Cancer Diet: Eating Right When You Have Cancer

The most common advice that health professionals keep telling patients around the world and have experienced this in every country that I consult out of an every hospital; they tell patients that you can eat what you want and today I’m particularly talking about cancer. We all know more and more people are getting diagnosed by this deadly disease all the time and we have more technology, we have better chemotherapy, we got radiation, we got every possible treatment right from immunology to immunotherapy, new drugs and hormonal treatment. What’s more alarming is people tend to breakdown tumours, go into remission. The doctors tell them that it’s all good go back home lead your normal life eat what you want and six months later sometimes even three months later or a year later there’s a metastatic cancer that comes back extremely aggressive. So why are these things happening in the first place when we have better hospitals we have better technology and we claim that we know it all when it comes to cancer and treatments. it’s only getting worse and through my experience and what I see around the world in the field of integrative oncology and integrative medicine it all comes down to your lifestyle and food.

I am NOT against chemo or chemotherapy or radiation. I am particularly against the way it’s done where a patient is told that you only need chemotherapy, you need radiation and that’s it. You can eat what you want you don’t have to do anything the treatment will take care of you and as human beings being species who are hard-wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain we automatically choose the easier way. For example food gives us pleasure so when any doctor or any health professional tells you that  you’re being treated but eat whatever you want you are happy because we’re wired for pleasure and we want to avoid the pain of being restricted from certain food which could do more harm and cause metastatic cancers. We don’t want to hear that and make those changes because again we’re trying to move away from things that cause pain to us which is also deprivation of the foods that we love.

The advice that is commonly given where people say eat whatever you want is the number one reason why people are getting sicker and sicker. It is one of the reasons why most cancers come back metastatic. Because we need to understand one thing when you get diagnosed with a cancer your body terrain has allowed a cancer cell to mutate and spread and the cancer to grow or a tumour to grow which means the environment in your body is supportive of the growth and spread of cancer. Now we can go through any treatment that we choose but if we do not change the terrain of the human body what I mean by that is if we don’t change the environment of the body your chemo on your radiation and also your alternative medicine or whatever it is that you choose to do is going to break down the tumour, it’s going to break down the cancer, your PET scans are going to show all good but you’ve never gotten to the root cause of why did it happen in the first place and why does your body provide an environment and energy for cancer cells to grow. Every cell requires energy and that energy comes from the food that we eat. So we’re feeding a cancer cell the food that they want and giving them the energy to spread grow or come back even after they’ve been broken down by chemo or radiation. So you can choose treatment after treatment but if your treatment does not include you changing the environment of your body your cancer is mostly going to come back or you were never in remission the first place because all of us have to understand right now PET scans can only recognize and pick up cells of a certain dimension and size which means if it’s too small your PET scan may come out clear but three to six months later that cell grows and grows and grows and all of a sudden you do your next PET scan and the cancer is back that to spread in different part of the body and different organs. So why is food so important and why am I so against people listening to this advice of eating everything.

We need to understand one thing that when a patient gets cancer and when the patient’s going through treatment they will lose weight and the advice of a doctor saying eat what you want or eat more or eat a lot of food or eat high calorie foods or eat sugar or eat ice cream thinking that the patient who put on weight is actually more like a death sentence and I’m going to explain to you exactly why. The weight loss that happens in most cancer patients; number one your doctor should be telling you that the side effect of most chemotherapy drugs is weight loss. So the solution is not eating more. When the side effect of a medication is weight loss the remedy is not eat more. The remedy is repair the body and gives the cells what it needs to handle the collateral damage and side effects of the treatment that you’re going through. In the honest attempt for chemo and radiation to kill the cancer or burn the cancer cells it is also destroying your healthy cells and your good cells in total your immunity. The only thing that can protect you from the cancer spreading growing or coming back. Now when it comes to weight loss there is a condition called cachexia and I think it’s every doctor’s responsibility to explain to the patient what cachexia is. When you look at a patient or a person going through cancer and you see that they’re all reduced to skin and bones or they are constantly losing weight no matter what, they now have a condition called cachexia. Cachexia is muscle wasting. It is the condition where your own cells are eating your body and no matter how much food you put into your body at that point you’re going to actual increase the cachexia and it’s going to get worse and worse.

