Cancer Fighting Foods to Support Your Cancer Remission Mission
(eating to avoid a recurrence of cancer)
When I had breast cancer 24 years ago, my dear friend and complementary cancer specialist doctor, Dr. Davis Lamson, suggested that for the rest of my life, my immune system should be my hobby.
I interviewed Dr. Lamson on my radio show (Dr. Berkson’s Best Health Radio). He has now been in this field for over 28 years, helped form the board certification program for complementary physician specialists, taught naturopathic oncology at Bastyr University for 17 years, and received a lifetime achievement award. Dr. Davis said he would now encourage me in a slightly different way: Remission should be my mission. There are many agents—pharmaceutical, herbal, and nutraceutical—and foods that you can consume regularly throughout the week to help prevent getting cancer again.
Dr. Lamson discussed how most tumors are made up of “daughter” cancer cells. Regular oncology interventions (surgery, chemo, and radiation) are fairly good at eradicating these cells. But it is mainly cancer stem cells that keep producing the cells that put us at risk of continuing or recurrent deadly cancers.
These cells can lurk in hidden places far away from tumors, like in bone marrow crevices and other cellular places.
Dr. Lamson says that while there have been no replicated studies that show specific natural protocols definitively and repeatedly get rid of cancer, there are now thousands of studies that show that various agents (from pharmaceuticals to nutrients and herbs) definitively eradicate cancer stem cells and much of the time also make regular cancer therapies more effective.
The Use of Nutrients
The use of nutrients added to cancer care (adjunctive tools) started because people were looking for agents that reduced the potentially nasty side effects of various cancer treatments. But Davis (who is my life-long friend; we reminisce about rafting down the Grand Canyon together while chatting on the show) bumped into a large body of scientific literature that demonstrated the science behind easy-to-obtain agents that helped kill cancer stem cells. Thus, it makes sense to consider these in a personalized post-cancer treatment program to keep you well and the cancer from returning.
Many people go through treatment and are told they are now in remission. The treatment “got” it all. They are sent back into the “wild” and it is either luck or not, that seems to define their fate. Other than giving anti-estrogen medications to estrogen-positive cancer patients, most cancer patients are just told to go home and start living again.
But something critical is missing from this scenario. It makes sense to also address the terrain of a body that allowed the cancer to grow and thrive in the first place. And it makes sense to kill hidden cancer stem cells.
So Dr. Lamson made it his career to gather together the science and agents that kill cancer stem cells and give us a better fighting chance to keep cancer from recurring. For example, Dr. Lamson shares that there are over one thousand articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the anti-cancer effects of a well-known diabetic drug called metformin.
There are hundreds of articles on an immune booster called low dose naltrexone.
And there are hundreds of articles on various nutrients and herbs that also help keep cancer from coming back. Especially apigenin, effective against multiple cancer cell lines.
Biotics and I sleuthed the world to put in the purest and most effective apigenin in my new Hormone Balance and Protect, which is filled with botanicals shown in peer review to fight cancer stem cells.
Also, the 3 mg of iodine between both products is the amount found in peer review studies to also utilize the anti-cancer stem cell activity of iodine (half in oxidized form and half in reduced form).
These agents work at various underlying mechanisms to literally “kill” hidden cancer stem cells, reduce inflammation, block fuel to inhibit tumor growth, boost immune function, and more.
These minerals and botanicals help tweak a physiology that was vulnerable to growing cancer in the first place and make it less likely to do so in the second or third place. This makes a lot of common sense. And it’s backed by science.
If you or a loved one has had cancer, this is something for you to think about and act on, even if your own cancer doctor might not know this information.
Cancer Fighting Foods
For years now, I put into my weekly menus the foods that are high in nutrients that help fight cancer. I also take supplements to achieve this.
For example, blue foods are high in the pigment anthocyanins—rich blue/black/purple pigments that have been shown in diverse studies, in the lab, and in animals, to help kill cancer cells. Adding in blue foods daily is easy to do. I buy purple cabbage once a week and add it to my salads, sandwiches, and veggie sautés. It’s easy to add radicchio, blue or black carrots, blue cauliflower, black rice, or even blue corn chips to any salad or meal.
I also love to sprout black lentils and sometimes when I need a dash of carbs, enjoy black rice which is also high in anthocyanins.
So when I make a salad, I keep cancer-fighting foods in mind. I often cut off the delicate ends of raw asparagus and add them in, later steaming the leftover stems for other meals. Asparagus is high in asparagine, which helps clean kidneys out and is also a moderate source of vitamin K, which boosts the action of Vitamin D, which in turn helps fight cancer.
Asparagus is also one of the most bio-available glutathione foods there are. At A4M one of the best case reports was a professor/MD that had a stage 4 breast cancer patient who was failing all interventions to consume 2 cups of asparagus daily. In any form. Many years later she is still astonishingly living strong, the doc shared to applause from us all.
