Are you or a loved one dealing with a cancer diagnosis and looking to add diet and lifestyle tools to the fight? Are you confused about the gaps between conventional cancer treatment and a functional medicine and real food approach? Tune in to hear Ali and Becki demystify the pathology of cancer as well offer food-as-medicine solutions to supporting the immune system, starving off tumor growth, detoxifying the body and how ketosis can play a role in best outcomes during cancer treatment!
In this Episode, Ali and Becki discuss the role of diet and cancer pathology, whether you are looking for the best diet during active cancer treatment or simply want to add prevention strategies to your daily rituals. We all have potentially cancerous cells in our bodies, however diet and lifestyle play a huge role in whether those cells manifest in disease expression or not! From boosting the immune system to foods that can influence the way tumors grow and spread, this episode is packed with cutting edge food-as-medicine solutions to empower you in the fight against cancer.
Also In This Episode:
- Supporting the Immune System
- Anti-angiogenesis Foods
- Supporting the Detox Process
- Anti-inflammatory Support
- The Role of Micronutrient Deficiency
- Resources to Support your Food-As-Medicine Journey
Transcript:
Welcome to the naturally nourished podcast, that delivers cutting edge food as medicine solutions for optimum health. Ali Miller is a nutrition expert sought out by the media and America’s top medical institutes for her revolutionary functional medicine interventions. From disease treatment to prevention, every episode will empower you with ways to put yourself back in control of your health. Please note, the topics discussed are for educational purposes only. Now welcome integrative dietitians Ali Miller and her co-host Becki Yoo.
B: Welcome to Episode 58 of the Naturally Nourished Podcast. This is cutting off cancer with food as medicine. Becki here with Ali.
A: Hey everyone.
B: And so Ali, I know you are no stranger to oncology and cancer care and, in fact, when you started Naturally Nourished, a launch of your career was really spending that first 6 months part-time at MD Anderson as a developer of a research study. And for listeners that want to learn all about it, in Episode 36 you interviewed Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, with whom you worked as a developer for a food as medicine protocol in a stage III breast cancer research study through the NIH and MD Anderson, so today’s episode we really want to focus on the underlying mechanisms of what drives cancer in the body and how we can use food as medicine to cut that off and to stave off cancer and prevent. So let’s talk about that study.
A: Absolutely so like Becki said, episode 36 we interviewed Dr. Cohen who recruited me to develop the protocol and the study is based on David Servan-Schreiber’s anti-cancer book. It incorporates elements of yoga, mindfulness therapy, resistance training and exercise, and nutrition. I developed- it was 6 different didactic or educational components that were an hour each in length as far as class type material to be done with a participant of the research study, led by a dietitian so 6 different course topics, made with handouts and materials and learning objectives on an anti-inflammatory diet, and then there was also 6 culinary classes that I developed with a unique menu each course and hands on food class. So basically a culinary approach to use food as medicine.
B: Awesome and we know that cancer prevention treatment and survivorship are also significantly impacted by diet and lifestyle and your food as medicine plans including those we feature in the Cancer E-book and the Detox E-book really are developed to ensure nutritional support, aid with detox, combat tumor growth, ease treatment side effects and prevent recurrence.
A: Yes and so like you said Becki, all ends of the spectrum whether we’re helping detox to prevent cancer, or detox post chemotherapy, if we’re actually in there during active diagnosis and treatment to work with the body to combat tumor growth or for early identification and upregulation, or during treatment to deal with side effects and then maintain optimal immune system post, food as medicine can definitely play a role on each end of the spectrum and it’s important also to acknowledge that unfortunately diet is a double edge sword, so the foods that we’re talking about the influence of diet and cancer, we’re estimating it upwards to 70% of the influence of a factor in the disease pathology or the disease diagnosis. You know, so many of us, all of us, have cancer cells in our body and it’s what we put in our system that plays a big role on how our body is expressing disease condition across the board beyond cancer. So the foods we eat can either drive inflammation, can drive elevated blood sugar levels, can drive toxicity, or they can reduce and enhance whole body function.
B: Yes and we just did a whole episode, episode 53, on coping with chemotherapy but we really thought that we couldn’t believe that we didn’t have an episode already on cancer pathology and supporting the immune system so that’s what today is all about. And I want to just jump right in and talk about the immune system and why that is so important.