Let me explain what cachexia really is. We all know and we all constantly keep hearing that make your body alkaline, keep your body alkaline and there are so many debates saying that it has nothing to do with alkaline. Your body has a natural ph regulator when it gets too acidic it’ll become alkaline. But you got to understand that the working of the cancer cell is very different from the working of a healthy cell. Cancer cells feed on glucose but they don’t digest and break down glucose the way a healthy cell does. Let’s talk about a healthy cell first. When a healthy cell gets glucose from carbohydrates or sugar sources what happens is you have mitochondria and every cell think of mitochondria as little power plants. Little power plants that power in an entire city with electricity. Your cells have mitochondria that power your body with energy. So when the carbohydrates proteins and fats from the food that you eat get into your cells these Mitochondria oxidize them into energy producing ATP which is adenosine triphosphate and that provides energy to your entire body. Now every cell in your body has mitochondria. The problem in a cancer cell is mitochondria are not effectively used to produce energy because your cell ferments glucose with a very improper mechanism. This means its ability to break down glucose is inefficient and very energy consuming. When your cell ferments glucose the by-product is lactic acid. Now lactic acid makes your cell acidic giving a cancer cell the perfect environment for it to grow and spread. When your cell becomes acidic it changes the DNA sequencing in your cell which means now your cell can no longer go through a process of apoptosis which is cell death. Every time your cell gets infected it has the ability to kill it self-that’s your immunity working. But now because you’re too acidic because your cell is too acidic and your DNA sequence is constantly being changed your cell can no longer go into a process of apoptosis which means kill itself which means protect itself. So your cell is fermenting glucose, the by-product is lactic acid. Lactic acid gets back into your bloodstream goes through your liver where your liver reconverts that lactic acid back into glucose. So now your cells, your cancer cells have created a vicious cycle to feed it and sustain it. So the lactic acid builds up in your body it also prevents the nutrients from the food that you eat from being absorbed into your cell into your healthy cells which means now your healthy cells no longer get the nourishment you need which is one of the reasons why the patient gets thinner and thinner. It’s from malnourishment. It is from your own cells eating into your body. Over and above that this same glucose to lactic acid conversion process consumes a considerable amount of energy which is why a patient gets fatigued and tired and they’re bedridden and they can’t move and then the doctors say eat what you want and that’s the worst advice because your system has changed. Your body isn’t going to break down carbohydrates and give you energy and the more sugar you take, the more high carbohydrate foods you take, in those very cells you are feeding them and you are restarting the process of improper, in efficient breakdown of glucose into lactic acid, conversion of lactic acid and  the liver back to glucose. Then we look at different treatments like caesium chloride or certain sulphates like hydrazine sulphate that can block the liver from converting lactic acid into glucose. Those are all the other alternative treatments which a cancer patient going through chemo and radiation has to be on.

We all know that the human body drops appetite. It’s the natural defence mechanism of the human body to drop appetite when you’re sick because the human body’s digestive system utilizes almost seventy to seventy-five percent of energy on digestion. So it shuts down digestion so energy can be diverted to healing. Healing is all about energy. Where do you think your cells get the energy to heal? It is from the total energy reserves that you have in your body. So the next time your doctors tell you that sugar is fine for you no matter what you do, know that you are feeding your cancer.

Let’s go back to the PET scan. What they’re injecting in you is radiated sugar. On every PET scan report the FDG uptake that you see is the sugar uptake into a cancerous cell. So when the FDG uptake shows high in certain organs in your body that’s how they detect that there’s metabolic activity and cancer in that area of the body. So no matter what anyone tells you the time that you have to really get smart with your diet not strict but smart is when you have this issue. So automatically when you get on to any healthy diet you will lose weight. So when you get on a healthy diet for cancer you are also going to lose weight. But that is not the problem. The problem is letting your body get into cachexia which is muscle wasting. Now how do you reverse this? Not by overfeeding the patient to eat whatever you want because now you understand how cancer cells utilize energy and misuse macronutrients that we put into the body. You look at small portions but nutrient dense foods. I’m talking about foods like your soaked nuts and seeds, coconut oils, complex vegetables, complex grains are things that the body requires in very small quantities but when they break down they break down into a lot of cellular energy.

