It’s not stress that pushes a cancer to grow faster: it’s the feeling of helplessness that we sometimes develop when we’re facing stress. This is accompanied by abnormalities in cortisol, which when they persist can prevent the immune system from doing its work, and increase inflammation in the body. The best defense against the feeling of helplessness is to find support from people around you. 

Some people -- like “Mish”, whose letter I quote in chapter 5 of Anticancer: A new way of life – manage to endure the trials of cancer thanks to the love of a close family member. A husband, wife, daughter or son who holds your hand through every stage, and who allows you to lay your tired head on his or her shoulder, can help prevent you from feeling helpless. But recent studies show that a network of friends can sometimes play a role that is just as important, whether in cure, or survival long beyond statistical life expectancy.

In a book published this year, Jeffrey Zaslow tells the story of a group of eleven childhood friends, who scattered across the United States after leaving high school. [1] Their friendship survived almost forty years that included all the ups and downs of life -- success and failures at university, marriages, divorces, and difficulties with children. In September 2007, one of them – Kelly – was told she had breast cancer, and that she would need family support. Instead of turning to her family, however, she confided the news by email to her far-flung high-school girlfriends. She received an “instant shower” of emails, phone calls, letters, cards, packages. When her chemotherapy caused painful mouth ulcers, one of her girlfriends sent a machine to make milk-shakes to soften her mucuous membranes. Another, whose daughter had died from leukemia, knitted her a woolen hat so she wouldn’t catch cold after losing her hair. A third made pajamas from special cloth to make night sweats less unpleasant. Kelly often found it easier to talk about what she was going through to her girlfriends, rather than her doctors. “We’ve known each other so long, we can tell each other anything,” she says joyfully. [2]


Research confirms the importance of friendship. In the Nurses Health Study, a large-scale analysis of nurses in the United States, women with breast cancer who could name ten friends had four times more chance of surviving their illness than women who could not. The geographical proximity of these friendships was not significant: their protective effect seemed to stem from the simple fact of feeling connected. [3]

Friendship also plays a major role for men. In terms of protection against coronary heart disease, a Swedish study of 736 men found that friendship bonds had as strong an effect on health as the fact of being married. [4] The study found that only smoking affected health as much as the feeling of loneliness and isolation.




BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Zaslow, J., The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and Friendship. 2009, New York, NY: Penguin Group.

2. Parker-Pope, T., What Are Friends for? A Longer Life, in The New York Times. 2009: New York, USA.

3. Kroenke, C.H., et al., Social networks, social support, and survival after breast cancer diagnosis. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2006. 24(7): p. 1105-11.

4. Orth-Gomer, K., A. Rosengren, and L. Wilhelmsen, Lack of social support and incidence of coronary heart disease in middle-aged Swedish men. Psychosomatic Medicine, 1993. 55(1): p. 37-43.


Chinese women who regularly eat mushrooms and drink green tea daily have 89% less risk of developing breast cancer than those who consume neither.

Australian researchers from the University of Perth compared the diets and lifestyles of more than 2000 women who attended a breast clinic in China. Working with detailed registers of their consumption of a variety of foods, they observed that, all other factors being equal, women who consumed an average of more than 10 g of fresh mushrooms every day had 64% less risk of developing breast cancer than those who did not eat mushrooms. Those who ate 4 g of dried mushrooms saw their risk diminish by 47%. When consumption of green tea was added (more than 1g of tea-leaves infused per day), the protective effect of the two factors combined reached 89%! [1]
 
We already knew that Japanese farmers who have a large consumption of these mushrooms are up to half as likely to develop stomach cancer (which is frequently observed in Japan) as people who do not eat them. [2]. Several large cancer centers in Japan now systematically deliver standardized extracts of these mushrooms to accompany chemotherapy treatments [3, 4, 5].
Japanese researchers have observed that patients who receive these mushroom extracts see the number and activity of their white blood-cells increase sharply, including in the interior of the actual tumor [4, 6, 7, 8, 9].
At Kyushu university researchers have observed that when chemotherapy is accompanied or followed by consumption of these mushrooms in patients suffering from colon cancer, they considerably extend the patient’s survival [4].
 