A: Yeah so the immune system we think of as a surveillance system of the body and it’s really important to acknowledge that it’s job to identify abnormal cell formation and tumorigenic activity and so when we have a diagnosis of cancer, the immune system has likely been in hypomode or under reactive mode, and that’s why often we can see with the drug classification of immunosuppressants so different drugs that are used, I won’t namedrop any, but to suppress autoimmune disease, often the #1 side effect or concern is cancer because we’re suppressing that surveillance system ability to detect. So in an individual also on the other end of the spectrum that’s dealing with high chronic stress, their immune system might be overworked and then it becomes pooped and becomes underworked and that’s where things like cancer can be higher risk in that individual. And then the immune system is also important during active treatment because the immune system is often compromised during active treatment.
So when we’re talking about superfoods for the immune system, we really want to work with the body to upregulate this surveillance system activity and that’s not only going to prevent day-to-day cold, flu, virus, and illness, it’s also going to help to support the body in its ability to detect abnormal growth, to upregulate its ability to destroy tumors and cancer cells and then also protect our otherwise healthy cells during treatment time. So one of the first things we can do when we’re talking about food as medicine support in the immune system is look at what is driving inflammation in each individual’s immune system and that’s done during the MRT test, so this is a blood test that looks at 150 foods and chemicals and in the individuals, based on their own blood, what drives chemical release of the inflammatory compounds in their bloodstream and so this we really use as a baseline as a GPS of the body if you will, of what someone’s superfood and someone’s kryptonite is, so we can strategize their diet to reduce inflammation and also reduce distractors from the immune estate because if you’re eating lettuce everyday, and lettuce is a red significant reaction in your MRT results, then that means that every time you eat lettuce, although you’re eating that to be healthy, that your immune system gets distracted by trying to battle the lettuce and may not see the sneak in of a virus or the sneak in of tumorigenic activity or expansion or growth.
B: Got it so we really want to be able to kind of refocus the immunes system and minimize that distraction or fuzziness.
A: Yes.
B: And then let’s talk about the role of probiotics with immune support.
A: Yeah so probiotics are a great way to support and optimize the immune system. We know that they can play a big role in our digestive function, so they can help with regularity, so bowel formation and can aid with diarrhea or constipation, either end of the spectrum . They also provide us with fuel sources so they make these things called short chain fatty acids which can help with our energy levels, but one of the biggest things that probiotics do in the cancer world is they actually lower the pH of the body, so they regulate the pH of our system and can create compounds that actually have anti-tumorigenic properties. They also can upregulate our natural killer cells in the body, which can play a role to directly battle cancer activity in our system. So they have natural antibacterial properties, can address our microbiome or gut bacteria, and also natural killer activity to be our best line of defense for any foreign invaders.
B: Awesome and then let’s talk about a couple of immune boosting foods within that probiotic realm that we can focus on.
A: Sure so if we’re doing dairy, some of the easiest things to incorporate are things like Kefir, which is a drinkable dairy beverage, or organic Greek yogurt or strained yogurt, you’d’ want to do all of these unsweetened optimally. We could also look as raw aged cheeses, so the raw aged cheeses would be made from unpasteurized raw milk. This allows probiotic bacteria cultures in the aging of the cheese. Miso is a fermentable form of soy paste that can be added to bone broth and actually although it is fermented from soy, has very antiestrogenic properties so unlike soy from the form of edamame, or soy milk, miso can actually prevent breast cancer and estrogen dominance in the body. We can also use other cultured vegetables like kimchi or pickled carrots or sauerkraut or pickles themselves. And then finally things like Kampuchea with include both a colony of yeast and probacteria in a synergy form. So any of these could be used in rotation in the diet, and then you also may want to consider beyond the food as medicine forms, our Restore Baseline Probiotic. What’s really interesting is if you’re body does not tolerate these foods, or if you notice loose stools or GI cramping, or diarrhea following consumption of any of these foods, that’s likely an imbalance of your gut bacteria so you may want to start taking a daily probiotic. You don’t “may” you do, want to start talking a daily probiotic and our Restore Baseline Probiotic offers 15 billion colony forming units. You may even require up to a higher level, especially if you’ve been on an antibiotic or have immune suppressing influence in the body and that would be a combination of our Targeted Strength Probiotic or our Spectrum Rebuild Probiotic which would be heavier hitters. And if you’re going through active treatment I would recommend one of the targeted strength and one of the Spectrum probiotics, each at bed if you’re just talking about prevention and baseline care, that Restore Baseline Probiotic, one at bed could be sufficient. And if you don’t tolerate the probiotic pills or you notice more distention or bloating, you may need to do a bacterial cleanse so you could check out our e-book, it’s called Beat the Bloat, it’s under Books and Program and this has a quiz for dysbiosis or bacterial imbalance. It also has a protocol to actually do a gut cleanse basically kind of plowing the fields of your microbiome before you proliferate and set up camp at the gut. And that’s what you see with probiotic rich foods or you take a good quality probiotic, and you’re getting a bad response, that means that you have a large population of a bad army or a bad bacteria overgrowth, that you need to cleanse out before you can allow that good to set up camp. There’s only so much playing field for the bacteria to proliferate and so sometimes we have to reset the bowel area in order to reinnoculate and flourish the good strains.
