Whole Diet Studies
A diet-based cancer therapy, the Gerson Therapy, was used to treat melanoma cancer. The five-year survival rates from their therapy compared very favorably to conventional therapy reported in the medical literature, especially for more advanced stages of melanoma [179] (see Table 7).
An Italian cohort of 8,984 women was followed for an average of 9.5 years, with 207 incident cases of breast cancer during that time. Their diets were analyzed by patterns – salad vegetables (raw vegetables and olive oil), western (potatoes, red meat, eggs and butter), canteen (pasta and tomato sauce), and prudent (cooked vegetables, pulses, and fish). Only the salad vegetable diet pattern was associated with a significantly lower risk of breast cancer, about 35% lower. For women of normal weight (BMI <25) the salad vegetable pattern was even more protective, about a 61% decreased risk of breast cancer [180]. The overall dietary pattern does make a very significant difference.
In US-based studies the "prudent" diet has been shown to be protective for colon cancer, while the "western" diet has been shown to be detrimental. The "western" dietary pattern, with its higher intakes of red meat and processed meats, sweets and desserts, French fries, and refined grains, was associated with a 46% increase relative risk of colon cancer in the Nurses' Health Study [45]. Slattery et al [17] found a two-fold increase in relative risk of colon cancer associated with a "western" dietary pattern, and a 35–40% decrease in relative risk associated with the "prudent" pattern, especially among those diagnosed at an earlier age (<67 years old). The "salad vegetable" pattern is still more likely to be protective compared to the prudent dietary pattern, but this pattern did not exist in this study population.
In an analysis of the colon cancer data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, Platz et al [56] found that there was a 71% decrease in colon cancer risk when men with none of six established risk factors were compared to men with at least one of these risk factors (obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol consumption, early adulthood cigarette smoking, red meat consumption, and low intake of folic acid from supplements). So, if all men had the same health profile as these healthier 3% of the study population, colon cancer rates would have been only 29% of what they measured.
A plant-based dietary pattern in being currently tested in the Women's healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Study. About 3,000 women who were treated for an early stage of breast cancer have been randomized into two groups. The dietary goals for the test group of the study are 5 servings of vegetables, 16 oz of vegetable juice, 3 servings of fruit, 30 g of fiber, and <20% of energy from fat. No guidelines were given for animal product intake, and initial results seem to confirm, since there were no changes in body weight, total cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol [181], which would be affected by animal protein intake. However, over the first year of follow-up vegetable intake did increase to seven servings/day, fruit intake increased to 3.9 servings/day, energy from fat decreased from 28% to 23%. Also, plasma carotenoid concentrations increased significantly in the intervention group, but not in the control group. α-Carotene increased 223%, β-carotene increased 87%, lutein increase 29%, and lycopene increased 17% [182], indicating that a substantial dietary change had been made by these women. It will be very interesting to follow the results of this study.
Conclusion
What is the result when all of these things are put together? What if all of these factors reviewed here were taken into account and put into practice? This anticancer diet would have:
• adequate, but not excessive calories,
• 10 or more servings of vegetables a day, including cruciferous and allium vegetables; vegetable juice could meet part of this goal,
• 4 or more servings of fruits a day,
• high in fiber,
• no refined sugar,
• no refined flour,
• low in total fat, but containing necessary essential fatty acids,
• no red meat,
• a balanced ratio of omega 3 and omega 6 fats and would include DHA,
• flax seed as a source of phytoestrogens,
• supplemented with ~200 μg/day selenium,
• supplemented with 1,000 μg/day methylcobalamin (B-12),
• very rich in folic acid (from dark green vegetables),
• adequate sunshine to get vitamin D, or use 1,000 IU/day supplement,
• very rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals from fruits and vegetables, including α-carotene, β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, vitamin C (from foods), vitamin E (from foods),
• very rich in chlorophyll,
• supplemented with beneficial probiotics,
• supplemented with oral enzymes
As reviewed above, reductions of 60 percent in breast cancer rates have already been seen in human diet studies, and a 71 percent reduction in colon cancer for men without the known modifiable risk factors. These reductions are without taking into account many of the other factors considered in this review, such as markedly increased fruit and vegetable intake, balanced omega 3 and 6 fats, vitamin D, reduced sugar intake, probiotics, and enzymes – factors which all are likely to have an impact on cancer. Certainly cancer prevention would be possible, and cancer reversal in some cases is quite likely.
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Michael Donaldson
Director of Research, Hallelujah Acres Foundation, 13553 Vantage Hwy, Ellensburg, WA 98926, USA.
E-mail:
Nutrition Journal 2004, 3:19 doi:10.1186/1475-2891-3-19
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/19
© 2004 Donaldson; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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