In the Montreal lab headed by Prof Richard Béliveau, extracts of various mushrooms have been tested against breast cancer cells in vitro. The benefits are not limited to Asian mushrooms: some mushrooms in the pleurotus family enable the almost complete cessation of growth of cancer cells in the laboratory.
 
Although the effects of mushrooms on cancer were already partially known, what is surprising in this study is their potentialization through the consumption of green tea. The principle of the synergy of different food products is a constant feature when we explore the action of our natural defense system against cancer.
 
Bibliography


1.    Zhang, M., et al., Dietary intakes of mushrooms and green tea combine to reduce the risk of breast cancer in Chinese women. Int J Cancer, 2009. 15: p. 1404-1408.

2.    Hara, M., et al., Cruciferous vegetables, mushrooms, and gastrointestinal cancer risks in a multicenter, hospital-based case-control study in Japan.. Nutrition & Cancer, 2003. 46(2): p. 138-47.

3.    Ooi, V.E. and F. Liu, Immunomodulation and anti-cancer activity of polysaccharide-protein complexes. Current Medicinal Chemistry, 2000. 7(7): p. 715-29.

4.    Torisu, M., et al., Significant Prolongation of disease-free period gained by oral polysaccharide K (PSK) administration after curative surgical operation of colorectal cancer. Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy, 1999. 31: p. 261-268.

5.    Nakazato, H., et al., Efficacy of immunochemotherapy as adjuvant treatment after curative resection of gastric cancer. The Lancet, 1994. 343: p. 1122-1126.
6.    Kikuchi, Y., et al., Effects of PSK on interleukin-2 production by peripheral lymphocytes of patients with advanced ovarian carcinoma during chemotherapy. Japanese Journal of Cancer Research, 1988. 79(1): p. 125-30.


7.    Tsujitani, S., et al., Postoperative adjuvant immunochemotherapy and infiltration of dendritic cells for patients with advanced gastric cancer. Anticancer Research, 1992. 12(3): p. 645-8.


8.    Kariya, Y., et al., Activation of human natural killer cells by the protein-bound polysaccharide PSK independently of interferon and interleukin 2. Immunology Letters, 1992. 31(3): p. 241-5.


9.    Mizutani, Y. and O. Yoshida, Activation by the protein-bound polysaccharide PSK (krestin) of cytotoxic lymphocytes that act on fresh autologous tumor cells and T24 human urinary bladder transitional carcinoma cell line in patients with urinary bladder cancer. Journal of Urology, 1991. 145(5): p. 1082-7.


10.    Béliveau, R. and D. Gingras, Cooking With Foods That Fight Cancer (McClelland Stewart, 2007).


Obesity is among the principal risk-factors for cancer, and we’re in an obesity epidemic. Take a look at this link and you’ll get a better picture.

This animated map shows the epidemic of obesity in the US, state by state, from 1985 to 2007. In sky-blue states, less than 10% of the population is obese. In the red states, more than 30% of people are obese – and we’re talking here about real morbid obesity, not just simple overweight. (1).

This is particularly disturbing when we reflect that cancer develops only several years after a person becomes obese. It gives us an idea of what’s in store for us, and for our society, if we don’t act to stop this phenomenon.

How did this happen? Since World War II, we, in Western societies, have completely changed our nutritional habits. There has been massive new use of sugar and white flour, the introduction of artificial and dangerous trans vegetable fats, and the production of animal feed based on soy and maize corn that are far too rich in omega-6 fatty acids and lack the omega-3 fatty acids of grass.. (2)

All these factors contribute both to the epidemic of obesity today, and to the epidemic of cancer. In fact, obesity is one of the principal risk-factors for developing cancer. We know now that the link between cancer and obesity stems above all from excessive consumption of sugar (3), and probably also omega-6 fatty acids (4): sugar stimulates the secretion of insulin, which in turn stimulates the inflammation and the growth of cells. The same effect occurs when omega-6 fatty acids are not counterbalanced by sufficient consumption of omega-3s.

