Deep relaxation gives us the peace and clarity of mind to tackle both.
Emotional release is also a powerful weapon for conquering stress. An attitude of un-forgiveness for those who have wronged you serves only to trap you in a cycle of stress that leads to bitterness and anger. These emotions will create their own web of disease and pain. Regardless of how wounded you are from the pains of those who were supposed to love you, you will not feel release until you experience deep emotional forgiveness. This will involve tears, and tears contain endorphins, which is why we always feel better after a good old cry. Men who learn to supress emotion and tears are especially susceptible to heart disease. You must forgive and then find the good in those who have wounded you. Servan-Schreiber tells the story of a woman who was raped at the age of six by her father and as an adult, who was full of resentment and cancer, she was able to forgive her dad after finally see him as an emotionally crippled victim of the pain and torture he endured as a member of the Dutch underground in World War 2.
One of the great lessons we all must learn about life is that we cannot control what happens to us and we cannot have everything we want. We can often only control our reactions. Habitually stressful people tend to want to control what is happening around them in order to feel secure. This need to control everything comes from their belief that they, as a person are fundamentally insecure. Their stress continually rises because they perceive most events as a threat to their peace, goals, growth or success. The solution to this surprisingly common problem is to see life’s experiences as an opportunity rather than a threat. Every experience is a teacher and we can learn so much more about life by embracing them. To ask “What can I learn from this that will make me a better person?” instead of “why is this happening to me, it’s not fair?” will go a long way in releasing you from a life of stress.
Health Rule Seven:
Change the way you think so that you can work on becoming positive and stress free. De-stress, forgive, rediscover the joy of sleep, reconnect with those you love, learn to see life as your educator rather than a threat, and learn to relax deeply.
CANCER FIGHTING FOODS
I would like to finish by listing some specific cancer fighting foods so that you have even more confidence in the benefits of foods as cancer preventatives, and cures. All of the following plant-based foods contain the unique antioxidants, enzymes, phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals, hormones, amino acids, proteins, fats, salts, fatty acids, carbohydrates and numerous other chemical compounds needed to clean disease out of the body. Many of the great medical and scientific discoveries of the next 50 years will involve understanding exactly how food sustains life. The more we know in this field, the more aware we are becoming of just our stunningly complex is the transition from ingesting food to sustaining each of our cellular motors. Digestion is an almost infinitely complex process with literally thousands of different chemicals being released when eaten and recombined at a molecular level, transported through 100,000 kilometres of arteries, absorbed into to each of our 50-100 billion cells in the exact quantities needed by each, metabolised and then powering all the million or so molecular functions inside the cell using roughly 500 million molecules of ATP per minute and releasing spent molecules from the cell when their job is done. All the time each cell is in constant communication with millions of co-workers via a vast chemical internet. To do all this requires the cell to hold a library of instructions equivalent to 500 million words. Science will never know exactly how it all fits together. A scientist working at the cutting edge of sub-cellular research recently told me that a single cell is “far, far more complex that the entire total of every single human and non-human activity that takes place in the city of Brisbane on a second by second basis”. It really is that awesome. Life is literally a miracle!
With that in mind, a short sample list of the many foods that do the miraculous work of preventing and fighting cancer are as follows:
1. Turmeric (usually found in curry powder) keeps coming up again and again in the literature as a cancer fighting agent of the first rank. The active ingredient in turmeric is called curcumin and is well known in the scientific literature as having very strong antioxidant, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory actions. This makes it ideal for the treatment of arthritis and osteoporosis, healing surgery wounds and treating cancer. The effect of curcumin, and all cancer fighting foods for that matter, is greatly enhanced when combined with other cancer fighting foods as their active chemicals synergise and can attack multiple enzymes in the cancer cell whereas chemotherapy only attacks one or two cancer cell enzymes, allowing the cell to quickly recover.
