Linda Lazarides' Diet for Cancer
What is cancer? Cancer is a disease where abnormal cells reproduce into abnormal growths called tumours. 
If these tumours invade the surrounding tissue, spread to other parts of the body and interfere with its functions, they are described as malignant. Although the science is still out as far as the exact mechanisms are concerned, tumours are thought to develop in a two-stage process:
  1. INITIATION: the initial damage (chemicals, radiation etc.) which damages the membranes of cells so that genetic material leaks out and begins to reproduce as "undifferentiated" (abnormal) cellular tissue. "Seeds" from this tissue can travel to distant parts of the body and take root as new tumours called secondaries.
  2. PROMOTION: when the body's immune system fails to destroy this tissue, and when the body's hormones are out of balance and feed the growth of the tissue.
Conventional treatments If a tumour has not formed secondaries, treatment may be restricted to surgical removal or 
radiation treatment. Breast cancer - which is often promoted by an excess of the hormone oestrogen - may be treated with anti-oestrogen drugs. Secondaries are usually treated with "chemotherapy" - drugs which interfere with the growth of cells. Fast-growing cells such as cancer cells and the normal cells which line your intestines, are most susceptible to these drugs, which are mostly so toxic that nursing staff are told to handle them with gloves. By poisoning your body's own cells they cause dreadful side effects. For most cancers, the long-term success rate of these drugs is very poor, and there is a fine line between their ability to prolong life for a few months or years, and their ability to hasten death by causing kidney failure. Both radiation and chemotherapy drugs are also known to be capable of themselves causing new cancers.
How
nutritional
therapy can
help cancer		 Not everyone is responsive to nutritional therapy, but many people have survived against all 
odds by using it. Hard work is required, starting as early as possible. The good results are attributed to its ability to:
  1. Draw out residues of immune-suppressing or cancer-promoting toxins which may have become incorporated into your body tissues because your body has not been able to excrete them. For instance, users of the Gerson diet have reported "black sweat" coming out of their pores. People on mega-vitamin C therapy have begun to notice distinctive substances (such as cough medicine) which they have not consumed for years, being drawn out of their skin and mucous membranes. In such cases, the taste of these items spontaneously develops and persists in one's mouth and throat.
  2. Make your body a more hostile environment for cancerous cells and tumours, by improving tissue oxygenation, pH and white blood cell size, motility and speed of action.
  3. Improve liver function and so speed up the breakdown of immune-suppressing chemicals (or excess hormones in the case of hormonal cancers such as breast cancer).
  4. Certain foods used in nutritional therapy may be able to help inhibit the blood supply to tumours, although more clinical trials are needed to confirm this. Tumours depend on angiogenesis - the creation of a blood network to feed them. Angiogenesis is encouraged by excessive permeability of your capillaries. A diet low in flavonoids weakens your capillary walls and increases their permeability. A diet high in flavonoids prevents this.
  5. Flavonoids, EPA from fish oil, garlic, dietary cartilage and the retinol form of vitamin A are known to inhibit the action of collagenase and/or other enzymes which tumours use to invade healthy tissue.
  6. Antioxidant-rich foods can help to minimize the side effects of radio- and chemotherapy treatments.
  7. Many antioxidant-rich foods and supplements also enhance the anti-tumour effects of chemotherapy. Rapidly growing cancer cells are the most sensitive to anti-cancer drugs. But free radicals induced by the drugs slow down the cells' rate of growth. This is not a beneficial effect. By neutralizing free radicals, antioxidant nutrients such as vitamin C restore the rapid growth rate of cancer cells, thus improving their response to chemotherapy. ["Dietary Antioxidants During Cancer Chemotherapy: Impact on Chemotherapeutic Effectiveness and Development of Side Effects," Nutrition and Cancer, 2000;37(1):1-18.]
  8. Nutritional therapy can enhance the liver clearance of toxic chemotherapy residues after a course of treatment and enhance the regeneration of your intestinal lining. It is important to have healthy intestines so that you can absorb enough nutrients to support your immune system.
Cautions Your doctor will have a fairly good idea of the statistical cure rates of the treatments he/she 
offers you. Few such statistics are available for alternative therapies, so you must take this into account when making your decisions. It is best to start nutritional therapy as soon as possible rather than waiting to see how well you do first on conventional therapies. If your doctor does not agree to allow you a few weeks to see if vigorous nutritional therapy can begin to reduce your tumour size, then ask him/her if it is OK to use both conventional and nutritional treatments together.
      Depending on how nutrition-responsive your own cancer is, you may also benefit from other natural therapies. We have heard particularly good reports of magnetic therapy, which consists of applying specially-made magnets to the skin to alter the body's electromagnetic fields. Magnetic therapy can completely stop the progress of a melanoma skin cancer which is in its very early stages, and is also therapeutic for more established cancers. Homeopathy and acupuncture may also be valuable contributions to an anti-cancer program. People with cancer sometimes benefit from a psycho-spiritual approach which teaches them how to reduce stress and gain more fulfilment from life.
Diet for
cancer		 In alternative medicine, the Gerson diet is the recognized gold standard for the dietary 
treatment of cancer. The late Max Gerson MD was a physician practising from the 1930s to the 1950s who pioneered this diet, the successes of which have been documented in his book A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases. His clinic (now based in Mexico) is still successfully treating patients today. Gerson believed that cancer was caused by poor functioning of the liver and intestines, resulting in excessive levels of toxins and a reduced ability to absorb immune-supporting nutrients. To address these problems, his diet mainly consists of:
  1. Organically grown fresh whole-foods
  2. 12 glasses a day of freshly-made fruit and vegetable juices, particularly leafy green vegetables. The large amounts of vitamin C and the electrolytes potassium and magnesium in these juices are thought to be responsible for physically displacing toxins in tissues and driving them out. The indoles in cruciferous vegetables also help the liver to break down excess oestrogen as well as many unwanted chemical compounds and wastes
  3. Sodium restriction. Excess sodium disrupts the fluid balance in and around cells, affecting cell-to-cell communication and oxygen supply
  4. Pancreatic enzyme supplements
  5. Flax seed oil
  6. Castor oil
  7. Some protein restriction for the first few weeks, after which yoghurt and cottage cheese may be consumed in moderately small amounts.
Malaise often occurs as the diet draws stored toxins into the general circulation. Gerson recommended treating both this and the pain of advanced cancer with enemas made from coffee, which stimulate both the gall-bladder to release waste from the liver and the intestines to expel it.
      The anti-cancer diet on this website uses many principles based on the Gerson diet, in combination with modern nutritional therapy.

Click NEXT to get the basic diet. More information in Linda Lazarides' Treat Yourself with Nutritional Therapy.

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