October is breast cancer awareness month. In Sacramento, even the comics are using pink ink (going pink) for an edition to call attention to breast cancer awareness. See, Comic strips turn pink for breast cancer awareness. And in today's Sacramento Bee, October 3, 2010, an excellent column appears on Sundays under the section heading "Integrative Medicine," by Drs. Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden. Today's column is "Integrative Medicine: Enlist fruits and vegetables to fight off cancer.
In Sacramento, numerous doctors are incorporating the idea of integrative medicine into their medical practice. Does your health care team have time to read studies that show populations that consume less animal food and more plant food have a lower risk of cancer? According to today's Integrative Medicine column in the Sacramento Bee, the doctors writing the column not that the the risk of cancer in vegetarians is about 50 percent lower than among people who eat meat on a regular basis.
Ask your own doctor if he or she is aware that animal foods and dairy products can increase the levels of hormones as well as pesticides in your bloodstream. If fiber helps to prevent cancer in numerous ways, is your doctor aware that there's little fiber in animal foods? If you're studying the risk of cancer, than it is eating low-fiber foods, especially barbequed meat that's all charred around the sides.
In the integrative health column, the doctors discuss antioxidants found in plant foods. Has your doctor ever explained to you that antioxidants help to prevent your DNA from damage? You want to eat foods that prevent DNA repair problems at any age and especially as you age. If you take a look at the Angiogenesis Foundation website, you can learn more about how plants may block a cancer's ability to grow. See, Angiogenesis Foundation - Understanding Angiogenesis. Also see the tutorial from the National Cancer Institute on how angiogenesis is important in cancer research. See, Angiogenesis - National Cancer Institute.
How Angiogenesis Makes Cancer Cells Multiply
The growth of new capillary blood vessels is called angiogenesis, a vital process for reproduction and healing. Cancer turns the body against itself by hijacking the angiogenesis process. Just as healthy tissues require oxygen and nutrients, malignant tumors need a blood supply to fuel their growth. But, unlike normal tissues, cancer keeps angiogenesis permanently switched on to ensure that it has a dedicated, uninterrupted blood supply.
Cancer is so difficult to cure is that it takes too long to be detected, according to the article on Dr. Oz's site, "What You Can Eat to Defeat Cancer." By the time blood vessels have grown in the cancer, or when it is advanced, it's much more difficult to treat. In a person with advanced cancer, uncontrolled angiogenesis keeps cancer cells growing and allows them to spread.
What angiogenisis means is that blood vessels are growing that feed the cancer cells with nutrient-rich blood. That process allows the cancer cells to multiply and spread, growing even more blood vessels.
You have to turn to specific foods to prevent angiogenesis in the first place. Without angiogenesis, cancers can’t grow and become dangerous. Microscopic cancers that form in our bodies all the time are mostly harmless. These cancers aren’t even visible on a standard X-ray or body scan.
How can you use certain foods to prevent cancer from multiplying and spreading? Angiogenesis needs to be brought under control before the tumor can get a foothold. This is where your everyday diet comes into play, according to the most recent medical studies. To read more on this subject, check out the article, "Five Foods That Starve Cancer."
Disturbing new research suggests that microscopic cancer, small cancer cells that can only been seen under a microscope, is widely prevalent. A recent study of women in their 40s indicated that 40% of them had microscopic breast cancer. Even more shocking, almost 100% of people in their 70s will have microscopic cancer in their thyroid glands, according to the article on Dr. Oz's site, "What You Can Eat to Defeat Cancer."
A microscopic tumor can grow up to 16,000 times its original size in as little as 2 weeks. But new groundbreaking research from The Angiogenesis Foundation proposes that you can stop cancer before it begins to grow. This new preventive approach is called anti-angiogenesis.
To learn more about anti-angiogenesis and the groundbreaking research at The Angiogenesis Foundation, click here. According to the article on the Dr. Oz website, What You Can Eat to Defeat Cancer, "anti-angiogenesis encourages that, by changing the way you eat, you can change your 'internal environment,' thereby depriving cancer cells the opportunity to grow and multiply. Certain foods, eaten in the correct portions and frequency, can provide cancer-starving benefits."
Five Foods That Starve Cancer
These five foods include the following vegetables, fruits, and fish:
1. Bok choy. This is a Chinese-type celery sold in most Sacramento supermarkets. If you find organic bok choy at one of Sacramento's Whole Food Markets or the Sacramento or Davis Natural Foods Co-op, all the better. If you can't get organic boy choy, most supermarkets carry it in the section next to the celery or cabbage in the produce sections. You can eat boy choy raw in a salad, cut up like celery, or stir-fry it with Chinese vegetables and brown rice or whole oat groats, or any other grain or vegetable that is favorable to your body's needs.
2. Cooked Tomatoes. Tomatoes contain more cancer-fighting properties than raw tomatoes. Both contain the molecule lycopene, but heating the tomato changes its chemical structure and makes the benefits more readily available to your body. According to the article, "Five Foods That Starve Cancer," you should eat 2-3 (1/2 cup) servings of cooked tomatoes a week.
3. Flounder. This fish is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and low in mercury. Three 6-ounce servings a week is ideal. Also Alaskan wild-caught salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids as are some other fish. Make sure the wild-caught fish you buy is both high in omega-3 fatty acids and low in mercury.
