Topic summary contributed by volunteer(s): Linda
Cancer is the #2 killer in the United States, and diet may be the #1 cause of cancer. The balance of evidence suggests that a whole food, plant-based diet may help prevent, treat, slow, and even reverse cancer progression. It’s never too late to start eating healthier, as cancer risk may drop after starting a plant-based diet at any age.
Some reasons why plant-based diets may be effective include lowering methionine intake, inhibiting angiogenesis, intercepting carcinogens, and increasing fiber and antioxidants. Populations eating diets centered on whole plant foods have lower rates of cancer. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables—at least 9 daily servings may boost detoxifying enzymes, lower inflammation, lower cholesterol, and make for healthier bowel movements, ridding the body of excess estrogen and cholesterol.
Consumption of animal products appears to increase the risk of cancer.
For substantiation of any statements of fact from the peer-reviewed medical literature, please see the associated videos below.
Before watching the video, can you guess which conditions vitamin D has actually been proven to work for in randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials?
How can we naturally increase the activity of our cancer-fighting natural killer cells?
I go over a case report of water-only fasting, followed by a whole food, plant-based diet for follicular lymphoma.
What kind of diet should cancer patients eat?
Women with breast cancer should include the “liberal culinary use of cruciferous vegetables.”
Randomized controlled trials show lowering saturated fat intake can lead to improved breast cancer survival.
Palmitic acid, a saturated fat concentrated in meat and dairy, can boost the metastatic potential of cancer cells through the fat receptor CD36.
What role do soy phytoestrogens play in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer?
Sun exposure is associated with lower rates of 15 different cancers and improved cancer survival. What happened when vitamin D supplements were put to the test?
What happens when we put cancer on a plant-based diet?
Despite less education on average, a higher poverty rate, and more limited access to health care, U.S. Hispanics tend to live the longest. Why?
Might appeals to masculinity and manhood help men with prostate cancer change their diet to improve their survival?
What can we conclude about the role of IV vitamin C after 33 years of trials involving at least 1,600 patients?
If studies from the 1970s showed cancer patients treated with vitamin C lived 4 times longer and sometimes even 20 times longer, why isn’t it standard practice today?
Studies in the 1970s with terminal cancer patients appeared to show an extraordinary survival gain with vitamin C, a simple and relatively nontoxic therapy.
Certain gut bacteria can “retoxify” carcinogens that your liver successfully detoxified, but these bacteria can be rapidly suppressed by simple dietary changes.
The lignans in rye could explain why rye intake is associated with lower breast and prostate cancer risk.
American Institute for Cancer Research recommendation compliance associated not only with cancer prevention and survival but less heart and respiratory disease mortality and a longer lifespan.
The association between cancer and the consumption of deep-fried foods may be due to carcinogens formed at high temperatures in animal foods (heterocyclic amines and polycyclic hydrocarbons) and plant foods (acrylamide).
Reducing cholesterol levels may inhibit breast cancer development, but the long-term use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs is associated with more than double the risk of both types of breast cancer: invasive ductal carcinoma and invasive lobular carcinoma.
Cholesterol appears to stimulate the growth of human breast cancer cells—which may explain why phytosterol-rich foods, such as pumpkin seeds, are associated with reduced breast cancer risk.
Do the anticancer effects of phytates in a petri dish translate out into clinical studies on cancer prevention and treatment?
Dramatically lower cancer rates in India may in part be attributable to their more plant-based, spice-rich diet.
Antioxidant intake from foods (not supplements) is associated with lower cancer risk.
What does the best available science say about the role multivitamins may play in heart disease, cancer, and longevity?
An elegant experiment is described in which the blood of those eating different types of spices—such as cloves, ginger, rosemary, and turmeric—is tested for anti-inflammatory capacity.
Blueberry consumption may double the population of our cancer-fighting immune cells, and the spices cardamom and black pepper may boost their activity.
Many of our most common diseases found to be rare, or even nonexistent, among populations eating plant-based diets.
If doctors can eliminate some of our leading killers by treating the underlying causes of chronic disease better than nearly any other medical intervention, why don’t more doctors do it?
One reason why soy consumption is associated with improved survival and lower recurrence rates in breast cancer patients may be because soy phytonutrients appear to improve the expression of tumor-suppressing BRCA genes.
Choline may be the reason egg consumption is associated with prostate cancer progression and death.
Simple changes in diet and lifestyle may quadruple a woman’s survival rate from breast cancer.
Reducing the ratio of animal to plant protein in men’s diets may slow the progression of prostate cancer.
Plant-based diets may prove to be a useful nutrition strategy in both cancer growth control as well as lifespan extension, because these diets are naturally lower in methionine.
Methionine restriction—best achieved through a plant-based diet—may prove to have a major impact on patients with cancer because, unlike normal tissues, many human tumors require the amino acid methionine to grow.
A higher rate of cancer deaths among those that handle and process meat is attributed to infection with viruses, and chronic exposure to animal proteins.
Cancer-causing viruses in poultry may explain increased risks of death from liver and pancreatic cancers.
Dr. Greger has scoured the world’s scholarly literature on clinical nutrition, and developed this brand-new live presentation on the latest in cutting-edge research on how a healthy diet can affect some of our most common medical conditions.
Cancer cells are commonly present in the body, but cannot grow into tumors without hooking up a blood supply. Angiogenesis inhibitors in plant foods may help prevent this from happening.
Black raspberries may cause complete clinical regression of precancerous oral lesions (oral intraepithelial neoplasia).
