Inflammation and cancer: Why your diet is important

Focused on Health - May 2014

By Sara Taschery

What does inflammation have to do with cancer?

“Prolonged inflammation can damage your body’s healthy cells and tissue, and weaken your immune system,” says Stephanie Maxson, senior clinical dietitian at MD Anderson’s Integrative Medicine Center. This weakened state can increase your risk of diseases like cancer. 

However, not all inflammation is bad. Your body’s inflammatory response is essential for you to heal. This response tells your body’s immune system to send white blood cells and chemicals to help fight off infection or repair an injury.

But when inflammation persists, or when your body triggers a response when you don’t have an infection or injury, it’s cause for concern.

Other causes of chronic inflammation can include obesity, smoking, stress, lack of exercise, exposure to secondhand smoke and diet choices. And worse, chronic inflammation often shows no signs.

The good news is you can reduce chronic inflammation and lower your cancer risks. “It starts with your diet,” Maxson says. An anti-inflammatory diet also can help you avoid diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

Maxson shares some anti-inflammatory diet tips.

Add more plant foods to your plate

Plant foods are the only foods that contain anti-inflammatory phytonutrients. Plus, they are high in the antioxidants and fiber your body needs to stay cancer-free. Fiber also can lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a protein in the blood that signals inflammation.

The American Institute for Cancer Research recommends filling at least two-thirds of your plate with plant foods.  

• Make one-half of your plate non-starchy vegetables and/or fruits of all colors. 
• Make one-quarter of your plate whole grains or starchy vegetables, like potatoes, corn and peas. 

Limit processed foods

“Choosing whole, fresh foods and doing your own prep maximizes nutrients and phytonutrients,” Maxson says. “These nutrients keep us healthy in many ways, while reducing inflammation.” 

Processed foods are lower in nutrients and higher in refined sugars, flours and fats. They’re also usually loaded with artificial ingredients that can increase CRP levels. 

• Skip highly processed foods, like fast food, packaged and instant foods.
• Steer clear of processed meats, like deli-meats, bacon, sausage, hotdogs and pepperoni.
• Avoid sodas and sports drinks.

Balance fatty acids

Omega-3 fatty acids can help protect your body from chronic inflammation. On the other hand, omega-6 fatty acids increase inflammation.

“Many Americans are trying to include more omega-3 fatty acids in their diet. But, they’re still eating too much omega-6 fatty acids,” Maxson says. 

The key is balance, so you’ll take in more omega-3 and less omega-6.

• Eat foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, tuna, halibut, flaxseeds, chia seeds, walnuts, pecans and avocado.
• Use oils high in omega-3, such as olive and canola.
• Avoid or limit oils high in omega-6, such as corn, sunflower, peanut and soybean.
• Read the ingredients on packaged foods. Limit foods made with refined vegetable oils high in omega-6. You’ll find these oils in most snack foods, cookies, crackers and sweets.

Limit red meat

Eating too much red meat, like pork, beef, lamb, deer and buffalo, can increase your cancer risks. Try to limit red meat to 18 oz. or less each week to keep your cancer risks low.

Maxson suggests replacing red meat with these high protein foods to help reduce chronic inflammation. 

• Choose animal proteins, such as skinless chicken, turkey and fish. 
• Replace animal proteins with plant proteins, such as beans and lentils, at some meals. 
• Choose meat, milk, cheese and eggs from pasture-raised and hormone-free animals. 

Eat more fermented foods

Fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut and miso contain probiotics that help reduce inflammation. To get the most health perks, eat at least one small serving of a fermented food each day.

• Choose low-fat, plain organic yogurt and kefir.
• Try fermented vegetables, such as sauerkraut and kimchi, with a sandwich or salad.
• Enjoy a cup of miso soup or kombucha tea.

“Foods that help prevent cancer also help reduce chronic inflammation, and vice-versa,” Maxson says. “So, following these guidelines will ultimately reduce your risk of a variety of chronic diseases, and improve your quality of life.”

If you’re concerned you have chronic inflammation, speak with your doctor.

http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-topics/prevention-and-screening/food/inflammationandcancer.html?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Twitterpage&utm_content=FOH&utm_campaign=prevention

Feed your body, not the disease

Local experts share how food can help fight cancer, before and after diagnosis

By Tiffany Esshaki
C & G Staff Writer

» click to enlarge « Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital will host a class on nutrition and cooking for breast cancer at 6 p.m. Oct. 23 in the hospital’s demonstration kitchen. Visit www.henryfordwestbloomfield.com to register. Kale salads, like this one created by culinary staff at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, are high in cancer-fighting compounds and low in carbohydrates.

