Oh, Dear God...
If you have recently been diagnosed with cancer, fear may cloud your thinking and you may make some hasty and possibly regrettable decisions. Even though the cancer has taken years to develop, your doctors may be telling you that treatment must be started immediately.
Cancer is cured by your immune system. The average American has five or six bouts with cancer in a lifetime. Your body may have already cured cancer once or twice and you were not even aware of it. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery don’t cure cancer.
Cancer is a serious disease and not everyone gets well, no matter what treatments they get or what program they follow. But if you play the odds and follow a strict program of diet and lifestyle changes, your chances of beating cancer will be much greater than if you do not.
My advice is to change your diet and lifestyle immediately. Give your immune system a chance to tackle the cancer. Then I would recommend that you get a second opinion or even a second diagnosis.
If you decide to undergo conventional treatments, your change of diet will be less successful as you are trying to rebuild your immune system and conventional treatments devastate the immune system. It takes years for your immune system to recover from chemotherapy so it is all the more important to follow the dietary guidelines.
In a review of the literature, reported in Clinical Oncology, December 2004, chemotherapy contributed only 2% to the 5-year survival rates for people with cancer. A few studies comparing conventional treatments with doing nothing found that cancer patients who did nothing actually lived as long, if not longer, than those who underwent treatments.
Be an activist about your own health. Read, study and learn about your options.
Ask your doctor how many people out of 100 who get the same treatment recommended will actually benefit? Then ask what that benefit is. Will you survive an extra few days or a few years? What are the side effects of the proposed treatments? What are the risks?
Surgery, chemo and radiation will not prevent the spread of cancer. Conventional treatments attack the localized tumors. Those tumors don’t usually kill people. The spread of cancer cells to the liver, lungs, brain, bones and other vital areas is what kills patients.
That’s why it is so important to build up your immune system through nutrition and lifestyle changes. Go slow in making decisions about conventional cancer treatments.
If nutritional treatments are started while cancer is still undetected, there is nearly a 100 percent chance of reversing the disease. Once the tumor is diagnosed, the odds become longer. However, even if it’s too late to reverse the disease, good nutrition has extended patient’s lives from months to years. In worst cases, it has minimized the pain patients endured in their final days.
What are some risk factors for developing (or growing) cancer?
DIETARY FAT
You must cut your dietary fat consumption to 10% of your total calories. Most Americans consume 30-40% of their calories in fat. In every population around the world that eats a high-fat diet, cardiovascular disease and cancer are the biggest killers.
Any kind of fat will compromise your immune system – even “good” fats like olive oil or fish oil capsules.
Adding any oil to your food will also raise your cholesterol level even more than eating cholesterol itself.
DIETARY ACID
Cancer cells can flourish in a highly acidic environment. Animal foods are the biggest contributors to acidity in our diet. The vast majority of plant foods are alkaline. Other contributors to acidity include grains, sugar, spicy foods, fried foods, salt, sodas, coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs, medications and tobacco.
POOR CIRCULATION AND LOW OXYGEN
Poor circulation and low oxygen allow cancer cells to thrive. Acidic (pH 7.3) blood has 69% less oxygen than an alkaline (7.45 pH) blood. If you have clogged blood vessels from eating a high fat diet, your oxygen levels will be lower. This lack of oxygen does not necessarily cause cancer, but does creates an environment that cancer cells can thrive in.
HIGH BLOOD SUGAR
When you have high blood sugar levels, you are feeding cancer cells. Once blood sugar levels (glucose) rise to over 110 mg/dl, cancer incidence rises. Cancer cells consume 18 times more sugar than normal cells. Trying to beat cancer on a diet that raises blood sugar is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
Refined foods raise the blood sugar level. They are simple carbohydrates such as white flour, wheat flour, refined sugar, pastries, white pasta, white bread, white rice, French fries, all chips, cakes, soft drinks and other junk foods.
Drinking alcohol is the same thing as drinking sugar right out of the bag.