B: Awesome so I think probiotics, probiotic foods, and then immune support with the MRT in general, those are good tips with how to support the immune system.
A: Yes.
B: So let’s get into starvation of tumors, and I know there are 2 ways we can do this to kind of starve off that tumor.
A: Yes so a couple different things that we’re thinking of – the first we’ll start with antiangiogenesis foods and so that’s an awesome big work and angiogenesis is the basically process of vessels feeding fuel, feeding tumors, feeding cells, bringing fuels to the cells and so anti-angiogenesis foods basically are going to close off the connections of the vessels or stop the vessels from forming, and that in turn basically starves off the cancer cells so cancer cells are rapidly dividing, they divide much quicker than healthy cells do in the body and so this idea of angiogenesis or feeding cell proliferation by incorporating anti-angiogenesis foods, again, can kind of block the formation of new vessels to proliferate and in sense, starve off, or weaken cancer cells and anti angiogenesis foods can be found in things like berries, and so your raspberries, your blackberries and blueberries are your best forms there. Also tomatoes and if we’re doing tomatoes they have a 2 for 1 because they also have the lycopene and if they’re cooked, they’ll have more of the cancer fighting properties from concentration of the lycopene as well as the anti-angiogenesis properties so like stewed or crushed tomatoes. Our cruciferous family of foods like our bok choy, cabbage and kale all have anti-angiogenesis properties as well as other cancer fighting compounds like I3Cs to upregulate detox. Citrus is a great one for antiangiogenesis foods, so our lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit all really great options. Dark chocolate or 100% cacao is another significant anti-angiogenesis, as well as tea. So green tea being the one that’s best researched for its antioxidants compounds and caticans but also has the ability to starve off vessel expansion to tumors with that antiangiogenics property.
B: Awesome that it just so neat, so cool to picture how that works. And then beyond this fancy term of anti-angiogenesis, I know there’s a more broad spectrum approach that we can take to starve off cancer via ketosis so let’s talk about that.
A: Yes so the ketogenic diet is really growing in up-to-date research as an adjuvant to cancer treatment. We interviewed Alison Gannet who had terminal diagnosis of brain cancer, and she uses the ketogenic lifestyle clinically in practice with clients as well as within her own body to manage and suppress her tumor growth, which is a pretty incredible episode and I apologize I don’t know the number of that, but it’ll be coming soon, and her story is one that is just really moving and phenomenal, but the way that ketosis works is it transitions the body from using glucose as fuel, most of us listening if we’re not following already the ketogenic lifestyle are using glucose as fuel and when we are monitoring for cancer in the body, we do a scan called PET scan and a PET scan actually monitors for glucose concentration in the body, and so when we’re seeing- when people say that they’re scan lit up like a Christmas tree or there’s a lot of action in the PET scan, they can see tumor activity because there’s light rapid proliferation or rapid growth, rapid expansion and in that area is also rapid metabolism of glucose or blood sugar. So increased sugar means increased proliferation and sugar or glucose is the preferred fuel source of cancer. So if we can actually starve our body from glucose, by going ketogenic it takes, remember, about 72 hours to transition the body from using glucose as its fuel source to starving of the glycogen stores which are the blood sugar stores in the liver and muscle, and then actually go into production and utilization of ketones, this actually is a fantastic mechanism to not only use fat as fuel and help with brain health and also help with metabolism and body fat loss, but it can actually, in theory, starve off tumorigenic activity and cancer proliferation.
