In addition to small amounts of healthy fats, my anticancer diet would include moderate servings of protein, and abundant helpings of fiber-rich vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains.  Plant foods are loaded with beneficial vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that slow cancer growth.  I’d make a special effort to eat foods with known anticancer properties—soybeans, cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli and cauliflower), leafy green and yellow-orange vegetables, berries, citrus and other fruits, garlic, and green tea.

I would also investigate macrobiotics.  Macrobiotics is an Eastern tradition, defined by Michio Kushi, founder of the internationally famous Kushi Institute in Massachusetts, as “the universal way of health, happiness, and peace.”  At its center is a “perfectly balanced” diet consisting of 50 percent whole cereal grains and 20 to 30 percent locally (and preferably organically) grown vegetables, supplemented with smaller amounts of beans, sea vegetables, soup and occasionally white meat, fish and fruit.  Many studies have demonstrated the value of this kind of diet in treating cancer patients.

Nutritional Supplements Are a Must

A healthy diet is only one tool in the fight against cancer.  Equally important are nutritional supplements.  As a doctor, I know that cancer cells drain nutritional resources from the body and leave it in a state of malnutrition.  Studies have shown that cancer patients have sub-optimal levels of a number of vital nutrients—particularly antioxidant vitamins and minerals.

If I had cancer, I would take a high-potency multivitamin and mineral supplement to ensure my body had the  nutrients it needed in doses adequate to mount an attack on cancer cells.  I would also take targeted supplements that have proven to strengthen the immune system and help the body fight back against cancer.  Here are some of the most promising:

Selenium:  The trace mineral selenium is one of our most powerful weapons against cancer.  In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996, researcher Larry Clark, Ph.D., of the Arizona Cancer Center, presented convincing evidence that supplemental selenium could reduce cancer death rates by as much as 50 percent!  In this study, Dr. Clark recruited 1,312 people with a history of skin cancer and divided them into two groups.  Those in the first group were given 200 mcg of selenium per day, while those in the second group were given a look-alike placebo.  Though selenium had no effect on skin cancer recurrence in these patients, its effects on overall cancer incidence and mortality were dramatic—there was a 37 percent lower cancer rate and 50 percent fewer deaths from cancer in the selenium group.  In fact, the results were so definitive that the study was stopped early, as researchers felt it would be unethical to deny the placebo group the benefits of this remarkable mineral.

Selenium is a powerful antioxidant that facilitates the quick repair of free-radical damage to DNA- one of the primary causes of cancer.  In addition to its own antioxidant properties, it is also essential for the production of glutathione, an important antioxidant and detoxifier produced by the body.  But selenium's ability to protect against cancer goes far beyond this.  It actually causes cancer cells to self-destruct before they replicate, thereby short-circuiting cancer growth.

I take 200 mcg of selenium daily and strongly recommend that any one concerned about cancer do the same.  The form used in the study is high-selenium yeast, which is the most bioavailabile form.

Page 2 of 9