Dear 3000plus followers,
Please read this— practical advice to prevent COVID-19 from one of the foremost experts on nutrition and disease. Then go out and purchase some lemon balm and other Lamiaceaes and prime your respiratory passageways to reject the nasty buggers.
Inhale essential oils. Eat lots of herbs. Bathe your throat with tisanes. with love, Harriet
Dr. Joe Schwarcz, McGill University
Drinking milk may raise your risk of breast cancer, says Montreal science writer Dr. Joe Schwarcz, pointing to a recent study from California’s Loma Linda University. While the evidence thus far on the breast cancer link has been conflicting, Loma Linda’s study “does ring some alarm bells,” Schwarcz says, in a column published today in the Montreal Gazette. Continue reading
Texas A&M’s Dr. Robert Chapkin lends his voice to the plant-based movement.
Over the past decade, many researchers studying anti-cancer mechanisms have focused on the intersection of diet and chronic inflammatory diseases, cancer included. The bottom line is becoming clear: Continue reading
Weill Cornell’s Dr. Andrew Dannenberg is concerned about us postmenopausal women.
Postmenopausal?
Normal BMI?
Too much friggin’ trunk fat? Continue reading
Read more thoughtful reactions to the new study on author Marion Nestle’s Food Politics blog.
Food writer Marion Nestle “would love to know the back story” behind why university researchers chose to do the recent study on eating meat and chose to interpret the results as they did.
I’ve got a hunch.
Just a little weight loss can go a long way in improving metabolic health, says Harvard’s Dr. Ed Giovannucci.
The evidence is clear, says the American Institute of Cancer Research (AICR), the team of scientists who’ve been studying nutrition’s role in cancer for more than three decades.
Excess body fat, particularly the kind that accumulates around the belly, increases the risk of at least a dozen cancers —pancreatic, colorectal, advanced prostate and breast cancer in us older women. If you already have cancer, it can worsen the prognosis.
So what can you do about it? Continue reading
Got milk? Got prostate cancer?
Psst, men–and all of you who care about men, growing boys or your own hormonal balance. How’s your DHT? That’s the powerful male hormone driving adolescent acne, then early hair loss, then later in life, Continue reading
“Again with the onions,” you’re probably screaming. Continue reading
While everyone else is taking to alcohol this Cinco de Mayo, dare to be different with an anti-cancer alternative: frozen matcha-ritas. Here’s the messipe:
Boston College biology professor Dr. Thomas Seyfried
May 2018 update: The answer to my question at the end of this post is “Yes it seems that you can get into ketosis on a plant-based diet.” Check out Miriam Kalamian and her “Keto for Cancer” book here. Long overnight fasts seem to be a good way to kickstart the process. Lupper, anyone?
For more on the metabolic approach to managing cancer, start with this very short summary of the New York Times’ recent piece. Talk with your oncologist and share Seyfried’s most recent article . Ask your oncologist to contact Seyfried at thomas.seyfried@bc.edu.
Dear Senator,
Meet the Moses of the metabolic movement, Dr. Thomas Seyfried.
For an overview of cancer as a metabolic disease, start here.
Cancer cells thrive on certain fuels–including glucose and glutamine, two key elements that you must inhibit in your anti-cancer diet. We’ve talked ad nauseum about glucose. But what about glutamine, an amino acid, a building block of protein? Continue reading
Myricetin may not yet grace your doctor’s anti-cancer tool kit, but put it on your prescription pad. Among all the phytonutrients, it’s what I call “plantastic”– blessed with a chemical structure that works some anti-cancer wonder.
Today, on World Cancer Day, go out and buy some cancer-fighting plants. Here are some musts for your anti-cancer kitchen: Continue reading
Is it my imagination or has Pillsbury’s Dough Boy shed a bit of belly fat?
Wonder what he’s been eating for lupper? Continue reading
Today, on World Diabetes Day, it’s time to set the record straight: The cause of Type 2 diabetes and its precursor, insulin resistance, is saturated fats. They muck up your cells and the ability of your cells to use insulin.
Choo choo on that! Continue reading
As if Brazil didn’t have enough to worry about, now comes a new study that exposes the shady side of selenium. The selenium in Brazil nuts, it turns out, is not the kind associated with anti-cancer qualities. Continue reading
How can such a common mushroom harbor so many anti-cancer qualities?
Credit its lectins, for starters–
2018 update: For an update on Dr. Thomas Seyfried’s suggestions for treating cancer as a metabolic disease, read his article here or my piece summarizing that article.
Talk with your oncologist about using this approach and ask your oncologist to reach out to Dr. Seyfried at thomas.seyfried@bc.edu.
This week’s New York Times magazine features a story on a theme familiar to all of you readers of this anti-cancer blog : the metabolic approach to starving, or feeding, disease. It singles out insulin and a related hormone, Insulin Growth Factor-1, which we’ve talked about often. And if glucose, glutamine and certain fatty acids drive cancer growth, as the metabolic scientists quoted in the article suggest, then what could be more important than phytonutrients that keep cancer cells from utilizing those fuels? That’s another theme we’ve been addressing. Remember singing the praises of dill? Continue reading
May 2016 update: C-137 continues to be detected in increasing amounts off the BC coastline, with the west coast of Vancouver island showing the most contamination.
Five years after the world’s most recent nuclear disaster, the plume of waters carrying Fukushima’s cesium has started hitting North America’s Pacific northwest. How safe are our fish? Continue reading
Now that you’re no longer a “Proteinaholic,” how do you go about selecting the most nutritious plants among all those shades of red, purple and green?