The second thing is because there’s muscle wasting you’re reduced to skin and bone. So the next thing that doctors tell you is load up on protein. Do you know how much energy the human body requires to break down protein and you’re using that energy in a cancer patients body for breaking down that excessive protein which is going to do nothing to increase the patient’s lost muscle mass. What you need is quality amino acids. So you’re looking at again nutrient-dense foods that give you a combination of almost all 22 essential amino acids together. They are beans, pumpkin seeds, nuts and seeds again, combinations of certain vegetables. So there’s a big difference between weight loss where everyone and especially the family of the patient gets worried and they start feeding the patient and forcing the patient to eat without recognizing that cachexia is caused because of the cancer process and the way that you can stop it or arrest it or reverse it possibly is by cutting out glucose to the human body. Changing the terrain of the human body. Making it more alkaline so the cells which are made acidic because of the lactic acid build up and conversions of glucose and the poor metabolism you help the body become alkaline. This means you change the terrain of the entire cellular structure of your body.

I want to speak to you about the most common advice that many health professionals give cancer patients around the world. We have observed this in every country that we consult. They tell patients: You can eat what you want. 

This can be dangerous. And I want to break it down today. 

The number of people getting diagnosed with cancer is on the rise every single day. We have better technology, chemotherapy, radiation, and every possible treatment from immunology to immunotherapy, new drugs, and hormonal treatment today. Many patients even manage to break down their tumors and put their cancer into remission. 

But when the doctors tell them that you are all good. Now go back home, lead your normal life and eat what you want – three to six months later – metastatic cancer resurfaces twice as aggressively. 

So why are these things happening in the first place? We claim to know it all when it comes to cancer and treatments. But we do not. Through my experience in the field of integrative and lifestyle medicine, I have realized that nutrition and lifestyle can play a very big role when it comes to the prevention and management of cancer. 

I am NOT against chemotherapy or radiation. These are needed in most cases. My problem lies in the mindset where a patient is told that you only need chemotherapy or radiation. You can eat what you want. You don’t have to do anything. The treatment will take care of you. 

As human beings, we are a species who are hard-wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. So, most of us automatically choose the easier way. For instance, food gives us pleasure. When a health professional tells you that you are being treated but you can eat whatever you want, you are happy because you are wired for pleasure and want to avoid the pain of being restricted from certain foods. Without realizing that there are foods that could do more harm and cause metastatic cancers. We don’t want to make those changes because we are trying to move away from things that cause us pain including deprivation of the foods we love.

The advice is the number one reason why people are getting sicker and sicker. It is one of the reasons why most cancers come back metastatic. We need to understand one thing. When you get diagnosed with cancer, your body terrain has allowed a cancer cell to mutate and spread. It has allowed cancer or tumor to grow. This means that the current environment in your body is supportive of its growth and spread. We can go through any treatment that we choose, but if we do not change the terrain or environment of the body, the chemo or radiation may break down the tumor and your PET scans may show all is good. But you would have never addressed the root cause of why did it happen in the first place and why your body provides an environment and energy for cancer cells to grow. Every cell requires energy and that energy comes from the food that we eat. So we’re feeding a cancer cell the food that they want and giving them the energy to spread grow or come back even after they’ve been broken down by chemo or radiation. You can choose treatment after treatment, but if your plan does not include you changing the environment of your body your cancer is mostly going to come back or you were never put in remission in the first place. All of us have to understand right now that PET scans can only recognize and pick up cells of a certain dimension and size which means if it’s too small your PET scan may come out clear but three to six months later that cell grows and grows and grows and all of a sudden you do your next PET scan and the cancer is back that to spread in a different part of the body and different organs. This is why food is so important and I am so against people listening to this advice of eating everything.

When a patient gets cancer or is undergoing its treatment, they will lose weight. The advice of a doctor saying eat what you want, eat more high-calorie foods, refined sugar, or ice cream thinking that the patient who put on weight is more like a death sentence. 

Your doctor should be telling you that the side effect of most chemotherapy drugs is weight loss. The solution is not eating more. The remedy is to repair the body and give the cells what it needs to handle the collateral damage and side effects of the treatment. In the honest attempt for chemo and radiation to kill cancer cells it is also destroying your healthy cells and your good cells in total your immunity. The only thing that can protect you from cancer spreading, growing, or coming back. Now when it comes to weight loss there is a condition called cachexia. It is every doctor’s responsibility to explain to the patient what cachexia is. When you look at a patient or a person going through cancer, you see that they’re all reduced to skin and bones or constantly losing weight no matter what, they now have a condition called cachexia. Cachexia is muscle wasting. It is the condition where your cells are eating your body and no matter how much food you put into your body at that point, you’re going to make the cachexia worse. 