B: Awesome and that episode we were talking about just for listeners to go back and listen, it’s episode 57-
A: Oh it’s right before this episode. Right. Good so we’re a little bit timely so this’ll kind of, if you haven’t listened to it or you missed it, go back and listen to it it’s an awesome episode.
B: Yes and then beyond eating a high fat diet to drive ketosis, I know that fats are also really important as cell barrier supporters, so this takes us to our next approach of cutting off cancer via supporting our cell membranes.
A: Yes so we want to both protect our healthy cells from damage and all of our cells are lined with what’s called a bilipid membrane, meaning that they’re both water and fat soluble. So having ample fat in the form of healthy fats helps to strengthen the membranes of these cells, protecting them from damage, from toxins. So these can be environmental toxins, or dietary toxins, and basically it prevents the membrane from allowing the toxin to penetrate, and getting DNA damage. So having ample amounts of fats, are going to provide also a form of fat soluble vitamins, like our vitamin A, D, E and K which also go back to supporting our immune system, which can help that surveillance system of cancer prevention. And there’s other strategic forms of fats, CLAs and omega 3’s that we’ve seen in research also to help to be anti-tumorigenic and anti-inflammatory. So CLAs we see, those stand for conjugated linoleic acids, these are in our grass-fed forms of dairy so like our grass-fed butter, and then the omega 3s are also seen in some of those grass-fed foods but higher in our omega 3 fatty acids from wild fish, egg yolks from pastured chickens, so having a healthy fat in all meals and snacks is a great place to start and if you transition your diet to ketogenic, your diet is going to be 80+% made up as far as macronutrient distribution from fat, so there will be no problem with getting healthy fats to support membranes and also to starve off your body from glucose. So variety of intake of foods like avocado, extra virgin olive oil, olives themselves, nuts and seeds, nut butters, coconut oil, coconut meat, grass-fed butter, all of these are in abundance with the ketogenic diet or a very low glycemic high-fat, low carb approach.
B: Awesome. So let’s talk now about the role of detox and why that is so important in cutting off cancer. So I just was really deeply in the weeds with our refacing our detox protocol and was really into how the 3 R’s of resetting your metabolism, restoring your digestion, and renewing your cellular health can really go beyond, above and beyond, what people might envision as a cleanse.
A: Yeah so I, when I developed the detox, I wanted it to be comprehensive as an entry point, if you will, into what I call Optimal Eating. So it talks a lot about mechanisms of metabolism, it talks about leaky gut, it talks about the GI tract, it talks about stimulating the digestive process, and then this idea of renewing cellular health both in barrier protection as well as this phase 2 of detox and so what happens in detox is there’s two phases, there’s phase 1 which is the activation of toxins and phase 2 which is the encapsulation and excretion and so when we’re talking about cancer, there is often an upregulation of enzyme activity of the individuals that are diagnosed with cancer with that activation, but inadequate activity in the conjugation excretion. So what this basically means is, people that have tumorigenic activity are typically activating toxins and those toxins are damaging their cells, damaging their DNA, scrambling things so that their immune system is not seeing this abnormal activity, and their body does not have ample enzyme support and metabolic support to identify the toxins that have been activated and encapsulate and excrete them so that they are not harmful to the body. So it’s important to support both biological phase 1 and phase 2, and in my ten day detox we’re really upregulating the action of the liver and the kidneys and so we’re talking about the liver and kidneys filtering the blood and the liver filters the blood of the body at 2 quarts/minute so it’s just constantly filtering and the liver is really the UPS of the body, so it is what determines what is a nutrient and where it gets packaged and shipped off to if you will, and so it decides “ok coq10 you go to the mitochondria or “ok calcium, you go deep into the bone where you belong and go to those osteocytes in the cells that build bone.” And then it says “I don’t know what you are toxin, I’m going to store you over in this fat cell.” And what happens is in an individual that is exposed to higher toxins without ample antioxidants or without ample phase 2 detox support, those toxins build up and, like I said, can actually damage the body’s expression, and also then can drive higher perpendency towards tumor activity.
