Anti-Cancer Strategies: Bring on the Leftover Carbs!

Want to sneak a few satisfying starches into your anti-cancer diet– say some

● hot, mushy sweet potatoes? 

● leek soup with Italian gremolata, thickened with turnips or celeriac? 

● curried quinoa with black beans? 

Here’s how:

 

Anti-Cancer Strategies: What Foods help Lower your Blood Sugar?

Can you name 10 foods that help lower your blood sugar and thus should be incorporated into your anti-cancer diet?

Anti-Cancer Strategies: Fats and Fasting, a Revolutionary Weapon for an Aggressive Enemy

Could coconut fat help turn the tide in the anti-cancer battle?

Is the war on cancer now witnessing its own D-Day, a turning point in the anti-cancer fight that will change the world for good?

With the recent settlement of a major lawsuit among scientists over who owns the rights to new revolutionary approaches to managing cancer, all the experts in the field are presumably now free to talk openly—and what they’re talking about is a radical new view of the disease.

Anti-Cancer Recipes: No Sugar, Lots of Spice and other Zesty Thoughts

Although Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month wraps today, the disease remains– and will always be the beast that roused this anti-cancer blog.

In the words of McGill University’s Dr. Gerald Wiviott, we all need a trigger to help us get off our bums (Canadian for “butts”) and make changes:  Inspiration, Motivation, Provocation and Support.  

Anti-Cancer Strategies: Kick the 3 a Day Habit!

Make that 4-5-even 6 smaller meals a day instead.  And why is that?

Anti-Cancer Recipes: What’s for Breakfast?

Hey, guys. It might be a bit difficult at first to wrap your new anti-cancer brain around this one, but you’ll get used to it:

How to Eat Out on an Anti-Cancer Diet

Sure, we’re trying to stick to an anti-cancer diet, but we still have to enjoy ourselves, right? And that means eating in restaurants every so often, indulging in some Kaeng Red (Red Thai curry, pictured here), but hold the chicken, lots of broccoli, please.

Anti-Cancer Strategies: Squelching Inflammation!

Ginger root seems to help smoulder inflammation associated with cancer.

Inflammation “contributes to tumor proliferation,  angiogenesis, metastasis and resistance to hormonal and chemotherapy.”—cancer researchers, 2009

Anti-Cancer Dietary Strategies: The Basics, Part 2

Epigallocatechin gallates (EGCGs) from green tea were one of the first dietary components identified as protective against angiogenesis, the process by which cancer cells develop blood vessels in order to grow and spread. Today researchers have found many more compounds that affect angiogenesis.

Exactly how do foods impact our ability to fight cancer? We started talking about that in Part I of The Basics. I owe you a better explanation.   

Anti-Cancer Dietary Strategies: The Basics, Part 1

We all have cancer cells dormant inside our bodies; the key is to keep them from growing and spreading.

Picture your lawn in the springtime—at the beginning, a few precocious dandelions, then an army of weeds invades your space. We slay them with herbicides, we patiently dig out their roots, yet they continue to multiply.  

But what if we changed the soil they grow in? What if we made that soil inhospitable to uncontrolled growth and spread?

Anti-Cancer Strategies: Countering Radiation

Dahl soup with mung beans

Taking CT scans or radiation treatments? Confused about what to eat in the wake of  Japan’s quake?

● For starters, try miso soup, prescribed by Japanese doctors for radiation poisoning after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Miso is made by fermenting barley, soybeans and/or brown rice with salt and a fungus loaded with enzymes and probiotics. According to Japanese researchers, it helps protect the body from absorbing radiation.

Anti-Cancer Strategies: Meet the Experts

Who are among the world’s top experts on nutrition and cancer?

With all the blather out there in the information universe, we all know that you’re only as good as your sources. As a journalist, I’ll tap into the world’s foremost experts on cancer and nutrition, digest their thoughts and then deliver their advice atop platters of inviting recipes. I’ll tell you where the experts differ in opinion—some say no alcohol; others tout red wine, for example (Don’t believe them)– and declare my philosophical bias at the outset: If you’re fighting cancer, follow the opinion that’s the least risky.

Anti-Cancer Foods: Eat your Avastin?

Avastin (also known as bevacizumab) is one of the most promising drugs for treating cancer. It works by binding to and neutralizing a protein that promotes angiogenesis, the process by which cancer cells create blood vessels and spread throughout the body.  But Avastin is expensive, hard to get and still in the trial stages for many types of cancer.

The good news is:  That protein our cells produce—VEGF, or vascular endothelial growth factor – can also be blocked by natural agents in common plants.