Here are some notes on up-to-date sources of information on cancers: their causes; treatments; and anti-cancer foods and diet. This isn't a reading list. However, I'm describing how each book maybe useful. The background to these notes is the persistence in conventional medicine of the debunking of what are seen as food fads and ridiculous magic diets, along with suspicion of any form of alternative treatments. However, a growing amount of the research is now being done inside conventional medicine, and includes clinical studies of anti-cancer food stuffs, as well as laboratory work. There are also a rich data source in epidemiological studies. Busy clinicians are not to blame for not knowing about all this work, but it is time more funds were put into reviewing the information, and finding ways to get it into the initial training of medical professionals, as well as into their compulsory CPD.
Dr David Servan Schreiber (2011) Anti-cancer: a new way of life, pb revised edn. [D SS]
A personal account of his life with a brain tumour, (diagnosed 18 years before he wrote his preface to the revised edn.). After conventional treatment (needed twice because the cancer returned) he became proactive on his own behalf “This book is the story of … (my) return to life and health – in fact to a level of health I had never experienced before – while knowing I had cancer. It is the story of how I used my skills, as a physician and a scientist, to find out everything I could in the medical literature that would help me change the odds. ...it offers a new, scientifically based perspective on cancer that gives all of us a chance to better protect ourselves from this disease.”
The book comprehensively covers what promotes cancer in our current world, and how it can be lived with using anti-cancer diet, exercise and what he calls the “anti-cancer mind” - which translates as “de-stressing” in the usual accounts. The chapter on this latter is the best I've come across. [I added “Strengthening the 'will to live'” to anti-cancer lifestyle changes from his chapter.] He discusses the science underlying his information, along with many examples from real people. Notes and references are provided to each chapter. It was the first comprehensive book on cancer I read. The revised edition is an up-to-date account. I recommend it if you want to know all about cancer, anti-cancer foods, and living with cancer from an eminently readable book.
Chris Woollams (2013) The Rainbow Diet – and how it might help you fight cancer (3rd edn.) [CW] Chris Woollams was a highly successful business man when, in 2002, he became interested in fighting cancer because his daughter Catherine developed a malignant brain tumour. The oncologists didn't hold up any hope of successfully treating her cancer. He set off to research diets, and complementary therapies, collecting information from cancer centres and research centres he could find around the world. He applied the information to his daughter's diet, and she lived many more years than the oncologists predicted. He set up the CANCERactive charity, started to distribute the information via his canceractive website with free articles and an email newsletter for weekly updates, and produces the ICON magazine, taken by over 600 UK hospitals, Cancer Centres, and Health Libraries. He is a critical reviewer of the papers he receives – about a hundred a year from 60 cancer research institutions – including prestigious ones. The Rainbow Diet is his third book. [I signed on to the canceractive website in 2012, and chased up interesting papers. I bought the book only a short time before Zander was diagnosed with his cancer, and it has helped me review my own anti-cancer diet.]
The Rainbow Diet deals comprehensively with the physiology of cancer tumour formation, the imbalances in the body caused by modern industrial diets, how the formation and growth of cancer tumours are powered by poor diets, and how tumour growth can be interrupted and reduced, and cancer cells can killed by anti-cancer foodstuffs. Necessary nutrients are covered in detail, and the foods that supply them, along with supplements needed for health and the compounds that have anti-cancer activity. Supportive science is mentioned as relevant, and more comprehensive accounts can be found in the canceractive website archives. The book ends with suggestions for the “Rainbow Diet” with, a useful point scoring system covering positive, neutral and negative foods in relation to cancer. The diet is based on eating a wide range of healthy foods, while cutting out much of the nasty stuff. It is a book densely packed with the facts, and in many ways a very useful reference. Chapters review different aspects of the topic, and there is a moderately good index.
Beliveau, R. & Gingras, D. (2007) Foods to fight cancer, pb. [RB & DG-1]
Richard Beliveau holds the chair in the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and is Director of the Molecular Medicine Laboratory of UQAM – Sainte – Justine Hospital – where research into the anti-cancer properties of foods, and comparisons of the relative potency of different foods have been carried out for many years. Denis Gingras is a researcher at the Molecular Medicine Laboratory of UQAM – Sainte – Justine Hospital.
This book focusses on the science of foods that fight cancer, particularly the phytochemicals that are the most effective anti-cancer components of fruit and vegetables. Part One discusses the hazardous side-effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy on healthy cells, and how better effects can be obtained by the daily use of foods that interfere with how cancer cells get their food. Such foods do not have the side-effects of conventional treatments, but in the long run can work as well or better. Part Two discusses in detail the scientific base of eleven anti-cancer substances in plants, how they fight cancer cells/tumours, along with tips for how to use them in daily food preparation. A particular interest has been studying the synergistic effects of putting different anti-cancer molecules together to see which ones give improved anti-cancer effects.
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