So in the individual with a detox, we want to provide both phase 1 and phase 2 enzyme support. And phase 1 is upregulated with antioxidants, which protect the activated toxin exposure. Phase 1 is also supported by liver, gallbladder support so these are bitters, like dandelion green, this is things like milk thistle which support the liver, this is things that support bile flow and so this is kind of the activation in that UPS system to identify. And then phase 2 is conjugation and excretion which uses a lot of sulfur containing compounds, so this is where we’re looking at our indole 3 carbonyls, from our cruciferous family from like our broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts. We’re also looking at ileums as sulfur drivers like leeks and shallots and onions and garlic. We’re looking at also sulfur from our protein-rich foods like our egg yolks, and our wild caught fish, and even our grass-fed beef, so in order to do a successful cleanse, a lot of these amino acids and metabolites like N-acetyl-cysteine and glutathione and all these granddaddy antioxidants superfoods are seen biologically active in animal products as well. So our detox actually incorporates animal or biological protein for 8 of the 10 days through the cleanse, and it works in a bell curve, if you will. As you eliminate foods, you’re strategically focusing on foods to boost in abundance and it is really a strategic approach to not only doing a detox successfully, but to also clean eating and identifying foods that potentially are driving inflammation in your body as you are removing, to see how your body response in the process.
B: Awesome and this detox protocol that we’re talking about is found in our Detox E-Book which was just redone, it got a little facelift and it’s on sale for $14.99 through the month of November, so if you’re listening to this podcast when it comes out, check that out under Books and Programs on our website. There’s a lot of really valuable information in terms of what to remove, what to replace in the diet, going through that entire 10 day protocol and then there’s about 20, I think exactly 20 actually, recipes to support your journey.
A: Yep and then it’s important to note, if you’re actually looking to do a metabolic detox, it does require supplementation support so we’re trying to, just like you change the oil in your tank quarterly, we’re trying to upregulate the influence of cleansing in the blood by the liver and the kidneys and so beyond the diet being strategic in that bell curve, you actually need an abundance of these therapeutic compounds that have been shown in medical research to drive phase 1 and phase 2 enzyme activity. And so it does require the detox packs which you can get on the site as well, the Reset Restore Renew packs, and actually I am going to be getting a high volume of packs that are good through August only, at a discount price because I’ve had a lot of people – the packs are $106 or $108 they’re a little bit cost prohibitive and lot of people have been requesting if I can do any form of promo, and I did get my hands on, and we are able to get some packs that are good through August of 2018, so we typically only sell supplements on our site that are good for at least 16 month window, but for those quick turnaround options, anyone that’s really to do a cleanse now or even in January, I will be offering these at a heavy discount. I think I’m going to be able to offer them at $30-40% off so stay tuned and definitely sign up for our email newsletter and we’ll be pushing out promo for that to get you guys ready for the holidays, and that might be the best time to jump into a 10 day detox using the supplements and you could use them again another time in the Spring, all before August of 2018.
B: Awesome and yeah the detox would be appropriate just as a cancer preventative tool but also for someone who’s recently gone through chemo.
A: Absolutely.
B: Ok and so we opened with the concept of the immune system as our surveillance system of the body, and talked about this focused approach using the MRT as kind of the individualized approach, but I want to talk just about kind of the general approach to an anti-inflammatory diet and how we see that.
A: Yeah so the MRT is the GPS, if you will, right as far as inflammation and like I said, I really like using this clinically with cancer care as well as autoimmune disease or GI distress because it is the GPS of the body so it takes out a lot of the anxiety of “is this food good for me? I read this article about this” and I often kind of really focus with patients on reducing stress within the process of cancer care because at the end of the day, you can find a research study or an article that says that Kale caused this cancer, right? You can find negative things about food and you can overthink it, and so I want to talk about some bar none pro-foods to add into your diet that can cool and soothe and be anti-inflammatory, but if you’re really looking for the individualized level, that MRT test would be my gold standard to really determine for your system, what’s going to downregulate inflammation and what’s going to work with that surveillance system of your body. But classifications are categories of foods that are anti-inflammatory, would first be maybe mucilaginous, so that’s a fun word to say and it basically means oopy goopy so mucilaginous foods are going to be seen with seaweeds and sea vegetables.
