beating cancer with nutrition

"I'm sorry, but you have cancer." These words from a doctor introduce fear into the heart of any patient.

The good news is that supportive nutrition therapy can significantly increase cancer patients' quality and length of life and improve their chances for a complete remission. Better yet, a healthy lifestyle that includes a wholesome diet, sufficient exercise, positive attitude and toxin avoidance can prevent up to 90 percent of cancers.

Now for the bad news. Conventional medicine does not have a high success rate with the disease. By the turn of this century, cancer will become the leading cause of death in America. During the past 26 years, NCI spent $37 billion in research with a resulting increase in cancer incidence and deaths. Clearly, medicine cannot produce a "magic bullet" to cure cancer while patients go on living on soft drinks, pollutants and stress.

On December 23, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon confidently declared a "war on cancer" and promised a cure by the 1976 Bicentennial. However, as late as 1991, a group of 60 noted physicians and scientists called a press conference and made the following statement: "The cancer establishment confuses the public with repeated claims that we are winning the war on cancer. ... Our ability to treat and cure most cancers has not materially improved." this article, I will briefly explore the reasons for failure in combating cancer and give rational directions to improve outcomes for the 2.5 million cancer patients being treated in America today.

Developing A Strategy

In early research, the techniques of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy looked like the best approaches to cancer. The goal was to cut away, burn and poison the abnormal cells. While such therapies can temporarily reduce tumor burden, they do not cure cancer. Only by changing the underlying cause of the disease can a cancer patient expect to return to health.

Doctors now know that eliminating cancer begins with changing the conditions that support tumor growth, not just applying cytotoxic therapies to kill cancer cells. Here's an analogy: Fungus grows on the bark of a tree due to the favorable conditions of heat, moisture and darkness. You can cut, burn and poison a fungus all you want, but as long as favorable conditions persist, it will flourish. Similarly, cancer develops in a human when conditions are right. Documented factors that favor tumor formation include toxic burden, immune suppression, malnutrition, mental depression and elevated blood glucose. More speculative causative factors include reduced pH, dysbiosis (abnormal bacteria in the gut), hypothyroidism, insufficient gland and organ output (i.e., insufficient DHEA, enzymes and hydrochloric acid) and parasites. Unless we correct these cancer inducers, cytotoxic therapies are doomed to failure.

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.2 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.3 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.4 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.