No secret to cancer-fighting foods
“The secret when it comes to diet and breast cancer,” Amy Shaw, MD, said recently, “is that there is no secret.”
Dr. Shaw, who is the Medical Director of the Cancer Survivorship Program with Annadel Medical Group, echoes the advice of both experts world-wide and nearly everyone’s grandmother: Eat your vegetables.
A diet that includes a vast array of clean, colorful vegetables and fruits, fish, whole grains and beans, fresh herbs and a minimal amount of alcohol is the best approach to overall health and to the prevention and survival of breast cancer. Meat, if eaten, should be grass-fed and poultry should be pastured; hormones and antibiotics that end up in the meat of animals fed them aren’t good for you, she said.
“A healthy person who gets cancer has a better chance of healing more quickly and of surviving,” Dr. Shaw emphasized, underscoring the importance of a good diet not to solve a problem but as a way of maintaining optimum health throughout a lifetime.
“There are no bad foods,” Shaw added, “and no special diet that improves (cancer) survival.”
There are bad quantities. For example, too much simple sugar, frequently identified as a “cancer feeder,” can cause problems, including diabetes, which in turn puts you at greater risk for developing cancer, including breast cancer.
“But can you have dessert now and then?” Dr. Shaw said. “Yes, you can,” adding that sugar feeds all of the body’s cells, not just cancer cells, and without it, we die.
But too much of anything from, say, carrots to megadoses of antioxidants, is not a good idea.
Anti-oxidant supplements are extremely popular and it can be difficult, Shaw explained, to convince a patient to stop taking them.
“Antioxidants are quite potent. Cancer cells are killed by oxidating them, so if you introduce high amounts of antioxidants, there’s trouble,” Shaw said.
To say that there is no single food or specific diet that universally impacts cancer either positively or negatively, is not to say that diet and nutrition do not matter. They do. Experts, including Dr. Shaw, point out that between one-third and one-half of all cancers world-wide are related to lifestyle. Smoking and diabetes top the list of risk factors and diabetes is, of course, entwined with how one eats.
Dr. Shaw emphasizes that the three most important things that every cancer survivor should focus on are getting regular exercise, eating a diet rich in a variety of vegetables and not gaining weight. Those who follow a vegan diet need to maintain their weight, as weight loss, common among vegans, can be a problem, too. And if you can’t afford grass-fed meats and organic poultry, don’t worry.
“You’re not going to get cancer,” Dr. Shaw said, “because you eat chicken that isn’t organic.”
The devil, as always, is in the details. When it comes to diet and breast cancer, details are everywhere and they often conflict with one another, though there is agreement, with scientific studies to back it up, in several areas. All experts agree on the importance of vegetables and fruits, of nutrient-dense foods and natural - that is, not processed - foods. Many recommend organic foods and some suggest it might be a good idea to avoid GMO or genetically modified foods. Experts also insist that it is important not to jump on the latest dietary bandwagon.
“People tend to gravitate to the latest claim,” explained Deborah Lantz, ND, a naturopathic doctor who is opening a practice in Healdsburg early next year, adding that it is natural to seek a “magic bullet” when one receives a dreaded diagnosis and acknowledging that there isn’t one.
For example, it wasn’t so long ago that margarine was touted as the healthy choice over butter, a bearer of bad outcomes. That’s long been disproved and margarine is today recognized as a food that should be avoided. Trans-fats - vegetable fats that have been artificially hydrogenated, making them solid at room temperature - have since been proven to cause all manner of health problems and are not recommended for anyone. Even margarine made with corn or soy oil should be avoided, as these oils contain large quantities of Omega 6 fatty acids, which cause inflammation in cell membranes. That prohibits cells from communicating with each other, studies suggest, which in turn can lead to cancerous tumors. Butter in moderation, it turns out, is better.
Although there is wide agreement that trans-fats should be avoided, there is less consensus about dairy products.
Sylvia Onusic, PhD., a board-certified nutritionist practicing in Pennsylvania, recommends dairy products from grass-fed animals and considers raw milk essential - either the milk itself, butter from raw cream or fermented products such as kefir and yogurt made from raw milk.
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