These are very mineral rich additions to your diet that can be incorporated into bone broth in the form of a misosoup, so we could use a little pieces of kombu or even nori sheets torn up in bone broth, and then that miso to get the probiotic support after we’ve removed the bone broth from heat, and that’d be getting a really great delivery of the seaweeds and iodine and B vitamins and minerals as well as that mucilaginous coating and that’s going to really help with the oral area like mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines especially if we’ve had radiation or chemotherapy because we can get a lot of ulcers and digestive sores, so seaweed can be very beneficial. You can also incorporate seaweed to do a simple seaweed wrap-up, like use your normi sheet with avocado slices or spread some guacamole on that and then do turkey slices or lox cold smoked salmon and roll that up and cut it into simple sushi bites. Or you could just snack on seaweed. So all of those would work really nice for us and then the bone broth itself would be another addition in this section which is kind of oopy goopy, it has the gelatin so it’s going to be that anti-inflammatory driver also.
Another category separately would be berries, which have shown to be one of the highest antioxidants and anti-inflammatory foods, so they have something called anthocyanins, which is that purple pigment in the blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries and these help to protect our vessels and as I mentioned and they have antiangiogenics properties so they can starve off the growth of cancer in the body, but they also can be cooling and soothing and have anti-inflammatory support. These are really great, I recommend a cup of berries a day, these can be added into smoothies or as a snack with nuts and seeds. Another category we could consider for inflammation would be, as I mentioned, omega 3 fatty acids with our barrier defenders. Omega 3s have a really potent anti-inflammatory support for our body. So doing this from our wild caught fish, or from, like I said, the yolk of a pasture-raised chicken, these are all going to be great options and I would recommend supplemental support here because it’s very difficult to offset our omega 3-omega 6 ratio and get enough of that EPA and DHA. So our EPA DHA Extra supplement. I will have Becki add to the show notes and this is my favorite omega 3 fatty acid fish oil on the market. It is 3rd party assessed for toxicity, it assesses for contamination from mercury, PCBs, and toxins, it is 100% purity guaranteed of the omega 3 marine lipid concentrate and that’s really important because all too often we’ve seen unregulated fish oils having thing like soybean oil, or corn oil as fillers and so that’s working against you. You’re taking a supplement but getting omega 6 and maybe even toxins from sprays from industrialized crops and things like that. So you really want to make sure you’re supplementing with a good quality EPA DHA. And our EPA DHA Extra not only can help with inflammation, so beyond the cancer scope of inflammation that’s talking about aches, pains, like joint ache and things like that and also heart health, very beneficial to prevent against stroke, and help to keep the blood thinned and protect against cardiovascular and diabetic insulin resistance and the whole metabolic gammit as well.
B: Awesome and then let’s talk about turmeric.
A: Yeah.
B: The supplement and food.
A: Yeah so spices as well are huge so we got our sea veggies, our berries, our omega 3 foods, and spices and seasonings. So turmeric is the bar none superfoods spice we think because it has antitumerogenic properties, it’s’ probably been the most well researched and that’s that curcuminoid. The curcumin is the active compound in turmeric and when we’re talking about turmeric we can see in traditional cultures that it’s best bioavailability when combined with black pepper, and also when combined with fats. And so we may have seen different supplements on the market that use biopurine or black pepper add-on, and those have been shown to have a little bit increased availability in the bloodstream, but our supplement Super Turmeric, super excited about super turmeric. It has 3 different active cucuminoids and it has been studies to have the highest bioavailability on the market, even compared to those products that have biopurine, 4-6 times the increased absorbability and 4-6 times increased presence in the bloodstream to have anti-inflammatory influence in the body. And this is without the use of the black pepper, which was done strategically because a lot of those formulas cause reflux or heartburn. The super turmeric also incorporates beyond the curcunoid’s turmeric oil, so its’ using the natural fatty compounds from the turmeric root itself to get that synergy influence of combining fat with the turmeric.
B: Awesome and then ginger we talked a lot about this one in our coping with chemo episode but ginger would also be a great digestive support, anti-inflammatory and help with nausea as well.
A: Absolutely and both the ginger and turmeric are in a lot of our recipes, you guys can see that we love using these things and one that we just put on the blog recently for the turmeric is called a Turmeric Shooter.
B: It’s Detox Supporting Turmeric Lemonade.