Let me explain what cachexia is. We constantly hear that we need to keep our body alkaline. Your body has a natural pH regulator. When it gets too acidic, it becomes alkaline. The working of a cancer cell is very different from the working of a healthy cell. Cancer cells feed on glucose but don’t digest and break glucose down as healthy cells do. 

When a healthy cell gets glucose from carbohydrates or sugar sources what happens is you have mitochondria which is the powerhouse of the cell. When the carbohydrates, proteins, and fats from the food you eat get into your cells, the mitochondria oxidize them into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and that provides energy to your entire body. Every cell has mitochondria. But the problem in a cancer cell is that the mitochondria are not effectively used to produce energy. Because of this, your cell ferments glucose with a very improper mechanism. This means its ability to break down glucose is inefficient and very energy consuming. When your cell ferments glucose the by-product is lactic acid. Now lactic acid makes your cell acidic giving a cancer cell the perfect environment to thrive and spread. When your cell becomes acidic, it changes the DNA sequencing in your cell which means now your cell can no longer go through a process of apoptosis or cell death. Every time your cell gets infected, it has the ability to kill itself which is your immunity working. But now because you are too acidic, your cell is too acidic and your DNA sequence is constantly changing, your cell can no longer go into a process of apoptosis. 

So your cell is fermenting glucose and the by-product is lactic acid. Lactic acid gets back into your bloodstream and goes through your liver where it reconverts back into glucose. Now your cancer cells have created a vicious cycle to feed it and sustain themselves. This lactic acid builds up in your body and prevents the nutrients from the food that you eat from being absorbed into your healthy cells. This means your healthy cells no longer get the nourishment you need which is one of the reasons why the patient gets thinner and thinner due to malnourishment. Your own cells start eating into your body. Over and above that this same glucose-to-lactic acid conversion process consumes a considerable amount of energy which is why a patient gets fatigued, is bedridden, and cannot move. 

This is why you cannot fall into the trap of eating whatever you want. Your body isn’t going to break down carbohydrates and give you energy. The more sugar you take, the more high carbohydrate foods you take, you are feeding those cells and restarting the process of efficient breakdown of glucose into lactic acid and its reconversion. Then we look at different treatments like cesium chloride or certain sulfates like hydrazine sulfate that can block the liver from converting lactic acid into glucose. Those are all the other alternative treatments that a cancer patient going through chemo and radiation has to be on.

It’s the natural defense mechanism of the human body to drop appetite when you are sick because the human body’s digestive system utilizes almost seventy to seventy-five percent of energy on digestion. So it shuts down digestion so that the same energy can be diverted to healing. Healing is all about energy. Where do you think your cells get the energy to heal? It is from the total energy reserves that you have in your body. So the next time your doctors tell you that sugar is fine for you no matter what you do, know that you are feeding your cancer.

Let us go back to the PET scan. What they are injecting into you is radiated sugar. On every PET scan report, the FDG uptake that you see is the sugar uptake into a cancerous cell. When the FDG uptake shows high in certain organs in your body that’s how they detect that there’s metabolic activity and cancer in that area of the body. No matter what anyone tells you, the time that you have to really get smart with your diet. Not strict but smart. When you get on a healthy diet for cancer you are also going to lose weight. But that is not the problem. The problem is letting your body get into cachexia which is muscle wasting. Now how do you reverse this? Not by overfeeding the patient to eat whatever they want because now you understand how cancer cells utilize energy and misuse macronutrients that we put into the body. You look at small portions but nutrient-dense foods. These may include soaked nuts and seeds, coconut oils, complex vegetables, and grains that the body requires in very small quantities. But the beauty is when they break down, they do so to give you real cellular energy.

When there is muscle wasting, you are reduced to skin and bone. So the next thing that doctors tell you is to load up on protein. Do you know how much energy the human body requires to break down protein? You are using that energy in a cancer patient’s body for breaking down that excessive protein which is going to do nothing to increase the patient’s lost muscle mass. What you need are quality amino acids. Look at nutrient-dense foods that give you a combination of almost all 22 essential amino acids together. These may include beans, nuts, seeds again, and combinations of certain vegetables. So if you are a family member and worried about your loved one (going through cancer) losing weight, please understand that forcing them to eat will not work. Cachexia is caused because of the cancer process and the way that you can arrest it possibly is by cutting out glucose. Change the terrain of the body so that the cells which have become acidic because of the lactic acid buildup and poor metabolism, can become alkaline. 

