What if just one lifestyle change could help you avoid getting cancer or diabetes or heart disease or high blood pressure? This one change could cut your risk of chronic disease and add years to your life. Well the simple solution to so many of these problems is to eat a healthy diet. In other words, one centered around whole plant Foods, welcome to the nutrition facts podcast. I'm your host. Dr. Michael Greger.
There are lots of things you can do, to reduce your risk of getting cancer, avoid tobacco maintain a healthy weight, but one of the simplest kinds of cancer prevention is to follow a healthy diet. The vast majority of cancer research devoted to finding
cures rather than finding new ways to prevent disease and the results of these skewed priorities are plain to see
20:21 is the 50th anniversary of Nixon's, declaration of war on cancer and the death tolls from the most, common forms of cancer in the United States have continued unabated. We've been looking at the very nature of cancer in the wrong way, breast cancer doesn't begin when a lump is first detected, all the common cancers, like long colorectal breast and prostate, which counts for the majority of deaths, have a long latency period, often 20 years or more. So it's not like,
We're healthy and then one day you got cancer. You haven't been healthy, you've had cancer growing, and you for a decade indeed. There's a bizarre misperception that people are healthy until they have actual symptoms of invasive cancer. But the barn in which, hey is smoldering before it burst into flames, is not a safe place. What about using diet and nutrition to prevent and treat cancer? Okay, but what kind of cancer there are more than 200 types of cancer? Ah, but
But they all share the same Hallmarks in a series of papers cited more than 40,000 times. In the biomedical literature, 10 Hallmarks of cancer have been identified increased sensitivity, to growth factors. Evading your body's tumor, suppressors dodging, your immune system being able to grow forever tumor, promoting inflammation, the ability to invade and spread and hook up its own blood supply, the accumulation of DNA mutations, disarming the self-destruct.
Is in place and hijacking the cells metabolism. And yes, of course, there are classes of drugs to try to counter each one chemotherapy agents designed to Target each piece of the cancer puzzle. Now, ideally there be drugs able to Target multiple Hallmarks at the same time, but that's not how drugs tend to work. This is one of the major reasons why in the context of cancer research, there's so many proponents of investigating plant Foods as I can deliver a cocktail of bioactive compounds.
Bioactive compounds that make Target most. If not, all of the Hallmarks of cancer compounds found in fruits and vegetables, such as berries, greens, and broccoli shown to be able to Target each of the 10 Hallmarks of cancer. At least in a Petri dish. Moreover. They fit the characteristics of an ideal chemo preventive agent. I mean, if you were to design the perfect candidate, you'd want them to be selected for cancerous or precancerous cells, while leaving normal cells, alone beside effect, free Target most types of cancer.
Able to be consumed as part of a daily diet, be conveniently. Available almost everywhere and be relatively inexpensive to boot and plants have all these. So no wonder those eating more plant-based and have lower cancer rates. However, it should be understood that. We're not talking about taking supplements, containing extra extra purified phytochemicals, but rather eating whole plant Foods themselves, more of a food system based approach to targeting the Hallmarks of cancer foods contain many.
Thousands of substances that lead to vast numbers of possible interactions yet much of nutritional science has long been directed towards the impact of single dietary components. Yes, this kind of reductionist approach can reveal the role of individual nutrients or Foods in the development of disease, but let's think about what the optimal research strategy would be to study the effects of bioactive natural plant, compounds on disease prevention. Instead of using isolated phytochemicals in the management of cancer. How about using Whole Food?
Because sometimes the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, a concept known as food. Synergy, check out this study the simultaneous inhibition of a series of cancer stages and breast cancer cells using a phytochemical super cocktail to breast cancer cell lines were treated with six different plant compounds individually and then altogether the level. You might find your bloodstream after eating foods, like broccoli grapes, soybeans, and turmeric. And while the compounds were ineffective.
Usually in combination, they significantly suppress breast cancer, cell proliferation by more than 80% inhibited, cancer cell, migration and Invasion. Stop the cancer cells in their tracks, and eventually killed them all off. The plant compounds did all this without having any deleterious effects on the normal non cancer cells used as control. No, wonder the foundation of cancer prevention, based on an update of the most extensive report on dying cancer. Ever, published is not pills, but plan.
Cut down on alcohol, soda meat and processed junk and Center your diet around whole grains, vegetables,
fruits and beans and our next story. We look at whether choosing organic over conventional fruits and vegetables. Could protect against cancer interview, updating the evidence on human exposure and toxicity of pesticides.
The body of evidence linking pesticide exposure. And cancer is said to be so huge that the role pesticides in cancer development. Can
No longer be doubted but most of the evidence that shows DNA damage from pesticides is from occupational, exposure, among farmers and workers. In the fields. The pesticide industry itself, were those living in high spray areas, there is evidence linking non-occupational exposure to pesticides to DNA damage in this case, single and double stranded DNA fragmentation, in sperm of men with higher levels of pesticides flowing through their bodies, but that was in China where the average pests icon.
