Hello, Health Champions! Today we're going to talk about the top cancer-fighting foods—the best foods to starve cancer. But in order to make any sense of what those foods are, we first need to understand what cancer likes.
If we're going to starve cancer, what is it that feeds it? The primary cause of cancer is glucose. There's something called the Warburg effect, which we'll discuss in detail shortly.
There is also chronic inflammation, carcinogenic compounds, and different chemicals that can cause mutations in cells and drive the conversion from a healthy cell to a cancer cell. Additionally, a lot of oxidative stress can create an environment where cancers thrive. When we have a weak immune system, we can't fight off cancer effectively.
The normal situation is that a certain number of cells go bad on a regular basis, but with a normal immune system, we can clean that up. If your immune system isn't working, that might give cancer the upper hand. There are also some hormonal imbalances that can drive cancer, and then there is gut health because a dysbiotic gut—if you have an imbalance in your bacterial flora—can affect virtually every one of these other factors.
I gave each one of these items a little icon just so we can illustrate a couple of things along the way. But the number one thing we have to understand about these factors is that when we talk about cancer-fighting foods or the best foods for this or that, most people start thinking with a pill mentality. They think they're going to find that superfood that's going to go in and strike out all the evil in the body, but it doesn't work like that.
First, we have to realize that there are certain things causing cancer, and unless we stop putting those factors in, there's nothing else we can do to make it better. So, the first thing we have to do is to avoid all the different factors that give cancer the upper hand. Then, we want to figure out what are some really good foods—some categories, some types of food—that can help the body, strengthen the immune system, etc.
, and might be able to offset or compensate for some of these factors. The Warburg effect basically observes that cancer cells prefer glucose. They're different from your normal cells; they come from your body's own cells but have changed.
In that change, they now behave differently and prefer different fuel. There are basically two ways that a cell can make energy, whether it's a normal body cell or a cancer cell. The first way is called glycolysis, and the other way is called oxidative phosphorylation (oxphos).
Oxphos is where we make ATP from ADP. Glycolysis can happen when there is no oxygen present; it doesn't need oxygen to perform that reaction, whereas oxidative phosphorylation requires oxygen. There are two types of fuel: one is glucose, and glucose can go into either of these two pathways.
If we use some other substrate, primarily fat, it can only enter into the oxphos pathway—you can only burn fat in the presence of oxygen. But glucose can be used either way. A normal, healthy body cell, acting well-behaved, is going to use primarily oxphos because we typically have oxygen present.
When we don't, that normal body cell can also rely on glycolysis, but it's not going to be as much because, as I said, oxygen is the normal situation. However, a cancer cell is not well-behaved, and therefore, it relies primarily on glycolysis—it's its favorite way of making energy. Even if it can perform oxidative phosphorylation and use oxygen, it's not going to be its favorite; it will favor glycolysis.
A normal cell is going to favor oxidative phosphorylation. Here's why this becomes super important: once we understand a little bit, and you don't have to remember all the details, just know this—oxidative phosphorylation with oxygen is more efficient; we can get more energy made. But with glycolysis, we can do it faster, and that's what the cancer cell really loves.
Because cancer is not well-behaved, it's gone rogue; it tries to grow as fast as possible, which is why it prefers glycolysis. Now, if we load up the system with glucose and have really high blood sugar all the time, we're feeding the cancer cells, giving them their favorite fuel, which allows for very rapid growth. This also means that the worse the cancer is, the more aggressive, the more malignant, the faster-growing it is, the more sugar-loving it becomes.
It's more dependent on sugar. This is how they diagnose these things with imaging—they feed them sugar and see where they light up on the screen because the most aggressive cells are going to be absorbing the most glucose and growing the fastest. If we understand the Warburg effect, it becomes rather obvious what kinds of foods to eat if we want to starve cancer.
That's obviously low-carb or, for some people, even a ketogenic diet. I've made lots of videos on that, but I'll run through a few examples real quick here. Avocado, for example, leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, butter, and coconut oil—these are all healthy fats that don't raise blood sugar at all.
Other low-carb foods include meat, fish, and chicken. We should always try to get those from natural sources—grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, and pasture-raised chicken if we can get it; it's always going to be better. Then, nuts and seeds are low-carb, high-fiber, and don't raise blood glucose much at all.
Mushrooms are a good example. It's important to realize that when I give you a list, that doesn't necessarily mean these are the only foods or the only good foods. We need to understand what these foods have in common and realize that there are many other similar foods.
Basically, any real food that is similar is going to work well. Additionally, even though these foods are selected to accommodate the Warburg effect and starve cancer cells because they like sugar, a lot of these foods, if they're real, will also reduce or be neutral to chronic inflammation, carcinogens, chemicals, oxidative stress, immune system imbalances, hormonal imbalances, and gut health. This is very different from an isolated chemical or an isolated vitamin that might address one of these factors.