REFERENCES

1. U.S. Obesity Trends 1985–2007. Center for Disease Control, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2008. (Accessed Feb 17, 2009, at http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/.) 2. Weill P. Tous Gros Demain ? Paris, France: Plon; 2007.
3. Gunter MJ, al e. Insulin, Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I, and Risk of Breast Cancer in Postmenopausal Women. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2009;101:48-60.
4. Gago-Dominguez M, Yuan J, Sun C, Lee H, Yu M. Opposing effects of dietary n-3 and n-6 fatty acids on mammary carcinogenesis: The Singapore Chinese Health Study. British Journal of Cancer 2003;89(9):1686-92.

In a recent email, Prof. Mendelsohn – who is the President of the largest Cancer center in the United States -- expressed his support for the ideas laid out in “Anticancer: A New Way of Life”, and invited me to lead a series of talks at the University of Texas’ new “Center for Integrative Oncology”.

I wanted to share with you the satisfaction I felt recently, when Prof. John Mendelsohn, MD, the President of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston – the largest center for care and research in cancer in the United States – sent me word of his support. He also invited me to spend part of this summer leadinglead a series of discussions with the team of the new "Center for Integrative Oncology" in Houston this summer.

At a time when it may seem that medical expertssome oncologists are still enmeshed in pointless controversiesare still lukewarm about cancer preventionpatients taking part of their care in their own hands, I’m glad to be able to reassure the large number of you who have put in action, in your daily lives, the measures for preventing and accompanying the treatment of cancer that I describe in my bookhave decided to follow the recommendations of Anticancer, that our work also has the support of one of the most reputable cancer specialists in the world.

Prof.Dr. Mendelsohn’s letteremail: "I found Anticancer to be a highly readable and well-researched book. It provides the understanding needed for the practice of evidence-based cancer prevention and risk reduction. It also fills an important gap in our knowledge of how patients can contribute to their own care by supplementing conventional medical treatment. I recommend this book for anyone interested in preventive medicine and integrative, complementary approaches to patient care."

Researchers at Seoul National University (South Korea) have just published the results of a new study in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (produced by the American Thoracic Society). Their work demonstrates that when mice are fed a diet that includes additives based on inorganic phosphates -- at levels comparable to a human diet that is rich in processed foods – this stimulates the growth and spread of small-cell lung cancers.

“Non-small-cell” lung cancer is the most common form of cancer, and it’s one of the most difficult to cure. (The survival rate after five years remains stagnant, at 14 percent). More than 90 percent of these cancers are associated with the activation of a signaling pathway that is strongly reinforced by the presence of inorganic phosphates in the diet (at least, this appears to be true in mice). Dr John Heffner, the former president of the American Thoracic Society, emphasizes that this type of research addresses the complex interactions between genetic predisposition and environmental factors which together cause cancer in man. The analysis of these results by Dr. Cho, a professor of veterinary medicine and co-author of the study, reinforces what I wrote in Anticancer: A New Way of Life. “Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell proliferation in lung tissue, and disruption of signaling pathways in those tissues can confer a normal cell with malignant properties,” he explains. “Cancer growth can be stimulated by altering even a small portion of these signaling pathways, which are regulated by the availability of certain food-products that act directly on the proliferation and growth of cells.”

Dr. Cho continues, “In the 1940s, phosphate-based food additives contributed about 470 mg per day to the average adult diet. But today, phosphates are increasingly added to processed foods. As a result, depending on the individual’s nutritional choices, the quantity of phosphates that we ingest has increased, and can be to 1000 mg a day.”

