What You Can Do with Your Diet to Help Combat Cancer

Moving from vanity to fear, cancer and skin aging turn out to have certain elements in common. In both cases, damage to the extra-cellular matrix is a key part of the process.

From the point of view of a cancer cell, life is hard. Cells in the body are becoming cancerous all the time, as a result of DNA mutations, but in the vast majority of cases, these cells either die spontaneously or are identified by the immune system and destroyed. A very small proportion of cancer cells manage to avoid these fates, and start to multiply, but are brought up short by the presence of other cells which have receptors on their surface that tell neighboring cells with similar receptors to stop growing. The cancer cell stops, unless it finds a way to remove its inhibitor receptors.

A healthy diet contains a number of compounds which can force cancer cells to re-express their inhibitor receptors, and as soon as they do they must stop growing. Nevertheless, a small percentage of the cancer cells that have got this far manage to keep their inhibitor receptors under wraps, and continue to pro­liferate. Now, however, they run into a new set of restrictions; the extra-cellular matrix stands in their way, and holds them in place. The matrix also presents another problem because the cancer cells - now numbering several millions - need to find a blood supply or choke to death. They need to attract new blood vessels, but the omnipresent matrix presents a series of barriers to any capillary that would otherwise grow towards the developing tumor.

If the cancer is to progress, it must destroy the matrix so that a new blood supply can be achieved. The successful cancer cells now use another trick; they secrete the same group of matrix-destructive enzymes (the matrix metallo-proteases) as are involved in the aging of skin, and which have the same result here. The matrix is punched full of holes, new blood vessels can grow in and the tumor really takes off. Even worse, the holes in the matrix allow metastasis, the process whereby cancer spreads from an original tumor via the lymphatic network and the bloodstream to other sites in the body.

A healthy diet presents the cancer with many additional prob­lems. Such a diet contains compounds which can kill many cancer cells, or force them to re-differentiate (revert to their former, non­cancerous forms). It will contain other compounds which block the matrix metallo-proteases, and stabilize the microfibers of the matrix, thereby blocking the in-growth of blood vessels.

The healthy diet, according to the American National Cancer Institute, should contain at least nine portions of fruit and vege­tables a day (women are let off with a slightly lower 'dose'). Very few people eat this amount of fruits and vegetables; in the U.S., very few manage to meet even the U.S. government's less ambi­tious recommendations of five a day. And as we get older our intakes of fruits and vegetables, which are too low to start with, drop even further.

The increasing incidence and severity of Type B malnutrition in middle-aged and older people helps to explain why the incidence of cancer increases as we get older. All the layered defenses against the cancer cell are in a state of disrepair. The immune system, depleted in many of the micronutrients it needs in order to func­tion properly, is faltering; the compounds that would normally keep cancer cells in check or kill them have gone; there is nothing to block the destruction of the extra-cellular matrix.

You can of course stay on your current bad diet, wait to develop cancer and then throw yourself on the tender mercies of the oncologist. I would rather eat a good diet, supplemented with the relevant micro- and phyto-nutrients, and stay healthier for longer.

Supplements that provide an anti-cancer shield are:

• a broad spectrum of vitamin/mineral antioxidants

• a flavonoid complex

• co-enzyme Q10

• betaine and occasionally echinacea

• a pre-biotic supplement

• mixed carotenoids for echinacea substitute yeast beta glucans

What about anti-cancer foods? The best foods to eat for a cancer-fighting profile are generally a wide range of fruit and vegetables. A number or culinary herbs also contain health-promoting nutrients.

• brassica vegetables such as kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli

• citrus fruits

• tomatoes

• rosemary, thyme, oregano and garlic

• onions

• soy products such as soy milk and soy beans

• wheat or rice bran

• walnuts

• raspberries, blueberries and blackberries

• turmeric

• pears

• shitake mushrooms

The general principles of an anti-cancer diet are: more fruit and vegetables, more grains, pulses and legumes and fewer fats, sugars, salt and smoked or pickled foods.

As one can see, there are several steps to make in the prevention, and as such plenty of responsibility.

Verne Verona, "Nature's Cancer Fighting Foods." Amazon