7 Cancer and Nutrition – A Personalized Treatment Plan.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
7 Cancer and Nutrition – A Personalized Treatment Plan.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
Welcome to the Cancer Secrets podcast. Changing the Cancer Paradigm. Hosted by Dr. Jonathan Steagall, a medical doctor and cancer specialist practicing in Atlanta, Georgia, deeply affected by his grandmother's death from stomach cancer, as well as patients he cared for in medical training, he realized there has to be a better way to treat cancer. Dr. Stegall has a unique and innovative approach to treating cancer called integrative oncology, combining modern medicine with alternative therapies personalized to each patient. This podcast is designed to educate, support and give you a positive voice you can trust. We invite you to join us on this journey as we seek to change the cancer paradigm.
Speaker2:
Hello and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Jonathan Seagal. This is episode number seven. If you're new to the show, please go back and listen to my introductory episode to learn more about me and my vision for this podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about the importance of nutrition in cancer treatment. I will share why nutrition is so important, as well as the nutrition plan I recommend to my patients. We'll also get into some examples of healthy food and eating habits. We invite you to grab a friend or family member to listen in today. Today's show is foundational to this podcast and will reveal the basics behind my personalized approach to cancer treatment. Let's dive in. First, I want to discuss how cancer and nutrition are related. Now, many patients come to me after seeing other oncologists and they tell me that their oncologist told them that nutrition doesn't really matter. That doesn't matter what you eat. Just make sure you don't lose weight, that there are no studies showing that nutrition makes a difference. And all of these statements are false. We have many scientific studies, very good studies, showing that nutrition makes a big difference whether we're talking about prevention or treatment of cancer. And I first want to review the differences and similarities between normal, healthy cells inside the body and cancer cells. So our bodies are comprised of roughly 100 trillion cells, and these cells carry out different functions.
Speaker2:
Some are involved in helping the heart to beat. Others are involved in air exchange in the lungs. Others are involved in digestion. Others work inside the brain. Still, others work in the skin. But these cells all have similar characteristics. Our healthy cells have to take in nutrients for energy, and they turn those nutrients into an energy form known as ATP. Now, as you can imagine, our cells are not only exposed to good things, but also to bad things. And this has never been more true than it is today in our environments. We're exposed to all sorts of toxic chemicals and ingredients. And all of these exposures take their toll on our cells. So if you can imagine all of the things that we're exposed to in the air, in the water, in our food, as well as in our household exposures, our cells are really bathing in toxic soup. Now, we obviously can't avoid all of these harmful exposures altogether, but what we can do is control that cellular environment as much as possible. Now we know that when cells are stressed and overworked and exposed to too many of these things, that they don't work as well. Now, part of this is what we know of is aging cells don't work as well. Cells don't produce energy as well. The body therefore does not function as well. And when a cell function has degraded enough, it has one of two choices.
Speaker2:
It can either die, which is programmed cell death known as apoptosis, or it can mutate in order to stay alive. Now, our preference is actually for cells to undergo apoptosis and die, and most cells have that mechanism within the genetic code. That's what we want to happen. If a cell is no longer functioning and helping us appropriately, we want it to die. However, what we see a lot today are cells mutating, and this mutational process is known as cancer. Healthy cells mutate into cancer in order to stay alive. The problem with this is that along with these mutations, these cells develop abnormal behavior. And these are known as the hallmarks of cancer. We know cancer grows very rapidly. It multiplies into many different cells. These cells are aggressive. They invade other structures within the body, and ultimately cancer cells are immortal. They live forever unless we kill them. All of these things resulting from what was once a healthy, highly functioning cell. Nutrition plays into this in a very meaningful way. First of all, if we're trying to prevent cancer, nutrition matters a lot. Good nutrition not only provides wonderful antioxidants and nutrients and other great things, but it also doesn't provide a lot of the harmful things like pesticides and other harmful chemicals we see in much of our food supply today. Now, one of the things patients ask me about most is what should I be eating? They frequently ask me about sugar because we know from research many years ago, from Dr.
