Can you treat cancer with nutrition? Here’s what doctors are doing right now

While the majority of the cancer establishment continues to seek a magic bullet pharmaceutical cure for cancer, another group of physicians has been taking a fresh look at the concept of a nutritional cure. It turns out that preventing, or even reversing, some forms of cancer may involve not the development of expensive drugs, but something as natural as sunshine.

In the Lab

In a laboratory study JoEllen Welsh, a researcher with the State University of New York at Albany, took human breast cancer cells and treated them with a potent form of vitamin D. The cancer cells shriveled and died within a few days of exposure to megadoses of “the sunshine vitamin.”

“Vitamin D enters the cells and triggers the cell death process,” said Welsh. She described the processes as “similar to when we treat cells with Tamoxifren [anti-cancer drug which causes adverse reactions in many women].” Researchers repeated the petri-dish experiment in mice, injecting them first with breast cancer cells and then with Vitamin D. After several weeks, the cancer tumors in the mice shrank by 50 percent.

Human Studies

Experiments outside laboratories have so far focused on vitamin D’s preventive effects on cancer. A French study released early in 2011 found that higher levels of vitamin D, obtained through diet and supplements, helped reduce the risk of breast cancer. Most significantly, the 10-year study involving over 60,000 post-menopausal women found that the effects of the nutritional vitamin D were boosted when women received greater exposure to actual sunshine.

Researchers, led by Dr. Pierre Engel of the INSERM (Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale, the French equivalent to the National Institutes of Health in the U.S), discovered that women living in the areas which received more sunshine had only about half the risk of breast cancer of women who made their homes in areas with less sun.

The sunshine seems to offer a more powerful healing effect than supplements: women who consumed less vitamin D but who got lots of sunshine had a 32 percent lower risk of breast cancer than dwelling in less sunny regions. However, the greatest protection from breast cancer was among women who consumed the high levels of dietary vitamin D and who also received regular, generous sun exposure.

Vitamin D deficiency

At a 2010 conference in Toronto on vitamin D, researcher Dr. Cedric Garland explicitly referred to breast cancer as a disease of vitamin D deficiency, stating that it could be “virtually eradicated” through increased levels of the vitamin. Garland also emphasized the importance of sunshine as a source of vitamin D.

Vitamin D’s benefits extend beyond breast health. Recent research has shown it to aid in preventing skin and colon cancers. Also, there is evidence that vitamin D deficiency may be a contributing factor in a host of other ailments besides cancer: depression, obesity, diabetes, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis.

The ABC’s of vitamin D

The US RDA for vitamin D is 200 IU for those 50 years old or younger; 400 IU for people older than 50-70 and 600 IU for people over 70. However, most alternative health experts believe these recommendations are too low. Dr. Andrew Weil recently raised his recommendation of vitamin D from 1, 000 to 2,000 IU per day. A study appearing earlier this year in Anticancer Research suggests that the cancer protection benefits require much higher levels–4,000 – 8,000 IU per day for adults.

Vitamin D is actually a hormone which enables the body to better absorb calcium. People with dark skin have more difficulty synthesizing vitamin D, as do other hereditary factors. Obesity can also interfere with vitamin D. Certain medications such as anti-seizure drugs and the use of sunscreens block vitamin D. Although vitamin D can be absorbed through the skin from sunshine, in latitudes higher than Atlanta, Georgia the sun is at too low an angle for 6-9 months of the year to provide sufficient UV radiation. By visiting a physician, or through mail order tests, you can have your vitamin D levels tested to ascertain that you have high enough levels (50 and 70 ng/mL) of this health-giving vitamin. The best dietary source of vitamin D is unrefined cod liver oil. Egg yolks (choose eggs from free-range rather than factory farms), salmon, mackerel and mushrooms also provide vitamin D.

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Prevent cancer with green tea – know how much is needed

If you take green tea to reduce your risk of cancer, are you really getting enough? Up until recently, population studies have had mixed results, making it difficult to give clear-cut guidelines on green tea intake. But now, several new meta-studies have begun to shed light on how much green tea is required to provide meaningful reductions in risk for several major cancers.

Green Tea: The Most Studied Anti-Cancer Plant

There are now more active clinical trials using green tea against cancer than any other plant extract: twenty-two trials are currently running (fifteen are still recruiting). PubMed now lists nearly 1600 peer-reviewed research articles, which mention “green tea” and “cancer,” and the list is growing at about 150 per year. Despite all this research, a clear-cut recommendation for green tea intake has been frustrated by several factors. Population studies have based their data on “cups per day” consumed, but the amount of cancer-fighting polyphenols per cup changes dramatically according to brewing time, amount used per cup, and type of tea (sencha, bancha, genmaicha etc.). Even the same tea will yield different EGCG contents according to time of harvest and position on the plant from which the leaves are harvested.

What Exactly is a Cup of Green Tea?

Because of these differences, a common basis is needed among researchers. Therefore the standard Japanese-style cup of green tea has been defined in some research papers as being 120 ml in volume and containing 50 mg EGCG (among other polyphenols). This is somewhat less than the USDA’s current data, which estimates a 120 ml cup of tea to contain 77 mg EGCG.

Green Tea Consumption Versus Cancer Risk

Keeping the above definitions in mind, recent meta-studies show the following levels of consumption may reduce cancer risk as indicated.

5 cups/day or more:
- 56% less oral cancer
- 54% less prostate cancer
- 42% less liver cancer
- 22% less endometrial cancer

2 cups/day or more:
- 18% less lung cancer (for general population)

1 cup/day or more:
- 60% less lung cancer (for female non-smokers)
- 44% less ovarian cancer

Most people taking part in the above studies consumed a maximum of 5 cups per day (very few consumed 10 or more), which limits how much risk reduction was experienced. This level still offers good protection from several major cancers. The risk reduction is not so clear yet for cancers of the breast, colon, stomach or pancreas – they may require even higher levels of consumption. Note: smoking seriously decreases the benefits of green tea against lung cancer, which is why non-smoking women see a 60% risk reduction with just 1 cup daily; whereas, the general population (smokers included) need 2 cups daily just to realize an 18% risk reduction. For most cancers, there is a “dose-response” relationship in which more green tea leads to greater reduction of cancer risk. For example, every 2 additional cups daily leads to an additional risk reduction of 18% for lung cancer and 22% for prostate cancer.

Green Tea for Cancer Prevention: At Least 5 Cups Daily

Therefore 5 cups of green tea daily appears to be the minimum consumption level in order to achieve meaningful reduction of cancer risk. If you don’t want caffeine, decaf green tea is an option, but it contains only about one third the EGCG content per cup compared to regular green tea. If you want a more steady, reliable intake of cancer-fighting polyphenols than brewed tea provides, then consider green tea supplements standardized to at least 250mg of EGCG per dose (according to the Japanese standard cup).

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