The purpose of this article is to present encouraging evidence regarding cancer prevention which also may be integrated into a plan for cancer treatment. You and your physician work as a team and need enough evidence to make informed decisions.
You won’t commonly hear this from the medical profession, and there are several reasons for this. One reason is that physicians receive very little nutrition instruction in medical school. Hence, most nutrition instruction in our society comes from the media and government organizations which are both heavily influenced by big industry and government lobbies. Unfortunately this represents a serious conflict of interest.
A second reason the medical profession is often silent on true prevention is that physicians tend to be focused on symptoms. We as physicians are taught to think about the underlying cause of disease, but in practice we get very used to treating symptoms with a pill or surgery. In cancer treatment there especially tends to be a disconnect when it comes to thinking about treating the cause. Most physicians tend to view cancer as a local disease that needs to be surgically removed, unless it spreads; then if it spreads, each of those components needs to be destroyed either by radiation or chemotherapy. It may seem logical to focus on a medication cure since antibiotics cure infection, and thus it would be natural to hope a medication could cure every disease.
A third reason you do not hear about nutrition and lifestyle is that there is no financial gain in this method for the researchers. The major drug companies fund most of our research. They do not profit from, nor fund, lifestyle education—they profit from drugs, so that is what they fund. Medicine is a business, like anything else, and has been greatly influenced by the drug business, and the drug-influenced research which it has produced.
A final reason diet and lifestyle as prevention or treatment is not discussed by most physicians is that it does not seem like a pleasant option, because it is not a quick fix like a pill or surgery but instead a complete lifestyle change. Physicians are paid little for the time it takes to teach and motivate. When they do take the time to teach proper lifestyle it can be disheartening because most patients tend to believe what the media says and what they have heard all their lives over what the doctor says.
However, research on the link of nutrition and lifestyle to cancer is significant. Many do not want to acknowledge the studies because they are not the ideal study of the medical profession which is the double-blind randomized placebo controlled trial. I agree that this is the ideal study design, but there are many treatments that cannot be blinded because it would be impossible, such as certain types of surgery, and yet we still have respect for these interventions. There are also things we cannot perfectly study since we cannot randomize people to certain things because of ethics, or because the study subjects are unwilling. But that does not mean the research done should be ignored.
There have been numerous studies over the years linking diet to cancer. The most extensive review of all these individual studies was seen in the following:
Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: a global perspective, released by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the American Institute of Cancer Research (AICR) in 1997. This report by a panel of experts chaired by Dr John Potter based its findings on over 4,500 credible scientific studies, and details patterns of diet and cancer throughout the world and examines the effects of various aspects of diet on 18 cancer sites. From these studies the above panel concluded the following to be obvious:
- Vegetable and fruit consumption is associated with lower risk of cancer at almost every site
- Alcohol is highly detrimental for cancers of many sites (not just the liver)
- Meat and animal fats are detrimental.
Some of the most significant and recent research is from the China Study, recognized as the largest epidemiological (population study) study ever done (called the Grand Prix of Epidemiology by the New York Times). This study, lasting over 20 years surveyed the diets of the Chinese people in various regions and the diseases in those same regions. While they found thousands of correlations, in general what they found regarding cancer was that meat and dairy intake were directly related to cancer. That is, the areas that ate more meat and dairy had more cancer, and to a predictable degree. Likewise studies have shown that when individuals moved from an area of low cancer risk to an area of high cancer risk, within two generations they had the same cancer risk of the area to which they moved.
Another interesting study was done by Dr Campbell prior to his work on the China Study, in which he injected aflatoxin, a known carcinogen linked to liver cancer, into rats, then fed them varying levels of animal or plant protein diets. What he found was that the rats fed virtually no animal protein did not grow tumors, while those fed more animal protein had more and faster growing tumors. When fed plant protein at any level the rats did not grow tumors and when those with tumors were fed a diet at any level of plant protein (and no animal protein) the tumors largely arrested growth or regressed.