Speaker2:
Otto Warburg, that cancer loves sugar. So another word for sugar is glucose. And we find glucose in many foods today, especially highly processed foods like cookies and candy and chips and processed breads and other things like that. Now, cancer prefers glucose. So a logical assumption then is if we reduce glucose enough, then cancer can't survive. This is the basis for the ketogenic diet, which basically restricts carbohydrates very close to zero. Now, this is a nice idea and for many years I recommended the ketogenic diet for my cancer patients. However, what we found in the interim is that cancer, although it loves sugar, it can use other things for fuel as well. It can use too much protein as fuel. It can use too much fat as fuel. It can even use ketones for fuel. One recent study found that one type of melanoma cell actually prefers ketones. And we know that ketones are the byproduct from eating a very low carbohydrate diet. So what do we do? If you go online, you see multiple different schools of thought on what we should be eating to fight cancer. Some people say you need to eat an all raw food diet. Others say to eat low carb. Others say to eat low fat. Others say to go completely vegan. It's very confusing.
Speaker2:
And so, as you can imagine, I see patients in my office every day who have no idea what to eat and are as confused as ever. They want to do all that they can, but they also want to choose a diet that can also be a lifestyle. So now I'd like to dive in to my principles of good nutrition. We've all heard it said you are what you eat. So let's ask the question Do you know what's in your food? This is a profoundly important question we should all be asking ourselves. What we eat is such an important part of our life and health. But often we don't think twice about what or how much we put into our mouths. Now, most of us in the developed world have grown up with an abundance of food throughout all seasons, often at arm's length. And this has led to a level of complacency and, quite frankly, ignorance about what is actually in the food we eat. Likely, if we knew what was in some of the food we ate on a daily basis, and what the subsequent health implications are for consuming such food regularly, our diets would likely look dramatically different. So it's time to develop mindfulness and awareness about what we eat. Let's look at some statistics. There are over 2500 chemical additives that are used in food and an additional 12,000 chemical substances which have the possibility of finding their way into our food, whether through environmental contamination or as a result of producing food.
Speaker2:
Now, according to physician and researcher Dr. Larry McCleary, about 80% of the food on the shelves of supermarkets today did not exist 100 years ago. This is a staggering statistic regarding the reality in which we now live, where food is rarely healthy fuel for our bodies, but instead artificial, chemically laden poison. Simply reading the ingredient list on the back of the label of many of the processed foods people eat every day reveals a long list of ingredients with difficult to pronounce names. Often these ingredients are preservatives, stabilizers or other non-food ingredients used to preserve color or shelf life. Now, many of these ingredients we should strive to avoid is they're not even technically food themselves. Many people assume that if an ingredient is included in food, that it has been tested for safety and deemed to be OC. The problem with this, as we have so many food additives today, it's impossible to test them all. In reality, we're human guinea pigs. And although this is not an exhaustive list, I do want to hit on some of the main chemical additives in our food today that we should be avoiding. The first is known as Mutilated Hydroxy Anna Sole or VHA, and the second is mutilated hydroxy toluene or BHT. Now these are both similar, but they're individual preservatives, often use in combination.
Speaker2:
Bacha is considered reasonably anticipated to be carcinogenic to humans, but it's still considered what is known as grass. Grass generally recognized as safe by the FDA, but has been reported to trigger certain cancers in rats. But human studies are lacking. Both BHP and BHP are considered likely to be endocrine disruptors. Purple Paraben is another one. It's added to foods like muffins and tortillas. It's been shown to be an endocrine disruptor and can influence genes which have been found to be important in breast cancer. It's also been found to accelerate breast cancer cell growth. Another additive is sodium nitrite. Now, sodium nitrite is commonly found in cured and processed meats such as bacon, luncheon meats, hot dogs and sausages. Now, curing meats with high amounts of sodium, including sodium nitrite, was the most common method of preservation many years ago. But in the years since, studies have suggested that it's highly carcinogenic, especially relating to cancers of the digestive system. Now this conversation would be incomplete without also discussing chemicals in the environment that can contaminate our food. Aflatoxins are the most carcinogenic, naturally occurring substances. There are secondary metabolites of certain types of fungus and molds that can obviously infest foods as well as our homes. Bpa, also known as Bisphenol A, is a component used to make plastics, and we all know that BPA and plastics are especially harmful, especially when plastic is heated. Never, ever heat plastic, even if it's BPA free.
