This has been a pretty exciting week for me, I learned of two pieces of news that really opened my eyes to the quickly changing fields of nutrition and medicine:
For one, an article was published about an English patient who has seemingly been cured from his HIV infection.
Another, was a theoretical cure for cancer, as proposed by William Li at a recent TED talk.
Whereas the first discovery was more of a miraculous success in a single patient case, the latter has been tested clinically and has proven to be effective in many cases of cancer. My main focus today is on the prevention and treatment of cancer, as it is one of the most devastating diseases in our society, the onset of which often seems to be coming out of nowhere. Or does it?
It is not an uncommon notion that the most common causes of cancer are genetics, that it’s somehow implanted in your genes and you’ve either got it or you don’t.
This, fortunately, is NOT the case. Genetic causes only account for 5-10% of cancers, while the rest stems from environmental factors. In this remaining 90-95% of cancer-causing factors, diet constitutes 30-35%. So the question becomes, how and what should we eat to prevent and treat cancer?
The is often referred to as “Culinary Medicine”
First of all, let’s briefly look into the mechanism behind cancer. What does a tumor look like? Under the microscope, it is a growing mass surrounded by hundreds of blood vessels or capillaries that feed it with oxygen and nutrients. “But cancers don’t start out with a blood supply like this. In fact, they start out as small, microscopic nests of cells that can only grow to one half a cubic millimeter in size and can’t get any larger because they don’t have a blood supply to provide with enough oxygen and nutrients.” At some point in time, with enough triggers either from the environment or inside the body, they mutate and secrete factors; proteins called angiogenic factors that stimulate new blood vessels to sprout and bridge to cancer cells. It isn’t until then that cancers become harmful. “This process of new blood vessel formation, termed angiogenesis, is therefore the tipping point between a harmless cancer and a harmful one. The major medical revolution is a new approach to treating cancer by cutting of the blood supply.”
Here is when diet comes in, to prevent the process of angiogenesis in cancers. “We can eat foods that are naturally antiangiogenic and beat back those blood vessels that are feeding cancers. In other words, we can eat to starve cancer!” Foods such as cooked tomatoes, grapes, soy, garlic, berries and tea all have properties that can reduce angiogenesis in cancer. What’s more interesting is that obesity, another highly prevalent chronic condition shares the same angiogenesis pathway as cancers. Like a tumor, fat grows when blood vessels grow. So, weight loss can be achieved by cutting off the blood supply through the same healthy dietary regimen. As many areas in the world lack the resources to put into place clinical treatment through antiangiogenic therapy, a healthy diet of foods that are rich in antiangiogenic factors may be one feasible way to successfully combat cancer.
Source
This amazing discovery was presented by William Li, a researcher under Harvard Surgeon, Dr. Judah Folkman’s mentorship.
Please check out http://www.ted.com/speakers/william_li.html for William Li's speech on "can we eat to starve cancer" at TED.
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