My first vote goes to “The Mighty Italian Triumvirate,” a combo of Continue reading
How are legumes like sperm? They contain the same anti-cancer and anti-aging elixir.
July 2016 update: A new study in mice and 19 men by longevity researcher Luigi Fontana found that restricting daily protein to 7 to 9 percent of calories improved their metabolic health.
Legumes–beans, peas and lentils — are the #1 key to longevity, says Dan Buettner, the bestselling author who’s been studying the world’s Blue Zones, those pockets of the world (Mediterranean, Japan, California, Costa Rica) where people eating plant-based diets with legumes as their main source of protein are outliving us all.
How might legumes fuel longevity? Could some be more “nutritarian” than others? How much protein should you be eating anyway? And must it be all plants all the time? Continue reading
Chicken’s off the platter if your New Year’s resolutions include restricting methionine–a promising new strategy to fight cancer and forestall aging.
What’s the latest advice that scientists are dishing out for your anti-cancer diet?
Read the backstory first to enhance tonight’s exchanges with loved ones. Continue reading
Note: My apologies. This post failed to clarify all the issues surrounding iodine, thyroid hormone and cancer. Low thyroid function may protect against cancer, so what does that mean for our diets? I’ll be publishing an update as soon as I can get some smart experts to explain all the confusing info out there.
Last week the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a consumer health group, released its handy lists of more than 250 brands of canned foods– -those with and without bisphenol A (BPA), a compound used in plastics and cans that seems to wreak havoc with hormones.
Why wasn’t Eden‘s canned beans on the green list?
Continue reading
Note: Like radishes, watercress is one of the few crucifers that should be eaten raw.
In this complex world of anti-cancer diets, some cruciferous vegetables may actually be more powerful than other fellow crucifers.
It all comes down to two words that begin with “I.” Continue reading
For the latest news about Fukushima’s impact on the North American coast, follow Fukushima Inform, written by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen.
Satellite measurements of ocean temperature (illustrated by color) and the direction of currents (white arrows) help show where radionuclides from Fukushima are transported. Large scale currents transport water westward across the Pacific. Circles indicate the locations where water samples were collected. White circles indicate that no cesium-134 was detected. Blue circles indicate locations were low levels of cesium-134 were detected. Small amounts of cesium-134 have been detected in a water sample taken Feb. 19, 2015, from a dock in Ucluelet, British Columbia. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
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Berries are a must for your anti-cancer kitchen, but how you eat them is key.
Here’s a sparkling twist on guacamole to share with friends this holiday season and add to your growing repertoire of anti-cancer recipes.
The emeralds include avocado chunks and cilantro; the rubies, red onions and pomegranates. Continue reading
Let’s jump straight to the top. The #1 most read post this year is–Anti-Cancer Recipes: Should you Cook Onions? So what’s the short answer? Continue reading
Ready to follow me on Twitter?
You don’t know what a healthy poop is until you’ve added some cranberries to your anti-cancer diet.
Want more health news? Follow me on Twitter.
The first study to examine the effects of certain compounds in peanuts on the spread of cancer is about to be published–and the results show serious consequences for your anti-cancer diet, especially if you have metastatic cancer.
Continue reading
Anti-Cancer News: Authors Retract Green Coffee Bean Paper
Two authors of a 2012 paper sponsored by a company that made grand claims about green coffee bean abstract’s abilities to help people lose weight have retracted it. The study was cited by The Dr. Oz Show, and last month it cost the company a $3.5 million settlement with the Feds.
Here’s the notice for “Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, linear dose, crossover study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a green coffee bean extract in overweight subjects,” a paper originally published in Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy:
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Tempeh-Mushroom Wraps with Red Curry Sauce
Dear readers: Over the coming weeks, I will attempt to get reaction from various researchers on the soy findings. Stay tuned, talk with your doctor and do what feels right for you. Nobody needs anxiety.
Soy? Did they say soy should be included in an anti-cancer diet? Continue reading
What anti-cancer benefits do fennel leaves and walnuts have in common?
What kind of turmeric powder should we choose for our anti-cancer kitchens? Continue reading
With summer on its way out, it’s time to freeze some of its most nutritious anti-cancer bounty. How to do it? Remember these 3 letters: Continue reading
When it comes to anti-cancer strategies, does diet really matter? To what degree? Continue reading
2016 update: Myricetin is one of those magical flavonols that act as anti-oxidants in normal cells but selectively destroy cancer cells. In fact, among the flavonols, it may be tops at targeting cancer cells for destruction.
Put walnuts and their next of kin on your anti-cancer shopping list. And who might that be? Continue reading
Got milk? Got prostate cancer?
2018 Update: For a fascinating look at how milk’s software disrupts key genes and thus drives the uncontrolled cell growth that we call “cancer,” read this interview with German dermatologist Dr. Bodo Melnik as well as his recent publication.
I’ve been reserving judgment on dairy products for 55 years now–since Grade 1, when my mom lied to the school authorities and told them I was allergic to milk. Truth was: it made me gag.
But now that Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard’s School of Public Health, and an esteemed panel of scientists have opined on the subject and we’ve had time to reflect, I can say this with certainty about whether or not dairy products have any place in an anti-cancer diet: Continue reading
Add these to your list of anti-cancer resources: Continue reading
Have you purchased any of these for your anti-cancer kitchen? Continue reading
Eat and Beat Cancer 