Speaker2:
Finally, there's two other very important chemicals that can contaminate our food. The first being glyphosate. A glyphosate is a pesticide found in the commercial product roundup. And we know that glyphosate can cause all kinds of problems in the main way we ingest glyphosate is through non organic fruits and vegetables. And finally, the last contaminant we must discuss is known as recombinant bovine growth hormone, or RBG. It's a synthetic form of growth hormone given to dairy cows to increase milk production. And subsequently, the dairy products from cows treated with these hormones are tainted with these hormones, including what's known as insulin like growth factor one or IGF one. Igf one is known to not only play a role in hormone related cancers of the breast, prostate, ovaries and uterus, but also IGF one is found to drive many different cancer types. So step one, when we talk about what we should be eating, is to talk about what we should not be eating. So obviously avoid processed foods. These foods are where you'll most likely find the wide variety of chemicals in food additives and preservatives we just discussed. Avoid cured meats, including bacon, ham, luncheon meats and sausage. Eat organic whenever possible. And by doing this, you'll be avoiding many of the harmful pesticides inherent in conventionally grown foods. Be mindful about how and where the food you buy was sourced and avoid foods commonly contaminated with mycotoxins such as corn, wheat and peanuts.
Speaker2:
Let's talk about sugar. Sugar should be eliminated. Now, when we talk about sugar, we're mostly talking about white table sugar. But there are also other forms of sugar which are perhaps equally as harmful. And these are the naturally occurring sugars in things such as white flour. Any sort of processed breads are going to include white flour. Similarly, heavily processed foods such as pastas, should also be avoided. However, you don't need to be avoiding carbohydrates altogether. Carbohydrates naturally occurring in fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains are all good sources of carbohydrates. Principle number two, and this is very important, is to minimize what is known as methionine, and that's spelled methi0ni any methionine is an amino acid and it's been shown in studies to be required for cancer cell growth. This landmark study from approximately 40 years ago found that cancer cells require methionine to grow, but normal, healthy cells do not. The follow up study found that when methionine is restricted, cancer cells could not survive. Now you may be asking, can I take some sort of pill, either a prescription or a supplement that blocks or eliminates methionine? The answer is no. However, the best way we can reduce or eliminate methionine is through the diet. Not surprisingly, a diet high in fruits and vegetables organic of course, limits methionine greatly. Methionine is also low in grains and legumes. So basically a plant based diet needs to be our focus.
Speaker2:
Now, high methionine foods are things like fish, chicken and red meat. Dairy has a moderate level of methionine, so what I recommend is choosing mostly plant based foods. So you're choosing a lot of fruits and vegetables, you're eating some grains and you're eating some legumes. Now some dairy is okay if you want to have some organic. Free range eggs from time to time. That's okay. If you want to have some animal protein from time to time, that's okay. I usually recommend anywhere between once or twice a week if you want to have a healthy animal protein such as grass fed beef or organic free range chicken. That's okay, but don't make it a daily staple. Now, many people are numbers people and they want to know numbers. So a good goal for daily protein intake is approximately one gram of protein per kilogram of body weight. So to calculate this, divide your body weight in pounds by 2.2. This is your body weight in kilograms and is the number of grams of protein you should strive for. For most people, this amounts to between 50 and 60 grams of protein a day. And if you start logging your protein intake, you're going to find you're probably eating too much. In the United States, especially, we eat too much protein. And just as an added note, all of the studies on longevity have found that people who eat high protein diets don't live as long.
Speaker2:
Now I realize this runs contrary to the fitness world, which says that you need more protein to build muscle and you need more protein for energy, and you need more protein if you're not eating a lot of carbohydrates. But honestly, protein is one of those things that we need enough of, but not too much. So that brings us back to Methionine. So Methionine is naturally going to be found in foods that are higher in protein, such as animal proteins. Some patients have even asked me, Dr. SIEGEL, how much methionine should I be eating every day? A good rule to shoot for is to keep methionine under 1000 milligrams a day. Now 1000 milligrams is the same as one gram. Now there are a list online of methionine levels in foods, and I encourage you to pull up one of these lists and use it to make decisions in terms of what you eat. What you'll find is a serving of animal protein, such as fish or beef or chicken is going to have somewhere between 608 hundred milligrams of methionine. So as you can see, if you're eating a serving of animal protein, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for anything else. This is why we need to prioritize plant based foods. So getting back to carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are an important form of energy and similar to protein. We want enough, but not too much.
