for cancer, the Gerson clinic is located in Tijuana, Mexico, a hotbed of nonviable “alternative” disproved cancer treatments that do not work.
Fasting and Juice Therapies
Fasting eliminates all solid food and generally limits dietary consumption to certain liquids. Juice cleanses or juice fasts, during which only freshly juiced fruits and vegetables are consumed for a period of time that can vary from a few days to weeks, are very common today. Such therapies are promoted for general health maintenance, as well as for healing diseases. Advocates believe they facilitate internal cleansing and support the immune system.
Fresh fruit juice, in moderation, can be healthy as well as delicious. But regimens such as this, especially when continued over an extended period, can be dangerous, especially for cancer patients.
In summary, eat healthfully; seek professional advice if you have special swallowing or digestive issues; beware of bogus dietary or other cancer “cures”; enjoy the beneficial and delicious Mediterranean-type diet rich in fruits, vegetables, seafood, olive oil, beans, and whole grains.
Important Vitamins and Foods
When researching nutrition for cancer patients online, some vitamin and food entries can create more questions than answers. It is worth spending a bit of time discussing some of those common items.
Soy
Soy can be a confusing topic for cancer patients. On the one hand, it is widely touted as a health food. It contains compounds called isoflavones, which may help decrease the risk of heart disease and cancer and reduce menopausal symptoms in women, among other benefits. Soy foods are also an excellent source of plant-based protein, particularly valuable for vegetarians. As a result, soy protein is being added to all kinds of processed foods and is becoming ubiquitous in the food supply.
But the very same isoflavones credited with many of these benefits are similar in structure to the hormone estrogen. Doctors and scientists are therefore concerned that they may mimic estrogen’s activity in the human body, potentially encouraging hormone-sensitive tumors (such as estrogen receptor (ER)–positive breast cancer) to grow. So, the question is, how do these benefits and risks balance out? Is soy something you should be eating at all, and if so how much is too much?
Soy’s journey to mainstream began decades ago, when researchers observed that rates of breast and other cancers were significantly lower in Asia than in Westernized countries. They assumed that diet was a factor and zoomed in on soy as a possible source of this health disparity. Since soy foods were eaten all the time in Asia but were almost entirely absent from the Western diet, it seemed a solid hypothesis. Fast-forward 20 years, however, and the research results have been mixed.
Regular consumption of soy foods has been associated with a reduced risk of cancer in many studies, but some laboratory and animal research suggests that soy can promote growth of estrogen-sensitive tumors. It’s worth underscoring that virtually all of the studies showing harm were conducted using isolated cells growing in a petrie dish or in rodents—not in humans. And most of them used isolated soy isoflavones, not the soy in its whole-food form. So the degree to which such findings apply to us is not clear. No conclusions can be drawn without considering results in humans.
In recent years, there have been several large public health studies of soy consumption in humans, and all have found it to be safe and perhaps beneficial, even in women with ER-positive breast cancer. Three large studies, two in U.S. breast cancer patients and one in Chinese patients, found no adverse effects of soy consumption on outcome, and suggested it may even offer some protection against recurrence and cancer-related death. The largest of these followed 9,514 U.S. and Chinese breast cancer survivors and found that patients who consumed at least 10 milligrams of isoflavones (about 3 grams of soy protein) per day had a significantly lower risk of cancer recurrence.7
Interestingly, it appears that soy is most beneficial when it is eaten regularly early in life and through puberty. Studies suggest that this may decrease the risk of breast cancer, but that introducing soy into the diets of adult women may not do much to change their cancer risk, either positively or negatively.
The bottom line, considering all of the findings so far, is that eating moderate amounts of soy should be fine. In its most recent set of guidelines, the American Cancer Society concluded that for breast cancer patients “current evidence suggests no adverse effects on recurrence or survival from consuming soy and soy foods.”
That said, it is wise to avoid supplements that contain high doses of isolated soy isoflavones. Stick to soy-containing foods, such as miso soup, tofu, tempeh, soymilk, edamame, and even soybeans in their original form.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin (technically a hormone precursor) that is produced in our skin when exposed to sunlight, and is also found in plants, fish, and dairy products. Its effects in the body are widespread: thousands of genes are regulated directly or indirectly by vitamin D. Scientists know that it is important for bone formation and that it assists in the absorption of calcium; adequate vitamin D levels are necessary to prevent osteoporosis and bone fractures. Although far more equivocal, some studies suggest that vitamin D may play a role in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, physical functioning, autoimmune diseases, infections/immune function, and mental health, among other diseases. Many argue that vitamin D supplementation can prevent or improve these conditions. But study results have been mixed, and evidence is lacking for virtually all uses except bone health.
Our need for this vitamin is not surprising; through most of human evolution, vitamin D was readily available. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors spent most of their time outside in the sun and presumably produced high levels of vitamin D. But our modern indoors lifestyle has made vitamin D deficiency a widespread problem. Deficiency is even more prevalent among darker-skinned people, who make less vitamin D to begin with than their lighter-skinned counterparts.
Of particular relevance for this book, there is limited but promising evidence that vitamin D may have a role in decreasing the risk or progression of some cancers. While vitamin D supplementation has not been shown to improve outcomes in cancer patients, some studies, especially those involving colon cancer, are suggestive of anticancer effects.8 However, the numerous efforts to delineate a causal relationship between vitamin D and a wide array of human cancers have produced conflicting results, and large-scale randomized trials will be required to provide definitive answers.9
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