2. Green tea, especially Japanese green tea, contains cancer fighting chemicals called catechins, the heavyweight of which is called ECGC. Cetchins contain anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties that help the tea plant to resist invasion. ECGC has been shown in various studies to be a potent antioxidant and to inhibit cancer growth in both in vitro, animal studies and human trials.
3. The cruciferous family of vegetables, which comprise broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and kale, are all descended from the original wild cabbage and all are known cancer fighters. Cruciferous vegetables contain the largest variety of phytochemical nutrients available to the human diet. Two of these polyphenols include glucoraphanine and myrosinase, which when chewed recombine into sulforaphane which is a powerful anti-cancer molecule because of its ability to flush out toxins linked to the development of cancer. If possible try not to cook your cruciferous vegies or buy them frozen as this will have destroyed a lot of the phytochemicals.
4. Garlic, leeks, shallots, chives and onions already have widely known health benefits. To these we can now add the ability to fight cancer. In a study conducted in Shanghai those people who ate over 10 grams of these vegetables a day had half the stomach cancer rate of those who consumed less than two grams per day. A study in Lorraine, France found breast cancer rates are lower in people who consume high levels of garlic. In fact a total of twenty chemical compounds derived from garlic have been shown to have cancer-fighting properties, with the principle ones being diallyl sulfide (DAS) and diallyl disulfide (DADS). These compounds also detoxify the cell so are beneficial in the treatment of heart conditions.
5. Red berries such as the strawberry, blueberry, cranberry, raspberry and blackberry are a delicious way of fighting cancer. They are very high in antioxidants and vitamin C, but the phytochemical called ellagic acid is thought to be the active agent in fighting cancer. Christine Sardo, who manages clinical trials on berry consumption and cancer prevention for Ohio State University’s College of Medicine has done numerous trials on the anti-cancer effects of red berries with outstanding results.
6. Omega 3 fats hit the headlines in the mid 1990’s as a major health food supplement. Our consumption of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids should be in balance, but today most westerners are consuming about 20 times more omega 6 fatty acids. This is due to our love of fried fast food and processed foods. Omega 6 will inflame the body and suppress the immune system and this means it will inflame cancer and cardiovascular disease. Increasing the intake of omega 3’s will reverse this effect. Omega 3 can be found in fish oil (2g per serving) but plant based sources such as walnuts (2.6g per serving) and flax seeds (2.2g per serving) are even better.
7. Leafy green vegetables are rich in folic acid and a host of other healthy chemicals. Lack of folic acid has been shown in animal studies to be linked to a high incidence of cancer. Green vegetables are high in folate which is a B vitamin that promotes heart health and helps prevent certain birth defects. Folate is also necessary for DNA duplication and repair. Without repair, damaged cells can mutate. Darker green leafy vegetables like spinach, Swiss chard, kale and collard greens contain beta-carotene as well as the carotenoid cousins called lutein and zeaxanthin. Beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin are all powerful antioxidants that seem to play a role in blocking early stages in the development of cancer.
8. According to the National cancer Institute, asparagus is the food with the highest levels of glutathione, one of the body’s most potent cancer fighters. It also helps repair damaged DNA, and ushers toxins out of the body. It’s also packed with nutrients like folic acid, vitamin C, potassium, thiamin and vitamin B6. It’s low in calories, sodium and cholesterol but high in fibre. Additionally, asparagus is high in rutin, which strengthens blood vessels.
Although the above list only highlights some of the many foods that help prevent cancer, it is important to understand the role of synergy in the effect of foods on cancer. Unlike drugs which contain a single active agent, a healthy diet rich in plant-based foods will contain many anti-cancer agents. When combined these have a greater effect than when taken individually. The sum is greater than the parts. This explains why clinical trials on a single vegetable will often produce mild anti-cancer properties while the cancer rates for people who live on a plant based diet, such as the rural Chinese are massively lower. Likewise, when looking at the so called “Mediterranean diet”, we find it consists of a high daily intake of vegetarian products such as cereals, legumes, dried and fresh fruits, tubers, vegetables and olive oil while having a low intake of animal saturated fat, processed red meat, dairy products and alcohol. This gives the Mediterranean diet many phyto-active compounds that help protect these people from cancer. When it comes to foods that fight cancer it is a huge mistake to think of them as drugs. Their synergistic effects cannot be underestimated.