Vitamins D & K
The International Agency for Research on Cancer released a report, Vitamin D and Cancer, on November 25, 2008. This is a randomized controlled trial (the hallmark of high science) to show that 1,100 IU of vitamin D daily reduced breast cancer incidence by 35%.
Vitamin D helps your immune system “see” cancer cells, and then nudge your immune system to respond to and fight off cancer cells.
Vitamin D and vitamin K need each other for optimal function inside your body.
Vitamin K helps calcium stay in your bones, and not form plaque inside your blood vessels.
It also seems that one possible risk factor of vitamin D toxicity may actually be caused by a vitamin K deficiency; these fat-soluble vitamins lean that much on each other. So it’s motivating to understand that eating greens helps your body utilize the vitamin D you take in.
Sulfur-Rich Foods
I love to add sulfur-rich foods as they help fight cancer, too. Sometimes it’s broccoli sprouts, which are 500 times more cancer-fighting than broccoli itself, based on over 500 studies out of Johns Hopkins. For a change, adding in broccolini is another suggestion. It’s also high in cancer-fighting sulfur compounds but has a gentler taste than regular broccoli.
I put the best of broccoli sprout botanicals also in Hormone Balance and Protect (a must product to avoid getting cancer in the first and second place).
My local grocery store sells sunflower sprouts, so I stock up on several containers. Sunflower sprouts are high in zinc, which helps keep hormone health balanced. It is also the highest mineral in your brain and fights brain fog, too.
Capers are a must. They are not just tasty berries to sprinkle on top of salads, chicken, and fish or inside sauces. They are the highest food in quercetin—a flavonoid that is a powerful cancer fighter.
Quercitin has been found to kill many different cancer cell types, so much so it’s been dubbed in the scientific literature as a “chemo-preventor.” It also boosts mitochondria energy organelles, so it helps boost your energy. Eating it at lunch helps ward off that afternoon energy crash that we are more prone to as our adrenals age.
There are a number of crouton alternatives. Onions are high in quercitin, especially the outer layers. So I may char some onions and use these homemade onion chips as croutons. Sometimes I add a few non-gmo organic blue corn chips to act like croutons. Blue corn is another food source rich in cancer-fighting anthocyanins.
Every now and then I purchase high-protein chips and use them for croutons.
Generously use diverse healing herbs, like dried organic parsley, high in apigenin, which fights cancer, too. I often “layer” parsley, adding in fresh parsley along with dried, to get flavonoids in all its protective phases.
It makes sense that if you had cancer, and you are in remission, avoiding recurrence is your main goal.
Dr. Lamson says “For life, your immune system, once you have had cancer, is now your number one HOBBY.”
Make your Remission your Mission.
Make your immune system part of your mindful meal planning and ponder it when you walk through the aisles at the grocery stores.
Buy smart. Cook smarter. Sprinkle your meals with cancer fighters.
And work with a medical nutritionist to get a personalized program.
Get on a course of agents that keep your body in a less vulnerable state to dangerous cancer cell growth.
You can be a co-creative part of insuring your healthy future by buying and eating smarter to make your risk of cancer recurrence smaller.
Of course, I have also shown in my books - Hormone Deception, Safe Hormones, and now SEXY BRAIN—the science behind orgasm helping to fight cancer, especially breast cancer. Perhaps after that cancer-fighting lunch, you might be open to a cancer-fighting dessert!
Dr. B.
References:
Molecular iodine inhibits the expression of stemness markers on cancer stem-like cells of established cell lines derived from cervical cancer. BMC Cancer. 2018 Sep 26;18(1):928. doi: 10.1186/s12885-018-4824-5. PMID: 30257666; PMCID: PMC6158890.
The Potential Role of Apigenin in Cancer Prevention and Treatment. Molecules. 2022 Sep 16;27(18):6051. doi: 10.3390/molecules27186051. PMID: 36144783; PMCID: PMC9505045.
Role of Induced Programmed Cell Death in the Chemopreventive Potential of Apigenin. Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Mar 29;23(7):3757. doi: 10.3390/ijms23073757. PMID: 35409117; PMCID: PMC8999072.
Anti-metastasis activity of black rice anthocyanins against breast cancer: analyses using an ErbB2 positive breast cancer cell line and tumoral xenograft model. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2014;15(15):6219-25. doi: 10.7314/apjcp.2014.15.15.6219. PMID: 25124601.
Black rice-derived anthocyanins inhibit HER-2-positive breast cancer epithelial-mesenchymal transition-mediated metastasis in vitro by suppressing FAK signaling. Int J Mol Med. 2017 Dec;40(6):1649-1656. doi: 10.3892/ijmm.2017.3183. Epub 2017 Oct 11. PMID: 29039492; PMCID: PMC5716451.
As always a great reminder - you have been teaching this for some time as I have been a student of yours now for quite some time! Your pro webinar on this topic is/was excellent and something I have since watched 3 times! Great info.