A: Ok but it has turmeric root, lemon in it, water, honey, and then if you’re doing keto you can pull the honey out and sub out for coconut water to still get that electrolyte influence in the body without the carbs. So that works really nice also if you’re dealing with active battling of cancer or even if you had a long weekend and are looking out upregulate your liver and detox process and get that anti-inflammatory whoosh. But the Super Turmeric Supplement, like the EPA DHA extra, has a big, broad spectrum of approach and can be used almost as an alternative to Aleve, so personally I use that pre-menstruation when I know my cycle’s coming, I use that to help with inflammation and I up both my EPA DHA Extra and Super Turmeric can that really helps with cramping and aching in the body as well. And we do have an Anti-inflammatory Bundle, which I’m just kind of in the mindset of supplements right now, so I’ll have Becki link this – the Anti-inflammatory Bundle has 3 things in it: it has the EPA DHA Extra, it has the Super Turmeric, and it has Cellular Antiox, which is the granddaddy antioxidant glutathione which has been shown in research to have a strong correlation with cancer occurrence for those that have deficiency y in glutathione and also glutathione levels get depleted from treatment. So the anti-inflammatory bundle would be a great comprehensive support across the board.
B: Awesome. So let’s transition now, since we talked a little bit about glutathione into micronutrient deficiency trends and certain nutrients that tend to be deficient in cancer patients.
A: Yeah so I actually just saw recently in- when I was face-lifting our detox a Natural Journal of Medicine actually just put out a study and one of the pulls from there I’ll just read so, I apologize if I sound like I’m reading because I am, but Nature Publication just noted that “recent experimental evidence indicates that vitamin and mineral deficiencies can lead to DNA damage. Optimizing vitamins and mineral intake by encouraging dietary challenge, multivitamin and mineral supplements, and fortifying food s might therefore prevent cancer and other chronic diseases.” I was so excited to see this. Just because it’s like “oh vitamin and mineral deficiency may be required to prevent chronic disease and cancer” and it’s something that I feel like we’re really screaming from the mountains and just isn’t honored enough in oncology fields and isn’t honored enough by standard allopathic physicians, and so it’s – we’re seeing in research that nutritional supplementation cannot only prevent disease but can also help in disease management and treatment.
And we’re seeing a strong trend when we’re talking about cancer with, yes, glutathione is the #1 and that is the grandmamma or granddaddy antioxidant, so vitamin C being the tiny antioxidant and then there’s all different gammit. There’s the whole gammit of antioxidants that go up there so there’s things like CoQ10 and selenium and vitamin E. All of these antioxidants that drive up to our glutathione being the top banana if you will in the chain. And glutathione depletion is seen during active treatment and also we can see a trend of higher susceptibility of cancer with inadequate glutathione and that’s because we see more free radical activity or more oxidative damage when our antioxidants are depleted, so optimizing your antioxidant status by having high amounts of antioxidant foods, like the turmeric using antioxidant supplement like the Super Turmeric and then maybe then working with glutathione itself, in fact that’s kind of the #1, that Cellular Antiox is my #1 go-to when I get a quick question from someone that’s dealing with cancer as a concern.
Asparagine is another one that we see trending when we’re doing our micronutrient testing, so Becki and I at Naturally Nourished do a blood test that looks at vitamins, minerals, and antioxidant status, and it’s looking about, about a 3-month average and asparagine is categorized with our amino acids or our protein building blocks, often we seen protein malnourishment or protein wasting, especially at some level of cachexia are wasting that can be more severe. And that is the number 1 driver of death or complication from cancer treatment. It’s another reason why the ketogenic diet can be so therapeutic because ketosis as a mechanism is muscle sparing, so prevents muscle wasting that would be seen in someone that’s using glucose as their primary substrate or fuel source. But I like to recommend running the micronutrient test once cancer treatment has completed or in early diagnosis state. And that’s where we can really specifically strategize for that individual where their micro nutritional status is and how to get them above water, but we do see a trend generally speaking of low glutathione and low asparagine. The best way to bump up your asparagine is with grass-fed whey, so the Naturally Nourished Grass-fed Whey is a great food product that is going to have high amounts of the asparagine it also does have some natural occurring glutathione, and then it has immunoglobulins which actually support our immune system that surveillance system getting back to our first concept of how cancer can be undetected in the first place. Sot that’s one of my favorite foods is to bring in a scoop a day of kind of a baseline if you