Cancer, has grown from relatively low levels to perhaps the highest cause of death in the world. Until the 1930’s many ancestral food eating peoples including the Inuit, Pacific Islanders and Australian Aborigines had very low to zero levels of cancer. By changing diets from their traditional fare to the low fat, seed oil and high refined carbohydrate levels of the Western diet, their rates of cancer, obesity and type-2 diabetes have skyrocketed.
Most cancer cells feed on glucose, some on glutamine. While normal cells can live on ketones and fats, many common cancer cells are unable to do this, instead glycolysis or breakdown of glucose is their only food. German scientist Otto Warburg identified this over 90 years ago. ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibs.2015.12.001)
When speaking to an oncologist about this recently, he suggested that this was a myth. However, proof of this is the process for a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan. For this the patient is injected with a radioactive tracer. The scan then highlights the places in the body where the radioactive tracer has accumulated. The radio-tracer is a radioactive sugar. The one commonly used is called FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose). Cancer cells are very active when they are growing and reproducing in a specific area. They need energy to grow. So, active cancer cells take up the FDG which then shows up brighter on the scan.
The adulteration of normal cells to pre-cancerous cells happens continuously in your body as cells and their mitochondria are damaged by regular low level insults. Examples include smoke, chemicals, pollution, radiation, asbestos, excess sugar, oxidized food substances, and inflammation. Killer T-cells seek out these damaged cells and kill them before they can proliferate. Support your immune system to maintain this protection.
Below are some steps to assist you to maintain a healthy and active immune system:
1. Eat real food, meat, eggs, fish, vegetables, avoid refined carbohydrates, sugars, starches, if it has an ingredients list then maybe best to avoid.
2. Use natural oils, animal fats, olive, coconut, avocado oil, avoid all seed (vegetable) oils.
3. Exercise regularly then rest and allow time to recover.
4. Get good sleep with a regular wake up time.
5. Avoid alcohol and sugar substitutes.
6. Adopt time restricted eating, perhaps 16:8. No snacking, 2 meals per day.
7. Get regular sunlight on your skin, without burning.
Cancer can be stimulated by anything that promotes growth and the dominant growth hormones in humans are insulin and IGF-1. If you stimulate growth with excess insulin, you are dramatically increasing your risk of cancer. In laboratory cancer cultures, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic and lung cancer, cells die without insulin to drive glucose into the cells. High insulin levels stimulate growth, promoting increased obesity, type-2 diabetes and cancer. (https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI114868) Surprisingly, tallness is also correlated with a higher risk of cancer. Another result of growth stimulation perhaps.
What promotes excess insulin? Frequent small meals, snacking, high sugar food, ultra-processed food, dietary carbohydrate levels above 120 grams per day, or continuous elevated cortisol levels caused by chronic stress, poor sleep, “rushing women’s syndrome”, etc.
Intermittent fasting can reduce insulin levels and has the additional benefit of weakening cancer cells thereby making some treatments more effective. From Annette Bosworth MD comes the information that one of the most renowned cancer treatment centers in the world, M. D. Anderson in Texas USA, will not begin chemotherapy for brain cancer until the patient has been in ketosis for 2 weeks.
In the 1940s, Dr. Albert Tannenbaum, former president of the American Association for Cancer Research, discovered that carbohydrate restriction alone in mice provided greater protection against cancer than overall calorie restriction. A (keto) low-carbohydrate, higher fat diet, combined with 18:6 daily intermittent fasting, significantly reduces glucose and insulin levels.
A study of 900,000 Americans, by Eugenia Calle, an American Cancer Society epidemiologist, published in 2003, ( https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa021423 ) found that being overweight or obese increased the risk of nearly every cancer she looked at. Compared with a normal weight woman, the highest-weight category women were 62 percent more likely to die from cancer, while the highest-weight category men were 52 percent more likely to die from cancer.
Here is a little ray of sunshine. Japanese researchers ( https://doi.org/10.15430/JCP.2015.20.1.1 ) have suggested that catechin polyphenols in green tea may delay, by years, the onset of some cancers and reduce the return of breast cancers plus other benefits.
Find my book at https://amzn.to/3uiehfv, Seek professional medical advice before making dietary changes, particularly if you are on medication.
Contact me if you have questions.
Good health, George Elder, Diet Researcher, Dip. Nutrition