To give you an idea of the amazingly complex chemical weaponry available to you when using food to fight cancer I have listed below a partial chemical breakdown of just one common vegetable. When I first saw it in “The Cancer Study” I was blown away by the genius of our creator in providing such marvels of chemistry for our food sources. Now behold the “humble” spinach:
Macronutrients |
|
Water | Many kinds of fat |
Calories | Carbohydrate |
Many kinds of protein | Fibre |
Minerals |
|
Calcium | Sodium |
Iron | Zinc |
Magnesium | Copper |
Phosphorus | Manganese |
Potassium | Selenium |
Vitamins |
|
C (ascorbic Acid) | B-6 (pyridoxine) |
B-1 (Thiamin) | Folate |
B-2 (Riboflavin) | A (as carotenoids) |
B-3 (Niacin) | E (topopherols) |
Pantothenic acid | Choline |
Betaine | |
Fatty Acids |
|
14.0 (myristic acid) | 18.1 (oleic acid) |
16.0 (palmitic acid) | 20.1 (eicosenoic acid) |
18.0 (stearic acid) | 18.2 (linoleic acid) |
16.1 (palmitoleic acid) | 18.3 (Linoenic acid) |
Amino acids |
|
Typophan | Valine |
Threonine | Arginine |
Isoleucine | Histidine |
Leucine | Alanine |
Lysine | Aspartic acid |
Methionine | Glutamic acid |
Cystine | Glycine |
Phenylalanine | Proline |
Throsine | Serine |
Many kinds of phytosterols |
CONCLUSION
This discussion on the causes and cures of cancer is not complete and never will be. However, it is as accurate as I could get it given the limits of my scientific understanding. What is important is that the big issues are covered in enough depth to give you confidence in our philosophy of food as medicine.
There are other weapons Annette uses in the fight against cancer such as using vitamin B17, detoxification, daily vegetable juices, lymphatic massage and whey protein smoothies. But each of us is on an individual journey and they are another part of her journey. All we wanted to do in this chapter was give you enough scientifically valid information to give you the confidence to begin your own individual journey back to health. After all, this is a laypersons analysis of cancer! We are not clever people so we believe the simpler and the more enjoyable the rules of engagement are in the war on cancer, the more likely the victory. So here again are our six simple health rules:
1. Move as close to a vegan diet as you can.
2. Get the great majority of your food from plants. This will include fruits, vegetables and nuts.
3. Eat over 50% of this plant food as in its raw form rather than cooked.
4. Work on becoming moderately fit.
5. Try to eat at least 75% alkaline foods and less than 20% of your diet should be acidic foods.
6. Remove as much sugar from your diet as possible, the more the better.
REFERENCES
Here is the quick list of the sources for this seminar. For a full explanation of what books and websites are best to look up please go to the last section of Annette’s seminar called “How I Beat Cancer”
“Anti-Cancer” By Dr David Servan-Schreiber. Highly recommended.
“The China Study” By Professor Colin Campbell. Highly recommended.
“Cancer is Curable Now”. Highly recommended
“Knockout” by Suzane Somers. Highly recommended
“Sweet Poison” By David Gillespie. Highly recommended
“Cancer is a Fungus” By Doctor Tullio Simoncini
British Medical Bulletin 2000, 56 (No 1) 184-192
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed Storehouse of peer-reviewed medical research.
www.cancer.org Cancer Facts & Figures
www.cancer.org.au Cancer Facts & Figures
www.wikipedia.org Great for definitions!
“Foods That Fight Cancer” By Dr Richard Beliveau & Dr Denis Gingras
And lots of other websites!