Speaker2:
I don't want you to feel that you need to eliminate or even minimize carbohydrates. You'll be getting a lot of carbohydrates in fruits, some vegetables, as well as in grains and legumes. However, these are going to be buffered somewhat by fiber. Naturally occurring fiber is very important for limiting the blood sugar response in the body to high carbohydrate foods. So what I don't want you to do is start buying processed juices and eating a lot of high carbohydrate foods in the absence of the naturally occurring fiber. So basically, if you're sticking to fruits and vegetables in their raw form and if you want to do a juice that you make in a juicer, that's okay. But I don't want you buying store bought juices because they don't have the other beneficial ingredients you're going to get going the natural route. Now we also need to talk about fat. For many years we were told that fat is bad if that makes you fat. Fat causes heart disease. Now, these have all turned out to be untrue. Although fat is more calorically dense than protein or carbohydrates, it's not the evil that it's been portrayed as for many years. We do need some fat and ideally we want to make the fat in our diet from healthy sources. These are things like avocados, coconuts, olives, nuts and seeds. When we eat things like grass fed butter or medium chain triglyceride oil, these also provide high quality fats that our bodies need.
Speaker2:
So I don't want you eating too much fat, but also not too little. So you can see a theme here. We want a nice balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. We don't need to go overboard in eating any one type of micronutrient, but we also don't want to go too low in any of them either. If you're eating a plant based diet, restricting methionine and avoiding processed foods, you will have the best anti cancer diet available. Now let's talk about what to drink. Water is obviously very important and you might be asking how much water should I drink? A good goal to shoot for is to drink half of your body weight and ounces. So a £150 person should drink at least 75 ounces of water each day. Now, in traditional Chinese medicine, it is recommended to drink water in between meals rather than with meals. This is thought to improve digestion and absorption to separate water from food. Now, we don't have any studies showing that this is true, but it may be something worth trying, especially if you are having any sort of digestive issues. People often ask me about coffee and tea. Now both of these are encouraged. They both have anticancer effects. Of course, organic is best, but if you're drinking organic black coffee, we know you're going to get an anti-cancer effect from that.
Speaker2:
Just be careful about adding additional cream and sugar if you absolutely require a sweetener and just can't drink your coffee black. I highly recommend stevia. I know we've covered a lot today. Nutrition is a potentially confusing topic and it's easy to get overwhelmed, especially with all the different people telling you what you should and shouldn't be eating. Rest assured, my nutrition recommendations are based on all of the most up to date research, as well as what I see clinically in my cancer practice. When making the changes we've discussed today, your body, as well as your mind, might take time to adjust, especially if you were making drastic changes. It's not uncommon to experience headaches, fatigue and irritability, not to mention cravings when you make these changes. But just remember, your body will adjust. Once you undergo the transition phase, you will find that you feel better with improved energy and better focus. If you're making these changes now, decide immediately to make these changes a lifestyle rather than merely a diet. The former is something you can do long term, whereas the latter implies only a short term commitment. If all of this seems daunting, please keep in mind that what you eat makes a significant difference. A large study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is one of the world's foremost oncology journals, found that women with breast cancer who ate five or more servings of vegetables and fruit each day and exercise for 30 minutes per day, six days a week, cut their risk of dying in half in the first two years following their diagnosis.
Speaker2:
If that were a patentable drug, every oncologist would prescribe it to their patients, and our cancer treatment outcomes would be far superior to what they currently are. So please realize what you eat matters a lot. It greatly impacts the outcome to treatment and ultimately survival when we're dealing with cancer. All the information we've discussed today, as well as much more, is covered in Chapter six of my new book, Cancer Secrets. Chapter six is all about the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and treatment. It outlines all of the recommendations I mentioned today with lots of in-depth information and research on why I recommend what I do. If you're interested in this topic, I strongly encourage you to pick up my book on Amazon.com. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. As you can tell, I consider nutrition extremely important. Not only is it a valuable tool we have in our toolbox, but it's also something that you can control from home. Every single day. You decide what you eat and therefore you hold the key to a very powerful treatment in your arsenal. I hope you'll join me next time for episode eight, where we'll dive into chemotherapy and how we can make it safer and perhaps even more effective. Thank you again for your time today. I look forward to next time.
Speaker1:
Thank you for listening to the Cancer Secrets podcast. If you were encouraged by this show, please share it with a loved one or friend. Help support the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. The more reviews, the more friends like you can find the show. Finally, to learn more, visit us online at Doctor Stay Google.com. The Cancer Secrets Podcast. Changing the Cancer Paradigm.
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