will, and that’s going to be the best way to replete that asparagine. And actually as it sounds in its name, asparagus is the highest plant based food in asparagine so I generally recommend asparagus as a cancer fighter, and going for about ½ a bunch twice a week or a full bunch of asparagus a week and incorporating that into things like our frittatas like our egg dishes, or we have a great asparagus salad in the Naturally Nourished Cookbook, but this is a great thing to add into the diet in addition to the grass-fed whey. And then we also tend to see beyond low amino acids and low antioxidants, we see low fat soluble nutrients. This can be for a couple of reason. One, maybe the individual isn’t consuming enough fat, they going for comfort foods like refined carbs, and so again, re-emphasizing if you’re keto, you’re getting higher fat. The other reason, though, could be during treatment they have damage to their intestinal lining and the they’re not absorbing the fat soluble compound, they’re not making as much lipase the enzyme that absorbs lipids or they’re not producing as much bile either because they had their gallbladder removed at some point of their liver is overwhelmed from chemo that they’re not putting out as much bile and they’re not emulsifying and absorbing the fats, and so in that setting I would recommend the Digestaid Enzyme by Naturally Nourished and the Digestaid Enzyme is taken 10-15 minutes before meals and snacks and this encourages everything you eat, that you’re absorbing more of the nutritional compounds and also reduces the fermentation or bloating from foods that you eat, so is actually can help with bloating after mealtime or cramping after mealtime and it can encourage less inflammatory response for the foods, it actually has a little bit if DPP 4 in there to break down gliadin and gluten and casomorphin in diary so it actually makes foods less irritating and it enhance the nutritional absorption in your foods by taking that DigestAid enzyme prior to meals.
B: Awesome so I think there’s, this is really encouraging because there’s so much controversial research out there “oh, you can’t take antioxidants when you’re going through chemo” or “beta carotene in isolation, yes, in isolation may cause cancer” and all of this research kind of the both sides of the banks, so what you’re assessing with the micronutrient test we can actually tell where our deficiencies lie and then also using really high quality third party assessed products and doing things so under the supervision of a practitioner would probably be more advised than what we’re seeing the these studies where it’s high, high doses of questionable supplements that are given and have questionable outcomes.
A: With potential mold contamination and in an isolated form, that’s not in a whole food form and, yeah, we never use beta carotene as an isolate we always used mixed carotenoids or retinoic acid, different forms of vitamin A that have been shown only beneficial outcomes of cancer, and, yeah, that’s the one argument of oncologists when they try to pull you off of all your supplements, is that one study that looked at beta carotene driving lung cancer proliferation and I don’t advise beta carotene.
B: And it was in smokers.
A: Yep all of these things. So yeah I think that hopefully the information in here allows you to put yourself back in the driver seat of your body and be empowered and feel confident with use of, like I said, that anti-inflammatory bundle of supplements with the EPA DHA Extra, the Super Turmeric, and the Cellular Antiox, and we do the bundles at a form that provides savings for you financially but that’s a great way for you to empower yourself and support your system during or after treatment.
B: Awesome. And then the synergistic effect of foods too, we’re not getting any of these antioxidants in isolation in a carrot or something that contains that whole spectrum of carotenoids.
A: 300 different types of carotenoids in there.
B: Right so we’ve covered a whole lot today between inflammation, antiangiogenic foods, our barrier defenders in our fats, the role that ketosis can have in cancer treatment, detox, and then finally antioxidants.
A: So I hope that you all have taken a nugget or 2 that you can add in abundance to your outcomes and check out like I said, on the AliMillerRD.com shops page, if you’re considering the Detox E-book, definitely would jump on that before the end of the year, and we will be uploading the promo for the detox supplements also by the end of the month so you can always message us if you’re looking to take advantage of that early, and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please jump over to ITunes and leave us a 5 star review and/or share the episode page on your social media, I’m hoping that this allows, again, information that is well-researched in the medical field to support clinical outcomes and empower you to use food as medicine and nutritional supplements to not only fight against cancer, but maintain remission and prevent it in the first place.
Thank you for listening to the Naturally Nourished Podcast. Visit our blog at Alimillerrd.com/blog for recipes, wellness tips, and food as medicine meal plans. Connect with Ali at Becki at AliMillerRD on InstaGram or Twitter and Facebook. Until next time, stay nourished and be well.