METRO DETROIT — Dr. Cynthia Browne, a radiation oncologist at the Van Elslander Cancer Center at St. John Providence Hospital in Grosse Pointe Woods, doesn’t always refer to meals as food. Instead, she might call them nutritional medicine.

That’s because what we eat, in her opinion, can be one of the most powerful treatments available to fight or prevent cancer. But patients and even some doctors can sometimes disregard the importance of eating a diet loaded with the good stuff our bodies need to fight disease.

“Most doctors know nothing about nutrition because it’s not part of our training and we don’t see much of it in our literature,” said Browne. “But food matters. You are what you eat.”

Browne said that when she sees a patient diagnosed with cancer who wants to be especially proactive in their treatment plan, she’s happy to share some tips on what foods help heal cells while fighting cancer and which foods could actually be helping tumors to grow.

“First, we need to prioritize. If you’re not getting air, I don’t care what you’re eating. If you’re dehydrated, I don’t care what you’re eating; you need to be drinking water. And if you’re not eating at all, I don’t care what you’re eating; I need to get calories into you any way I can so you have the energy to undergo treatment. But if all that is in order, then we can talk about protein and fat and micronutrients.”

The sugar situation
According to Browne, protein, fat and micronutrients are important parts of a cancer patient’s diet for a very specific reason: They prevent blood sugar from spiking. The more carbohydrates and sweets we eat on an empty stomach without protein or healthy fat, the more likely it is that the sugar in our blood will increase and give cancer cells fuel they need to thrive.

“Cancer feeds on glucose. That’s why diabetics who have high blood sugar have more cancer and worse cancers. It’s thought it’s because of the sugar in the blood, though it hadn’t been proven,” she said.

Because of that, Browne advises her patients to stay away from the popular health trend of juicing, since most times we tend to juice only the fruits and veggies that taste good instead of what’s truly good for us.

“Most people do fruit juice because it tastes good and it’s sweet, but nothing will raise blood sugar faster than juice. Even carrot juice and beets will do the same thing, because they’re also very sweet,” she said. “If all someone is juicing is spinach, watercress and parsley, that’s great. But that’s not what they’re doing.”

In lieu of those carbs, Browne recommends patients swap in quinoa and protein like fish and poultry, as well as high-fiber carbs like apples and raw carrots. All of those will prevent blood sugar spikes and also keep inflammation low, which she said is another factor that could hinder the success of cancer treatment.

“Inflammation drives cancer growth, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis — most of the disease we see in Western man,” she said. “We have an epidemic of people with heartburn, and that’s inflammation. Fairly simple changes in diet can make a huge difference in how people are going to feel.”

Nutrients come in real foods
Halle Saperstein couldn’t agree more. She’s a registered dietitian at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital and spends a great deal of time advising patients not only on how they can best nourish their bodies during cancer treatment, but also how the foods they eat throughout their lives can help mitigate disease in the first place.

“There are so many foods that have anticancer benefits, like blueberries and quinoa and salmon. But we’re learning that it’s not those goods by themselves that (are healthy), but as part of a dietary pattern, which means consistence and combination,” said Saperstein.

Just like she tells kids, she advises adults healthy or not to eat a rainbow, or a diet packed with fruits and vegetables of all different colors — the brighter the colors, the more antioxidants.

As far as those fruits and veggies go, Saperstein said you should be getting five servings a day, though Browne said those battling cancer should be getting closer to nine or 10. Keep saturated fats to a minimum, Saperstein added, but don’t discount the benefits of healthy fats like those found in avocados and fish.

“Eating five fruits and vegetables a day has shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer by 22 percent in post-menopausal women,” she said.

It wouldn’t hurt to cut back on the red meat, as well, Browne said, to reduce inflammation. Saperstein agreed, saying that going vegetarian even one day a week can substantially reduce the amount of saturated fat in your diet.

Give a little, take a little
Breast cancer patients might also want to reduce the amount of alcohol and soy in their diets. Saperstein said patients with the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene are thought to have an increased risk of breast cancer, and alcohol and soy can both be seen as estrogen in the blood, which fuels cancer cells.

“People with those genes maybe don’t need to stop drinking completely, but just be mindful of it,” she said.

Just like estrogen, which Browne described as a “cheerleader for cancer,” both experts warned of the dangers of incorporating too much plastic in food. While most people aren’t likely knowingly consuming plastic, it could be discretely seeping into our stomachs anyway.

“Don’t microwave in plastic containers or Tupperware, don’t store food in plastic, and don’t drink from plastic water bottles because when that plastic heats up, it gets into your water and food, and we often don’t realize what we’re doing with the intake of plastic,” said Browne.