More detailed studies are underway. However, in the meantime, it is my personal opinion that everyone who’s undergoing treatment for non-small-cell cancer should be made aware of this important research. They need to decide for themselves whether their attraction to processed foods containing inorganic phosphates counts more to them than the possible risk that they may stimulate the cancerous process, which this study reveals. 
 Processed foods containing the highest levels of inorganic phosphates: Inorganic phosphates are used by the food-processing industry because they retain water and improve food texture. They are especially present in processed meats and sausage products; certain processed cheeses (especially cheese spreads); processed pastries (the ones you can buy at the supermarket, not the ones at the neighborhood bakery); almost all processed sodas (fizzy and sugared drinks, including Coca-Cola); drinks based on fruit syrups; and food-products prepared with evaporated milk (including industrial ice-cream). Other food products whose ingredients include preservatives based on phosphates, such as Calcium phosphate, Disodium phosphate, phosphoric acid, sodium triphosphate, tricalcium phosphate, etc should also be avoided.

1. Jin H, Xu C-X, Lim H-T, et al. High Dietary Inorganic Phosphate Increases Lung Tumorigenesis and Alters Akt Signaling. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2009;179:59-68.

A new study confirms how important it is to limit the dietary intake of sugar so as not to stimulate cancer

I’m scheduled to give a talk tonight at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, but I’m writing this to alert you to a new report by another New York hospital, the Department of Epidemiology of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, working as part of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study of 93,676 women. The report confirms the link between a high level of insulin – which indicates the level of sugar in the blood, and the risk of breast cancer.

In this massive study, the risk of breast cancer in menopausal women who were not undergoing hormonal treatment (which is now contra-indicated in the United States and Europe, except in cases of specific menopausal symptoms that are difficult to manage in other ways) was 2.4 (140 percent increase in risk), while the risk associated with hormonal treatment was lower, at about 2.0 (100 percent increase in risk). The authors conclude that the link between obesity and breast cancer in menopausal women is probably entirely due to higher levels of insulin and estrogen hormones in women who are significantly overweight (Body Mass Index > 30).



This confirms one of the main conclusions featured in my book Anticancer: A New Way of Life, the important role of a diet excessively rich in sugar (“high glycemic index”) in the appearance of certain cancers. It once again underscores how important it is to communicate to patients who have already developed cancer that it is vital that they adopt a low glycemic-index diet, in order to reduce their levels of blood-sugar (“glycemia”), and thus diminish the secretion of insulin and its malignant influence on the growth of cancer cells.

Low-glycemic-index diets – like the Mediterranean diet, which many of us have found so easy to adopt – have already demonstrated their favorable effects on every other parameter of health: cardiovascular disease, dementia, and inflammatory diseases. So let’s get cooking!


1. Gunter MJ, al e. Insulin, Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I, and Risk of Breast Cancer in Postmenopausal Women. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2009;101:48-60.

New studies suggest that a high level of Vitamin D in the blood may improve our mood during the winter months, and may also protect against colds and flu.

This is my discovery of the season! I’ve already written about the importance of maintaining a strong level of vitamin D3 in the blood, to protect against cancer. This works in cancer prevention, but it’s also very likely to have an impact in slowing the progress of cancer. We’re now learning that women with a high level of vitamin D3 have the lowest risk of developing breast cancer, and that if they do develop cancer, they have a lower risk of cancer progression (Abbas et al. 2009 ; Goodwin, 2008).

This beneficial effect of vitamin D3 seems likely to extend to non-small-cell lung cancer too. 
In one study, people with the highest blood levels of vitamin D3 had an average survival rate that was double those who had the lowest blood levels of vitamin D3 (Zhou et al., 2005). Similar data also exists for cancers of the colon and prostate cancers (Freedman et al. 2007, Woo et al., 2005).

Indeed, researchers into vitamin D believe that it slows the progress of all forms of cancer, at least during its early phases (Cannell et Hollis, 2008).

What’s new is that it seems that adequate levels of vitamin D3 -- comparable to the levels observed during the summer months in people who enjoy moderate exposure to the sun – may also protect from colds and winter flu (Laaksi et al., 2007), and may additionally contribute to maintaining a positive mood, acting as a kind of antidote to falling energy levels during the cold, dark winter months (Wilkins et al. 2006). 
 Two doctors of integrative medicine have recently published an article on the subject (Cannell and Hollis, 2008), and they conclude that we should maintain our blood-levels of vitamin D3 above 50 ng/ml (in Europe, where this is usually measured in nmol/l, this corresponds to about 125 nmol/l) and below 70 ng/ml (175 nmol/l). (To convert ng/ml to nmol/l, multiply by 2.498).