It might fit into one category or improve one thing like a medication, but it's not going to create a complete, holistic picture the way that whole food will. Since inflammation is a driving factor for cancer, we want to eat foods that lower inflammation, or at the very least, are neutral. That would include all low-carb foods again because if we eat high carb and become insulin resistant, that is a driving factor for inflammation.
There are other natural foods and compounds in garlic, turmeric, and ginger that can actually have a natural anti-inflammatory effect. Another good example is berries; they contain anthocyanins. Fatty fish, which are high in omega-3s, have a normalizing effect on inflammatory responses.
It's not like a pill that you take that's anti-inflammatory, but it helps the body modulate and balance out to appropriate inflammatory responses. Another example is broccoli, which contains something called sulforaphane. In dark chocolate, we have things like flavonoids.
Extra virgin olive oil and olives have something called oleocanthal. Again, I've given you a few examples here, but realize that there are many other real foods that will be beneficial and contain similar compounds. Even though we're focusing mostly on the inflammation component here, a lot of these foods will actually help in all of these different categories.
Next, we have carcinogens and chemicals that the body has to detoxify. Who does that? Primarily the liver.
If the liver is overburdened from other things like sugar and alcohol, that's not so great. So, we want to cut those out first, and then we want to think about liver support. What helps the liver?
I've done specific videos on that, but again, low carb, low sugar, because those things create a fatty liver, which burdens the liver. Cruciferous vegetables contain something called glucosinolates. Tomatoes contain lycopene, which assists the liver in its detoxification pathways.
In the allium family, like garlic, we have sulfur compounds that also assist the liver. Eggs contain choline, which is a very important nutrient for the liver to perform some of its metabolic processes. I hope you're starting to see the pattern.
Many other whole foods, many other real foods, are going to be very similar to this. If we start understanding and seeing patterns, then we're not limited to certain foods, and we stop thinking about them as magic pills or magic bullets. Again, we've focused on carcinogen detox—detoxifying chemicals that can be harmful—but if they're whole foods, they will probably assist us in many other ways as well.
Foods can be immune-boosting too. Garlic and ginger are well-known immune boosters. They are antibacterial in themselves, so if you have an immune challenge, they can actually kill off some things on their own, like a natural antibiotic.
But they can also help with immunomodulation, with balancing and stimulating the immune system, making it behave correctly. They can also boost the production of white blood cells, which are your immune-fighting cells. Another example is mushrooms; they contain something called beta-glucan, which can stimulate immune function.
Bell peppers contain vitamin C, which is also necessary for the immune system. A lot of times, people talk about citrus fruits, especially orange juice, and start consuming orange juice by the gallon as if that were the only source of vitamin C. Well, bell peppers actually have more vitamin C than citrus fruits, but they have a fraction of the sugar.
Again, we don't want to just take something that could be good if it also contains something that's going to counteract that. Even though I'm mentioning certain compounds contained in these foods, many other whole, real foods contain these or similar compounds. And again, we're focusing on the immune portion, but if these foods are natural, whole, alive, and fresh, they will assist us in many different areas.
What about hormone balance? What does that have to do with it? There are two hormones primarily associated with driving cancer: estrogen and insulin.
With estrogen, of course, it's primarily females and breast cancer, but there are other cancers as well. The key thing to know is that insulin is the primary factor. If we have high levels of insulin, if we're insulin resistant, that's the primary factor that will deregulate estrogen.
The very first thing we need to do is to make sure that our insulin levels are okay. Again, we want to eat a low-carb or moderate-carb diet, especially if you're insulin resistant. The more insulin resistant you are, the fewer carbs you want to eat.
Broccoli shows up again; it contains something called indole-3-carbinol, which has been shown to help balance out estrogen levels. What's important for both inflammation and hormone regulation is that we have a lot of healthy fats. Fatty fish high in omega-3s, extra virgin olive oil, and avocado, which are high in monounsaturated fats and are very neutral to inflammation, can be very helpful for the body to perform many of its functions.
Now you're starting to catch on—you know that many other real foods similar to these can also help you in all these different areas. Finally, we want to choose foods to reduce oxidation and oxidative stress. Some foods contain natural antioxidants, and those are the ones we want to ensure we get plenty of.
But it doesn't mean that more antioxidants are always better, like some people think, and then they run to the store and buy these mega-dose synthetic antioxidants. That's not a good idea because oxidation is what gives us energy. When we eat food and turn it into energy, we oxidize that food, produce oxygen and free radicals, and then need these natural antioxidants to neutralize the free radicals.
However, it is totally possible to eat a bunch of these mega-dose synthetic antioxidants and interfere with energy production. Long-term studies have shown that people who consume the most synthetic antioxidants live shorter lives. It actually takes years off your lifespan because that's not the way we want to go about it.