Saperstein also said to try to buy food from the perimeter of the grocery store, especially when it comes to fruits and vegetables sold in cans. While many manufacturers are starting to sell food in containers free of Bisphenol A, or BPA, plastic, it’s best to play it safe and avoid having those compounds in your meals.

Avoid charring meat on the grill for the same reason, Saperstein added, saying that animal muscle can become toxic when it becomes crispy on the grill and could lead to consumption of cancer-causing chemicals.

Small steps toward a big goal
With so many things to avoid, it can become pretty daunting to feed your family an anti-cancer diet. Browne advises people to make changes where they can, and adapt an overall healthy lifestyle.

For Saperstein, that includes getting enough vitamin D, even if it comes in supplement form, and getting plenty of exercise. Both of those have been shown in lab studies to reduce the risk of breast cancer, among other healthful benefits.

“About 30-60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a day was shown in a study to reduce the risk of cancer by 10-15 percent,” she said.

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Tiffany Esshaki at tesshaki@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1095. 

http://www.candgnews.com/news/feed-your-body-not-disease-77764

Can a Vegan Diet Prevent Cancer?

By SHAPE magazine | Healthy Living – 23 hours ago

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by Mike Roussell, SHAPE Diet Doctor, phD

Could a vegan diet really prevent cancer? Here's what the experts say.When it comes to cancer, research abounds. Unfortunately science has yet to show us any specific diet that will prevent cancer. One of the main issues with the diet-cancer connection is that it is very complex. A cancer that impacts a particular area, like breast cancer, can be driven by several biological mechanisms so that while it is breast cancer, the diet or treatments that that particular breast cancer responds to could be very different.

During my brief stint as a medical student (before leaving to study nutrition full time), I had a professor who was in oncologic pathology. He always talked about "cancer bingo" in that there are a set number of things that will influence most cancers: genetics (a big one), diet, environmental exposures, and more. It wasn't necessarily each individual component that would cause a given cancer but instead the coming together of several specific components that would then yield cancer.

This makes it very hard to study. If you are concerned with developing or are fighting a particular type of cancer, then it is important to look at that cancer specifically and what treatments it responds to.
For example, certain kinds of breast cancers are insulin sensitive, and thus eating a lot of carbohydrates (ironically like in a vegan diet) would cause your body to produce lots of insulin, making this an inefficacious strategy in reducing risk for those particular kinds of cancer.

RELATED: There's a lot of confusion about women and cancer. Check out the nine must-know facts about breast cancer to learn the truth.

Other researchers believe that very low-carb diets may be a key treatment strategy for fighting brain
tumors in the future, as certain brain tumors rely heavily on glucose to fuel their uncontrolled growth and unlike regular brain cells do not function very well when ketones are the only fuel source available (like in a very low carbohydrate diet).

As for protein, one Hawaiian study looked at the impact between red meat consumption and cancer. They found a very large increase in associated risk of intestinal cancer when an individual had specific genes and ate red meat well done, while the association greatly diminished or went away when one or neither of those factors were present.

Regardless of your genetic profile, the following guidelines can help reduce your risk of any cancer.

1. Don't smoke. Obvious but worth mentioning.

2. Eat 2 to 3 cups of vegetables a day. This is the recommendation from the American Cancer Society; I would say eat more. Two cups isn't that much, and more is better in this situation so you can pack in as many powerful antioxidants in your diet as possible.

RELATED: Greens are super nutritious but some are better than others. Learn delicious ways to add the 10 best leafy greens to your diet.

3. Have one alcoholic drink daily (or less). There is definitely a sweet spot for alcohol consumption and health. For women, one drink per day is the maximum you'd want to average before it begins to stop being a positive factor in your overall health and wellness program.

4. Limit your consumption of processed meats. High fat, highly preserved meats cooked or charred over an open flame is never a good idea. This makes many people only think of red meat, but research shows that the same pro-carcinogenic compounds can be formed when poultry fat (i.e. chicken skin or other visible fat) is exposed to direct flames and high heats.

5. Stay active and get lean. I recommend that weight-loss clients get at least five hours of exercise a week, and this is a good benchmark to shoot for even if you are not trying to lose weight since it will make maintaining your weight much easier. Overweight and obesity are thought to contribute to 14 to 20 percent of cancer-associated mortality in America.

I don't think that there is a "best" diet for fighting cancer, as you can achieve the above list by following a multitude of eating plans. The key is to create a situation where you can follow these principles consistently, especially late into life as your risk for numerous cancers increases. 

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/vegan-diet-prevent-cancer-154200640.html