You should note that, in the absence of large-scale, long-term research into survival rates, Dr Jean-Claude Souberbielle, who has been studying vitamin D for 25 years at the Necker Hospital in Paris, recommends a blood level above 30 ng/ml (roughly 90 nmol/l), and under 50 ng/ml (125 nmol/l), in order to minimize the risk of side-effects such as the development of developing kidney stones due to excessive absorption of calcium.

The best way to move forward on this is to talk to your doctor about the importance of analyzing your level of vitamin D3. (Many doctors do this regularly, but others have no knowledge of this field). You may also need to take appropriate supplements. Vitamin D experts recommend taking daily supplements of 1,000 – 5,000 International Units (remember that our skin manufactures 10,000 IU after 15 to 20 minutes of exposure to midday sun in the summer), or single doses of 100,000 units of vitamin D3, once or twice a month (each dose costs no more than $1.50). However, it’s usually better NOT to take ergocalciferol (also known as vitamin D2), which some experts think may be more toxic. 


RISKS The only possible risks associated with excessive intake of vitamin D3 – particularly in people who have cancer – are, firstly, that kidney stones may develop due to excessive calcium in the urine, and, secondly, hypercalcemia (excessive levels of calcium in the bloodstream). Hypercalcemia may in some cases be lethal to people with cancer. It is therefore recommended that you measure blood levels of vitamin D3 (25 OH cholecalciferol) and calcium, before you begin supplements, and roughly every three months during treatment.

Acknowledgment Thanks to Thierry Souccar and his team at www.lanutrition.fr for having alerted me to the recent article by Cannell and Hollis.

Bibliography: 
Souberbielle J-C, Prié D, Couberbaisse M, et al. News on the effects of vitamin D and the evaluation of vitamin D status. Annals of Endocrinology 2008;69:501-10. Abbas S, Chang-Claude J, Linseisen J. Plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D and premenopausal breast cancer risk in a German case-control study. Int J Cancer 2009;124(1):250-5.
 
Goodwin PJ. Frequency of vitamin D (Vit D) deficiency at breast cancer (BC) diagnosis and association with risk of distant recurrence and death in a prospective cohort study of T1-3, N0-1, M0 BC. In: Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology; 2008.

 Zhou W, Suk R, Liu G, et al. Vitamin D is associated with improved survival in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer patients. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention 2005;14(10):2303-9.

 Freedman DM, Looker AC, Chang S-C, Graubard BI. Prospective Study of Serum Vitamin D and Cancer Mortality in the United States. J Natl Cancer Inst 2007;99(21):1594-602.

 Woo TCS, Choo R, Jamieson M, Chander S, Vieth R. Pilot study: potential role of vitamin D (Cholecalciferol) in patients with PSA relapse after definitive therapy. Nutr Cancer 2005;51(1):32-6.

 Cannell JJ, Hollis BW. Use of vitamin D in clinical practice. Altern Med Rev 2008;13.

 Laaksi I, Ruohola J-P, Tuohimaa P, et al. An association of serum vitamin D concentrations < 40 nmol/L with acute respiratory tract infection in young Finnish men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2007;86(3):714-7.

 Wilkins CH, Sheline YI, Roe CM, Birge SJ, Morris JC. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with low mood and worse cognitive performance in older adults. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 2006;14(12):1032-40.


"Anti-cancer" life-style choices (nutrition, physical activity, stress management) reduce mortality from breast cancer by 45 percent.

A new study just published by the magazine CANCER (November 2008 issue) provides a great deal of food for thought. Researchers from Ohio State University have demonstrated that women undergoing treatment for breast-cancer, who followed a training program similar to the life-style changes that I describe in Anticancer: A New Way of Life, nutritional advice, more physical exercise and, especially, better stress management, saw their risk of dying fall in the following 11 years by 45 percent (see illustration below). The drop in mortality amounted to 68 percent when the small number of patients who abandoned the program early on were excluded from the statistics. The program constituted eight weekly sessions, followed by one monthly session over the course of a year.