The bottom line is that you need to pay attention to what you are eating, especially if you are going through cancer or its treatment. Food is like information to your genes. From the first moment you drink breastmilk, its nutrition travels and starts sequencing your genes and your DNA. And it continues when we move to solid foods and grow. When we stray too far away from the foods we grew up eating, we start falling sick and have gut issues, diabetes, and other health conditions. 

Whether you are sick, have cancer, or are in remission, every particle of food that goes into your body is constantly communicating to your genes through which your hormones work. When your thyroxin goes up, your cortisol comes down, and vice versa. Your testosterone is linked with so many other hormones in the human body. They fluctuate, go up and come down through communication, the fuel for which is food. When you are going through cancer, it is important to run your parallel treatment with the right information. Before chemo, there are foods to build up your body. During chemo, there are foods to support your body. After chemo, there are foods to detoxify your body. During radiation, the protocol will change because your treatment is changing. If you want to get different results, you have got to constantly change what you do. To manage the side effects of any treatment you are undergoing you need to change the way you eat and your lifestyle. This will help your recovery journey. The damage that the treatments do to you can be controlled and you can have a better quality of life.

Today many people undergoing treatments for six months or more have organ failure, their stomachs cut off, are living with bags to collect their poop, radiation in the lower pelvic region, and wear adult diapers 24 hours a day. It doesn’t have to be this way, except in extreme cases. In most cases, this is preventable if you choose to do the right treatment and have the right support. 

In many cases, when you have constipation during chemotherapy, the doctor prescribes another drug to counter it. But you have to understand that chemotherapy wipes out certain B vitamins which is why you have constipation or diarrhea. You need to replenish those B vitamins through the right supplementation of foods. You can handle the side effects and symptoms of all the treatments naturally. 

Let’s speak about acidity. You’re already highly acidic which is why you probably have cancer. You may be prescribed a pan D or another antacid to just take away the symptoms. But that’s going to go into your gut and create more problems with your immunity. It only suppresses the symptom but does not address the root cause. Change your diet, make yourself more alkaline and handle the acidic feeling which is a process of the glucose lactic acid cycle that I spoke about. 

We are hard-wired to choose pleasure and avoid pain. But when our body is going through certain things we got to put in that effort to make these changes. Weight loss is a concern when you’re going through cancer but cachexia is your bigger concern. Respect the biofeedback that the human body gives you if you have no appetite. Respect it and find other ways to get smaller portions of food into your diet.

I work with clients in Mexico and have spent a lot of time there. It’s my favorite place besides Cuba because these two countries do not come under the radar of the FDA. This means that scientists and doctors there can be creative. This means they can look for cures without being controlled by pharmaceuticals and the FDA. They have fasting camps in Cuba and Mexico where they just put patients with cancer on fasts from 10 to 15 and sometimes even 30 days. That’s supervised fasting and after the first three or four days, the patient doesn’t feel the need for food. You should see the beautiful way the body starts healing the energy is being diverted to repair the cells. To lose weight is not your priority right now. Your priority is getting the right energy to the cells that require the right energy and that’s possible through the food that you eat.

So the next time someone tells you to eat what you want that’s a death sentence for you. It will start the degeneration of all of your organs your immunity and everything else. Now you choose whether you want to survive and live a quality life or you want to live a life of constantly going to hospitals and trying one treatment after another because you are only addressing the symptom and never the root cause.

Another shout-out to all the women who are survivors of breast cancer. Why is constipation so bad for you? And why do you need to choose your foods correctly? For a woman, getting constipated means you are backing up estrogen into your liver and reabsorbing them into your cells.  In most breast cancer cases that are ER-positive, you need to ensure that you have no dominance of estrogen in your system. Don’t just rely on laxatives and pills. Change the way that you eat. Get the right vitamins in your body because every time you’re constipated, you are backing estrogen back into your liver and that’s the worst thing for your cancer.

When you understand all this I believe that so many cases today can be prevented and so many people in remission can stay in remission without the fear of having metastatic cancer again. Change the terrain of your body. You change that with food, lifestyle, and the way you think. I am talking about your emotions and stress levels. The way you internalize emotions. The mind-body connection matters. You cannot leave the mind out of the equation of healing. You treat the physical self, and you also treat the mental and emotional self. I wish you well. 

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