To be fair, there have been studies that have shown no benefit on cancer from adding plant foods to the diet, but these studies in general have had so little difference in the animal protein and plant components that they can not be considered a fair test. It would be like studying the difference in lung cancer caused by smoking filtered cigarettes compared to regular cigarettes and upon seeing no difference claiming that cigarettes are not harmful at all. Hardly a fair conclusion!
We can clearly see that current research implicates lifestyle and diet as major contributors to cancer. Particularly, animal protein seems to be at least a significant cofactor that allows cancer to grow, while plant foods inhibit this growth. While there are many possible causes of cancer such as radiation, chemicals, toxins, viruses, and genetics, perhaps it is not so simple as an outside source invading us and taking over, or simply the inheritance of bad genetics over which we have no control. We are complex creatures and cannot afford to ignore the interaction of our own physiology with cancer and also with everything we do and eat and even think. So the most logical approach would be to think carefully about the fuel we put in our bodies, one of our most intimate interactions with our environment. Does it matter what we put in a car for fuel? Would it run as well with water or corn oil or ketchup? How much more important what we put in our bodies! How can we worry about the environment around us and how it impacts our health (a valid concern) and yet not worry about what we put in our bodies? Cancer is complex and I will not try to make it out to be simple. What we need is to take a comprehensive approach to prevention and treatment by curbing behaviors that contribute to the development of cancer and starting new behaviors that help prevent it or increase the body’s natural abilities to fight it.
Now for a word about the cancer industry. There are many great doctors and individuals working hard to solve the problem that is cancer. And they are very sincere, but despite the best of intentions research does not support that we are “winning the war” on cancer. While there have been individual treatments that have been introduced showing some benefit, treatment outcomes for most cancers really have not changed much in years. Outcomes that have changed can quite possibly be attributed to earlier screening plus the fact that all “cure” outcomes are based on 5-year survival, so that if you get screened earlier there is a good chance you will live longer regardless of treatment. And also keep in mind that the benefit of cancer treatment drugs are usually presented in terms of relative numbers which sound significantly better than the absolute numbers. An example of this is a study done with 1000 participants, half of which are put on a treatment drug X. If 2 people are expected to get a disease and now with drug X they find that only 1 person gets the disease, that is a 50% improvement with the drug, whereas the absolute benefit is only 1/1000. This is statistical terminology that most people do not understand that could make the treatment sound better than it is in reality.
What I have argued for is diet and lifestyle as prevention of cancer, which a large amount of evidence supports, but I also want to argue that diet and lifestyle should be at least part of treatment for cancer. Admittedly I have no solid evidence for this based on double blind randomized human studies because there are no large scale studies of this nature for treatment of cancer. So in making this argument all I have to go on are five things: (1) cancer risk is highly associated with diet; (2) in animal studies growth of cancer has been affected dramatically by dietary change, especially showing growth with animal protein, and showing arrest or even reversal with a plant based diet; (3) there have been numerous case studies in which individuals have had resolution of their cancer by dietary and lifestyle change; (4) traditional chemo and radiation, in terms of absolute numbers, is still not that great. I’m not saying that you should not take chemo or radiation, since this is a personal choice you make along with your physician, but I do think you should thoroughly understand the benefits and side effects of such treatment, and get the absolute numbers to help you make your decision. And I do worry that we try to fight cancer with treatments that destroy our immune system, which could help us fight it (chemo) or treatments that tend to create cancer (radiation). (5) Finally, adding proper diet as a component of cancer therapy will certainly not harm and it very well might help.
I do have hope that some day the medical profession, my profession, may catch the vision of lifestyle prevention and treatment of disease. If they do, it will not be because of any financial gain, and it will take much effort and years of swimming against the flow of the drug companies, big food industries and government lobbyists which influence government policies and education. For now I feel that I cannot ethically wait to share this information with you, for the motto of my profession is this: “FIRST, DO NO HARM.”
References
1. Melina, M.S., R.D., and Davis, R.D. Becoming Vegan, 2000: 26-27
2. Campbell and Campbell II. The China Study, 2006.
3. Anderson. Healing Cancer From Inside Out, 2009.
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