Tration are as much as four times higher than some other parts of the world. Another way pesticides could potentially facilitate, tumor growth is to adverse effects on anti-cancer immunity. NK cells, natural killer cells, our body's first line of white blood cell defense against cancer cells and virus infected cells and pesticides have been shown to reduce harmful effects on these defend ourselves, reducing their ability to kill off tumor cells. For example, if you put a bunch of natural killer cells in a Petri dish along with human.
Leukemia cells without any pesticide your natural killer cells can clean house and wipe out more than half of the cancer. But if you drip a tiny bit of pesticide on your NK cells are so disable that the cancer wins the day. Okay, but how much pesticide are we talking? The researchers used a maximum level found in those actively spraying pesticides. Most of us, however, privileged enough not to be forced into such a job. So what about looking at? Just the
Residual pesticides left and conventional produce is choosing organic for cancer. Prevention worth the investment in the United States more than 90 percent of the population has detectable pesticides in their urine and blood regardless of where they work or live. And we know it's from the food. We eat because crossover trials where people are switch between consuming conventionally grown and organic foods, show you can turn on. And off urinary concentrations of pesticide metabolites like a light switch, but that doesn't necessarily mean the
Pesticides are harming, you. The health consequences of consuming pesticide residues from conventionally Grown Foods, remain unknown. But a recent study did find that those who self reported the highest frequency of organic food. Consumption had about a 25 percent lower risk of getting cancer. And here it is. The first of its kind to evaluate the association between frequency of organic food, consumption and cancer risk, controlling for wide, array of other factors. Doesn't it matter? That organic consumers are younger
The researchers controlled for that and still found significantly lower cancer risk. Okay, but maybe you're going to Consumers, get less cancer because their more affluent through or more highly educated and skinnier or exercise more or less M smokeless. Nope, they controlled for all that and still found significantly lower cancer risk in organic consumers, maybe their diets were different in other ways though. More fruits and vegetables overall or less junk food. Nope, they still found significant lower cancer risk.
They concluded our results indicate that higher organic food. Consumption is indeed associated with a reduction in the risk of overall cancer. This is the most sophisticated study of its type to date. But there was an earlier study that was even bigger and little evidence was found for a decrease in the incidence of all cancers except for perhaps one kind of blood cancer. Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Sure the data no difference in cancer overall between those who never choose organic or those.
You usually are always do with the only significant findings a low risk of non-hodgkin lymphoma and an increased risk of breast cancer. Is it possible that women who choose organic food or more conscientious about getting screened for breast cancer and that explains the higher diagnosis rate. We really don't know. Of course what we care about the most is not just cancer but so-called all-cause. Mortality the risk of dying prematurely period and higher blood levels of a pesticide known as beta hexachloride cyclohexane are associated.
With living a significantly shorter live. How do we cut down on our levels? Well, there was a study done way back when the found that the breast milk of a vegetarian mother was found to have less beta hexachloride cyclohexane than the milk of her sister who was also breastfeeding at the time but included meat in her diet, the vegetarian sister apparently had levels of that pesticide that were lower by about a third compared with her omnivorous sibling. No, surprise. Since this concept of chlorinated pesticides are fat soluble.
Abel. So the found most frequently in foods of animal origin, a more recent study failed to look at bit hexachloride cyclohexane, but they did find that chlorinated pcbs were associated with increased mortality risk. And again, the toxins were found in the same kinds of food, dairy products, eggs and animal fats. So, no surprise, the blood of those eating vegan was found to be significantly less polluted than omnivores regarding a whole series of pcbs, including those found.
Found in the study to be associated with increased mortality, but the vegans did not have lower levels of beta explore cyclohexane. The bottom line is that if you're worried about the adverse health effects of pesticides and pesticide type compounds. You may want to lower your intake of animal products, but when it comes to fruits and vegetables, the benefits of consuming conventionally grown produce more likely to outweigh any possible risk from pesticide exposure. So, concerns over pesticide wrist should not discourage us.
Stuffing our faces with as many fruits and vegetables as possible. That would give us a huge health benefit. Where's the potential lifelong damage of any pesticides on those same fruits and veggies has been estimated only cut up few
minutes of a person's life on average which is nothing compared to the nutritional benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables. We would love it. If you could share with us your stories about, Reinventing Your Health through evidence-based nutrition, go to
Russian facts dot org slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help Inspire others. See any graphs charts Graphics, images are studies. Mentioned here. Please go to the nutrition facts podcast, landing page there. You'll find all the detailed information. You need plus links to all the sources. We cite to each of these topics. My latest two books are how to survive a pandemic available on eBook. Audiobook, warp actual boat.
And the how not to diet cookbook with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious meals. All proceeds are received from the sales of my books. Go to charity. Nutritionfacts.org is a non-profit science-based Public Service where you can sign up for free daily updates on the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles everything on the website is free. There's no ads no corporate sponsorship, but strictly non commercial.
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