HIGH CHOLESTEROL LEVELS
The only source of dietary cholesterol comes from animal foods. Cancer cells have higher demands for cholesterol (and sugar).
HIGH SEX HORMONES
High fat foods are the main culprits for raising sex hormones. Milk is full of bovine estrogen from cows. Body fat also stimulates the production of estrogen. This is the reason that overweight women have higher cancer risks.
Pesticides and other chemical toxins raise estrogen levels. Since 95 percent of the pesticides Americans consume come from meat and dairy products, they’re getting a double-boost of hormones when they eat animal foods.
Eating a high-fiber diet removes excessive sex hormones from the body and lowers estrogen levels.
Many studies have linked high testosterone levels to prostate cancer. Eating animal foods stimulates the production of testosterone. Eating any farm animal today adds to your hormone overdose because large corporate farms use hormones to increase animal growth and output.
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Prescription drugs are highly concentrated and synthetic so they are very hard on your liver.
How To Be Successful
Your diet must be totally plant-based. No animal products are allowed. You must totally switch. You cannot get good results by only making a few changes.
You must be strict with yourself. If you want a chance at reversing cancer, you will have to be the demanding Queen of nutrition. You don’t have to restrict food portions if you are eating the correct foods.
The only soy food allowed on this diet is the whole soybean (edamame). The only rice product allowed is whole brown rice.
Use whole-wheat pastas or whole-wheat breads. Make sure the label on grain products says whole-wheat, sprouted wheat or organic rolled oats. Don’t buy breads or pastas that list multigrain or stoned wheat as the main ingredient as those are not whole grains.
A low-fat plant based diet is about eating natural, whole plant foods. All animal products are excluded because they promote cancer. Even though refined (packaged) foods are technically plant-based, they should not be included as they will diminish your benefits.
Some people think they can defeat cancer by drinking organic milk or eating organic eggs and meats. Saying organic animal products are better for you is like saying organic tobacco is better for smokers. Organic animal foods will plug up your arteries and promote cancer just as fast as non-organic animal foods.
Fish is not a health food. A survey of a large number of postmenopausal women showed that the group who ate fish had higher rates of breast cancer.
The Power of the Mind
As a practical matter, attitude is important. Positive thinking can enhance your life while anger, stress and depression can suppress the immune system. If you had two groups of people and one group relied on the mind (or spirit), while the other group relied on a good cancer-fighting diet, the nutritional group would win easily. The mind can be a healer for some people, but proper nutrition is the key to consistent success.
Exercise
Exercise is an essential part of this nutritional plan. Active Americans get a fraction of the cancers that sedentary Americans get. Cancer hates oxygen and exercise oxygenates tissues.
Walking is probably the best exercise for us. It’s easy, cheap and gets you outdoors. Always get at least half an hour of exercise a day.
Get out in the sun occasionally. It’s the best way to get vitamin D.
Vitamin D
During the summer, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., fair-skinned people should get 10 minutes of sun exposure, while very dark-skinned people should get 30 minutes several times a week. Never allow yourself to get sunburned.
Vitamin Supplements
Cancer is not a deficiency disease of a single nutrient. Synthetic supplements can cause more problems than they can help. If you want to supplement, do it with greens and other vegetables in your juicer or blender. Juicing or blending can be life saving for seriously ill patients who are unable to eat much.
How Do You Get Started?
Drastically changing your diet is hard. You have been on your current diet for many years so you don’t even have to think about it. The easiest way to start is to get a cook book with low-fat, plant-based recipes to give you ideas and inspiration.
If you want more information on the “why” of eating this way, you will want to purchase my book, Diet and Cancer: Is There a Connection? If you have all the information you need right now and just want to get started, order my cook book, Coco’s Healthy Cooking. In the cook book you will be able to find a number of recipes which fit the cancer-fighting criteria that is listed here. Both books are available on Amazon.
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© 2010-2013 Melinda Coker
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