Food and Diet to Treat Cancer

With all the different cancers we know of today, and all the different treatment options we have available, most patients with cancer will try anything to beat this horrific disease.  Many cancer treatment centers have begun to use a variety of food therapies to treat cancer.  Max Gerson is one of those doctors who began using food therapies in the fifties, saving lives using a strict diet of fresh vegetables and fruit.  Many patients have had successes just using a macrobiotic diet, vegetarian diets, and the Budwig diet.  Others have added products like wheat grass, barley green, and broccoli sprouts to their diet because of special properties they contain.  For example, broccoli sprouts (not just broccoli) contains a cancer-fighting agent known as sulforaphane that prompts the body to make an enzyme that prevents tumors from forming. 

Budwig diet/flax seed oil:

The Flax seed (Linseed) oil diet was originally proposed by Dr. Johanna Budwig, who was a German biochemist and expert on fats and oils in 1951.  Her simple formula consisted of two tablespoons of flaxseed oil to a quarter cup of low fat cottage cheese (or other foods containing sulfur), claiming that these ingredients helps to increase metabolism, boost the immune systems, reduce cholesterol levels, and help to inhibit cancer-cell growth.

• Hallelujah Acres Diet was developed by Dr. George Malkmus, and is a vegetarian diet that has helped with a variety of diseases, including cancer.  
• Low sugar Diets seem to fight cancer by starving cancer cells.  Cancer cells seem to use sugar as their basic "fuel."  In addition, a high sugar intake seems to increase factors in the body responsible for creating conditions that encourage cancer to grow - for example, high acidosis, immune system suppression, and prosglandin production.

GERSON: The Gerson therapy consists of detoxification and diet.  Detoxification involves the use of coffee enemas.  The theory behind this diet therapy is that caffeine is rapidly absorbed through the lower bowel and travels directly to the liver where it stimulates the production of natural immune factors.  Care must be taken not to over-stimulate the liver, since this could eventually lead to its exhaustion and breakdown.  The diet is similar to the Laetrile diet, but is stricter.  It includes twelve or more glasses daily of freshly pressed fruit and vegetable juices, a daily vegetable soup, and potassium/iodine supplements.  The therapy was developed by Dr. Max Gerson, who is a graduate of the University of Freiburg Medical School in Germany who fled to the U.S. in 1936 as a refugee of fascism.

GLYCOALKALOIDS: These are used mostly for skin cancers.  Lane Labs has done studies using their product "Skin Answer" and has had good results on squamous cell carcinomas.  However, melanomas are not treated using this.

GREEN TEA: This is a popular cancer preventative and used by Asians for centuries. Dr. Fujiki, of Japan's National Cancer Center says "Green tea cannot prevent every cancer, but it's the cheapest and most reliable method for cancer prevention available to the general public." The active ingredient is a chemical compound abbreviated to EGCG, which has strong free-radical-scavenging properties.  ECGC also has other important properties that can help with things such as metabolism.

HAELAN: Haelan is a promising nutritional-based anti-cancer agent made from liquid soy bean extract.  Its array of benefits includes blocking cancer-cell blood supplies, enzymatic activity, tumor reduction, and boosting of the immune system.  It has also been found to help alleviate the side-effects of chemo and radiation, other conventional cancer therapies.