4. Strawberries. The antioxidants in strawberries help fight cancers. You should eat 1 cup a day, including the juice, according to Dr. Oz's website article, "Five Foods That Starve Cancer." But remember, since strawberries may be contaminated with pesticides, choose organic strawberries. And don't eat excess strawberries as they could start affecting your thyroid.
If you have hypothyroidism, check out the article on foods to avoid for hypthyroidism. See "Foods to Avoid for Hypothyroidism." Some cruciferous vegetables and some fruits, including strawberries are on the list. Ironically, some of the cruciferous vegetables and strawberries are on other lists of what to eat to help reduce the risk of cancer.
5. Artichokes. Did you know that the hearts of artichokes contain 3 different cancer-fighting molecules? According to Dr. Oz's website article on "Five Foods That Starve Cancer," enjoy ¼ cup of hearts per day.
Can Vegetables and Some Fruits and Berries Prevent Cancer Cells from Growing New Blood Vessels?
Angiogenesis describes how tissues in your body find the ability to grow new blood vessels. The whole idea is that in a normal percent, the process is regulated. In a cancer, the process is no longer regulated. One regulated angiogenesis works is how a scratch normally heals. If you're pregnant, angiogenesis is the regulated process by which new blood vessels form that helps the placenta grow to a certain size to allow your baby to develop normally.
In a healthy person, angiogenesis is regulated. When your body needs new blood vessels, they grow. But the growth stops when the blood vessel is completed. In cancer and tumors or polyps, the the process of angiogenesis goes awry. The thing that is supposed to regulate it and stop it when the normal size is reached doesn't work. Blood vessel formation keeps happening, keeps growing, and the cancer, tumor, or polyp keeps growing without anything to stop it.
Scientists want to know whether any type of food can stop angiogenesis from growing abnormally. Cancers are at first only a single abnormal cell. Can vegetables, fruits, or berries get rid of that abnormal cell? We all harbor these microscopic cancers, but most of them remain dormant. What food, gene, or toxic pollution around you will make these microscopic cancers wake up from their dormancy and grow simply because the particular food, gene, radiation, or toxic chemical in the environment makes it possible for those microscopic cancer cells to get a blood supply?
Can foods get rid of whatever is making it possible for cancer cells to get a blood supply? Once cancer cells have a blood supply from newly grown blood vessels, they will get enough oxygen and nutrients to keep on growing as if immortal.
At first, the cancer cells excrete chemicals that look like angiogenesis. The cells are smart enough to learn to feed by creating their own blood supply. To get rid of these cells gone wild you have to cut of the blood supply of a cancer or tumor to stop it from replicating itself. As long as new blood vessels bring it blood, it will keep on multiplying out of control. It, too is some kind of unregulated life force. And cutting of the blood supply puts a method of control on it. But how do you starve the cancer cells? With baking soda? With certain foods? What shrinks cancer cells by cutting off the blood supply to those cells, but not to normal cells?
There are drugs that shrink tumors. But there also are experiments being researched with foods, such as maitake and shiitake mushrooms, or foods that turn up the immune system, such as colostrum. But drugs only work some of the time, not in all cases. Can foods do a better job?
The answer is yes, scientists are studying foods. You can read at the Angiogenesis Foundation site how researchers are studying specific foods concerning the power of those foods to block angiogenisis. What are the foods being studied at the Angiogenesis foundation? Those foods are blueberries, raspberries, apples, oranges, kale, bok choy, tomatoes, artichokes, pumpkins, maitake mushrooms, parsley, and some legumes. Scientists are studying soybeans, turmeric, nutmeg, garlic, and there are some animal foods on the list being researched.
Can fish starve cancer cells? Scientists are studying tuna. That's right tuna, with all the talk about mercury in tuna, it's being researched. So is red wine and chocolate. Can chocolate starve cancer cells?
Look at it this way. If cancer cells grow in sugar, but you can buy 100 percent no-sugar added cocoa or baking chocolate that is unsweetened with no added sugars, that's the kind of chocolate that may play a role in starving cancer cells--if scientists find that unsweetened chocolate in specific small amounts is helpful. Chocolate is being studied.
Basically, what scientists look for is any given plant's ability to stop angiogenesis. Researchers are looking for the foods that starve a single cancer cell or even a microscopic cell cluster. Specifically, scientists are looking for proteins in any given plant food or fish that contain tumor-suppressor proteins. If there's something like that in a food, it may help to prevent cancer or tumor cells from growing--or shrink them.
The idea is more cancer-fighting foods and less animal fats. But some vegetable oils don't do that and some might, such as extra virgin olive oil, also being studied by other researchers for a wide variety of reasons. When scientists look at foods, such as the various studies at UC Davis, cooked tomato products even tomato paste may hlep reduce the risk of prostate cancer by 50 percent, according to the Sacramento Bee column of Oct. 3, 2010, "Fight cancer with fruits and veggies, maybe even chocolate," in the print and online edition.
The problem is if only 35 percent of cancers are caused by dietary means, that leaves a huge percentage caused by environmental pollution, toxins, radiation, and genes that focus on DNA repair problems. Obesity also increases cancer risk.
Did you know that fat cells grow by angiogenesis. Fat cells need new blood vessels to grow. You can help reduce risk by eating more vegetables. Listen to a talk online by a scientist who is studying specific foods as a possible way of reducing cancer risk.
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