It’s disturbing that major conferences on cancer treatment, such as the “First Convention of Society Against Cancer”, which will open this Sunday in Paris, continue to take place without mention of new scientific data provided by studies such as this. As detailed in my book Anticancer: A New Way of Life, new research emphasizes the impact of environment in cancer progression, and demonstrates that individual approaches may allow each of us to protect ourselves better from the disease, both as prevention and in order that we can benefit more extensively from treatment. I have just written to my medical colleagues, many of whom will be present at this weekend’s Convention as cancer specialists, to alert them to this latest study.

However, it seems to me that you – the people who are most affected – will also have to ask these questions, which are so often ignored by specialists, since many of them prefer to invest exclusively in methods of prevention and treatment that don’t throw doubt on our health-care systems and industrial practices.

So speak up, and pass this study around!

Proportion of patients who survived, from the onset of intervention, in the group of women who followed the training program and the control group, which didn’t receive training.

Note the improvement in survival rates of patients who benefited from training even after just two years.

This is the reference and abstract for Prof. Andersen’s study:

Andersen, B. et al. (2008) Psychologic Intervention Improves Survival for Breast Cancer Patients Cancer 2008;113:3450–8. copyright 2008 American Cancer Society.

BACKGROUND. The question of whether stress poses a risk for cancer progression has been difficult to answer. A randomized clinical trial tested the hypothesis that cancer patients coping with their recent diagnosis but receiving a psychologic
intervention would have improved survival compared with patients who were only assessed.
METHODS. A total of 227 patients who were surgically treated for regional breast cancer participated. Before beginning adjuvant cancer therapies, patients were assessed with psychologic and behavioral measures and had a health evaluation, and a 60-mL blood sample was drawn. Patients were randomized to Psychologic
Intervention plus assessment or Assessment only study arms. The intervention was psychologist led; conducted in small groups; and included strategies to reduce stress, improve mood, alter health behaviors, and maintain adherence to cancer treatment and care. Earlier articles demonstrated that, compared with the Assessment arm, the Intervention arm improved across all of the latter secondary outcomes. Immunity was also enhanced.
RESULTS. After a median of 11 years of follow-up, disease recurrence was reported to occur in 62 of 212 (29%) women and death was reported for 54 of
227 (24%) women. Using Cox proportional hazards analysis, multivariate comparison of survival was conducted. As predicted, patients in the Intervention arm were found to have a reduced risk of breast cancer recurrence (hazards ratio (HR) of 0.55; P 5.034) and death from breast cancer (HR of 0.44; P 5.016) compared with patients in the Assessment only arm. Follow-up analyses also demonstrated that Intervention patients had a reduced risk of death from all causes (HR
of 0.51; P 5.028).
CONCLUSIONS. Psychologic interventions as delivered and studied here can improve survival.

How to avoid excessive stimulation while preserving the precious catechins in green tea

The catechins present in green tea protect against cancer progression. However, they also contain theine/caffeine (about one-third of the quantity present in a cup of coffee). Eliminating caffeine from the body may take as long as eight hours. Thus for some hyper-sensitive individuals (including me!), consuming green tea after 3 or 4 in the afternoon may cause sleep disorders, especially difficulty in falling asleep.

It happens to be the case that when in contact with hot water, the extraction of theine and catechins (which are antioxidant and antiangiogenic) occurs at different rates. As illustrated below, if the tea is allowed to infuse for one minute, and if this first water is thrown out so that the leaves (or bag) can re-infuse in fresh hot water, 70 to 80 percent of the theine (upper curve) is eliminated, while only 10 percent of the catechins (lower curve) are lost. If the “first soak” is given four minutes, then 90 percent of the theine is eliminated, while 50 percent of the catechins remain.

You choose which infusion you prefer!

Source : ‘Le Guide de Dégustation de l'Amateur de Thé’ (A Taste Guide for Tea Connoisseurs) by Xavier Delmas and Mathias MInet - Les Editions du Chène.