We want to get things that are natural, that help the body balance it out naturally, not mega doses that interfere with and flatten what the body is trying to do. These natural antioxidants can be found in berries, dark chocolate, green tea, turmeric, tomatoes, and pomegranates—all rich sources. You'll find some of these antioxidants in virtually every type of plant, so there's a wide variety of plants, as well as many other real foods, that will help you get these benefits and assist you with all these different risk factors and mechanisms for cancer.
Gut health is tied to immune function—your immune system is heavily dependent on what happens in the gut. Your inflammatory responses, inflammatory regulation, allergies, and autoimmune responses all depend on what's happening in the gut and how healthy and intact it is. Additionally, your hormone balance is affected by gut health because a lot of what goes on in the gut can affect hormone signaling.
In other words, poor gut health leads to disease. The foods for gut health aren't always totally straightforward to figure out because some of the things you're supposed to take, some things that are supposed to be good for you, might not be tolerated well. If you get gassy and have an upset stomach, etc.
, then that's a sign of an imbalance, and you probably do need some help. If you'd like more information on that, I'll put it down below. We're working on a program to help more people long distance, where we can do some of these tests and guide you through that process.
One of the first things you want to have is fermented foods or probiotic foods. These are foods that contain bacteria that are good for your gut or supposed to be good for your gut. Some of them can colonize, set up shop, and help balance things out, while others just pass through, but in doing so, they outcompete some of the bad bacteria, providing a competitive environment and keeping some of the others down.
Some examples of such foods are sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, and kefir, and you can ferment lots of different types of food. Then, you have prebiotic foods. The first category is probiotics—actual bacteria or spores—but prebiotics are the foods that feed the probiotics.
Here we have things like asparagus, onion, garlic, and leeks; they contain a lot of something called inulin or FOS (fructo-oligosaccharides). We also have leafy greens, which contain certain types of fiber and polyphenols, and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage. These also have lots of good compounds, some fiber, and other compounds that can selectively feed and create a good variety in your gut.
If you haven't figured it out yet, in addition to the foods I mentioned, there are many other good, real foods as well. So, don't limit yourself to just these. Even though these foods are a little special in some ways, they're not unique; they're not the only ones you want to eat.
I started off by saying that while it's important what you eat, it's even more important what you don't eat. So let's compare and contrast a little bit on these seven different mechanisms that create cancer and see what processed food does for them. First, we have high sugar and white flour in processed foods.
They're going to be primarily made from sugar and white flour, which will raise blood sugar. So, immediately, we are violating the principle of not feeding the cancer. We also need to understand that long-term intake of sugar and white flour will drive chronic inflammation—it's the most common mechanism in driving insulin resistance and chronic inflammation.
So now, we immediately knock out the second principle of chronic inflammation—we violate that. Processed food that's high in sugar and white flour is also going to create a lot of oxidative stress. Again, a strike for oxidative stress here.
Additionally, these processed foods are going to contain a lot of chemicals—artificial sweeteners, artificial flavorings, artificial colors, pesticides, stabilizers, preservatives, etc. Not only are some of these potentially carcinogenic (and maybe we don't find out for another few years), but a lot of things used in some countries are banned in other countries. These chemicals will also create oxidative stress and inflammation.
So again, it doesn't just affect one thing—something that's really bad can strike out lots of different things. Already, we have four out of seven things here with a strike. Processed foods also create immune system compromise.
They place an additional burden on your immune system, so we get a big red X on immunity from processed foods. So, how are processed foods for hormones? We know that sugar and white flour will drive blood sugar, insulin, and insulin resistance, and insulin will deregulate estrogen, as we talked about earlier.
But also, many of these chemicals added to food act as endocrine disruptors, meaning they unbalance your hormone system. Many of these chemicals have a shape and size similar to a hormone and fit into the same receptor, confusing the body. They may block something and stimulate it, or fit into it and stop it, so you get too much or not enough of something because of this endocrine dysregulation.
Processed food is pretty good at messing up your hormone system too. What about gut health? What does processed food do for that?
Once we understand how closely tied gut health is to all of these different factors—and we see now I've added arrows mostly going in both directions, meaning that these mechanisms cause dysbiosis, imbalance, pathogenic overgrowth, and dysregulation of your biome, but then that unbalanced gut will further create more problems and worsen all of these different things—we start to realize that processed food is just not a good idea. Ninety percent of what you eat should be something other than processed food. When we mess with it, when we add chemicals and repackage it, it just doesn't work like food anymore.
Here's one example of such an item. It's very popular; I'm not going to call it out by name, but you've all heard of it. If an ingredient list looks like this, it's absolutely not something you want to consume.
But here's the scariest part: we have all this food, we have a culture where there are thousands of products with ingredient lists like this, and then they try to help you understand this food by giving you something called nutrition facts. The only thing you get to evaluate whether this is good or bad is how many calories it has. We've just gone through and shown that all seven of the different mechanisms that cause cancer are heavily influenced by these different factors and chemicals, and then we get a label where we try to understand this based on calories and a few different grams.
This label does not tell the story. Learn to understand what real food is, and eat almost exclusively real food. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one.
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