@Amazoniac said in cancer:
@Amazoniac said in cancer:
@Amazoniac, I didn’t think you thought it foolish. I was talking about people like my dad. I’m not discounting the importance of diet. I just disagree that plant-based is the best option. The diet you quoted is the standard plant-based diet I see recommended not just by alternative practitioners, but by mainstream, as well. What were the patients’ diets like prior to the treatment with pancreatic enzymes, nutritional supplements, "detoxification" procedures, and an organic diet? Were they of equal quality, i.e., consisting of organic and pastured foods or were they more like a standard western diet? What I typically see is a person develops a disease, in this case cancer, on a standard western diet and then follows a plant-based diet consisting of real food and improves, at least in the short-term. This is not proof to me that a plant-based diet is more healing than a diet equally abundant in both organic and pastured plant and animal foods, especially when I know far more people who have had long-term success with the latter than the former.
I shared to reinforce how recurrent this pattern is between cancer therapists who consider diet an important and manipulable factor.
Intuition was likely a determinant to what people were eating before treatment, although some might have added a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato on occasion to make meals healthy. To not intervene with their core choices, we'd be left with those changes in the quality of ingredients. Take someone who eats a lot of meat and some bread by preference, do you expect that improving the quality of each would be superior to what has been proposed by the mentioned experimenters?
The experimenters may arrive on these therapeutic diets under mainstream influence, but they refine it over time based on results. For a guy like Gerson, who advocated raw liver juice, there would be no problem to incorporate more animal products in the diet had they worked, until they prevailed. Example:
"In Paris, I tried seven cases and I had three results. One of the cases was an older man. He had a cancer of the cecum where the colon starts, 70 years old. Another case was a lady from Armenia. This was a very interesting case. I had to work against the whole family. There were many physicians in the family, and I had plenty of trouble. But, anyway, I came through in that case. She had cancer of the breast which regrew. Every time the family insisted that she was "so much down." She weighed only 78 pounds. She was skin and bones and they wanted me to give her egg yolks. I gave her small amounts of egg yolks—the cancer regrew. Then they insisted that I give her meat, raw chopped meat. I gave her this and the cancer regrew. The third time, they wanted me to give her some oil. I gave her the oil and the third time the cancer regrew. But, anyway, three times I could eliminate the cancer again and cure. And still I had no idea what cancer was. If somebody asked me about the theory, just what it was I was doing, I had to answer, "I don't really know myself."
And imagine the degree of simplification of protocols in not having to go through the hassle of elaborate plant preparation.
I find it unlikely that they would complicate their approaches with something that leads to worse outcomes in spite of being open to trying alternatives.
Nevertheless, how often do we read observations of positive effects associated with animal products consumption in cancer? Most of them are either neutral or negative, perhaps with a few exceptions (such as some dairy products). But when it comes to plant foods, we start to find neutral to positive effects far more often.
I can only congratulate you for going from Prismacolor to Applegate.
I can’t answer that with confidence because I can’t say I agree that intuition was likely a determinant—and a fear and guilt free one at that, since that’s a key point to unburdening ourselves and healing—given we are regularly bombarded with health and dietary propaganda. What I can say is I don’t believe meat and wheat are inherently disease promoting.
I don’t doubt Gerson’s findings, but I know plenty that contradict them. For instance, Dr. Morse found that any plant other than fruit would make his patients’ tumors grow, and Anita Moorjani’s cancer went into remission on an Ayurvedic protocol abundant in dairy and again on a Chinese medicine protocol abundant in meat, then while following a plant-based protocol she developed lemon-sized tumors down her spine and died, then came back to life and had a spontaneous healing while consuming ice cream. Then there’s my mum’s positive experience with a dairy-based diet, and I had another family member whose tumor grew to the size of a soft-ball on a Gerson diet and shrunk when he was put on a beef and rice diet temporarily to stop the chronic diarrhea the Gerson diet was causing. There’s also the positive accounts I’ve read from people following the Milk Cure and the Carnivore diet. There are a series of laboratory and animal studies showing that trans-vaccenic acid, a long-chain fatty acid found in the meat and dairy of grazing ruminants, promoted the destruction of certain types of cancer cells so perhaps that’s a factor?
By Applegate, are you referring to my hot dog bender back in February? If so, plot twist—my diet has been plant-based/vegetarian since March. These days, Chiquita would be a more fitting sponsor.
Jennifer,
People tend to negotiate with themselves to eventually consume the desired foods in one way or another, in special in parts of the world where nutritional campaigns are not as forceful as in the US. The two foods used as example don't inherently promote disease, but we can't count on their consumption to do much in helping to revert the situation of someone with cancer.
Fruits à la Robert Morse would be plant-based eating. The stories that you shared might have been to contrast Gerson's account. I quoted him not to rely on isolated cases, but to point out that he was willing to yield and would probably incorporate more animals products if he perceived benefit, and it wouldn't conflict with a diet that already included them. But again, he's only one of the many that agree on this aspect.
It doesn't apply to your examples, but part of the cases that don't do well on plant foods could do worse if they made their diets rich in animal products.
As a side note, I occasionally come across critics of Gerson—whose approach shouldn't work for everyone—but try to ask them what they propose instead. It's often very disappointing. And they're not constantly confronted with people on the brink of death, where one slip under their responsibility can be fatal.
Milk or carnivore diets would be extreme interventions, just like fasting and the positive stories from it. Sometimes drastic changes are capable of turning things around, but they're not reliable or founded enough to model.
Animal-based diets are typically richer in protein, fat, and growth factors.
Exceeding on protein is easy with such diets, leading to an undesirable exposure to extra glutamine and glutamate, arginine, tryptophan, methionine, cysteine, serine, aspartate, asparagine, BCAAs, methylcobalamin, phospholipids, nucleotides, and more.
With fats, it's complicated..
- The Modulatory Effects of Fatty Acids on Cancer Progression
- Dietary Fat and Cancer—Which Is Good, Which Is Bad, and the Body of Evidence
..but in an optimistic scenario, they're still poor in micronutrients and would be displacing other foods.
I don't know about trans-vaccenic acid, but if someone meets a great deal of energy needs through animal products, the person is reducing the exposure to a combination of anti-cancer compounds that occur primarily in plants. We could list 10 substances derived from plants for each protective animal-sourced substance that's brought to the table. Caffeine, salicylic acid, emodin, baicalein, curcumin, apigenin, quercetin, narigenin, fisetin, kaempferol.. They're not found in pharmacological amounts, but can cooperate. They can also be present in either diet, but plants as staples will be additional.
Depending on where a public is sampled, there can be more of the undernourished cases with a past of dietary restrictions that tend to benefit the most from anabolic foods, but this may not reflect the general state of the population macronutrient-wise. The therapeutic gap that you have with animal products for most people is narrower than apparent because animal foods are already consumed and sometimes in excess.
This gets further complicated when direct manipulation of the diet is not an option for treating it as a consequence. Yet, cravings can be driven by a single nutrient in a food, making us neglect the problematic components and consume what's already adequate in surplus to get the right amount of the sought factor. If this missing factor occurs in something like orange juice, it's no big deal, but it's more concerning if it's in a steak or eggs and someone with a tumor.
As for the last comment, it had nothing to do with your food habits, but your defense of diets rich in animal products as part of a cancer therapy rather than deprioritizing them for particular cases. The sponsorship is there independent of what you're eating (you were eating dogs?), it's a matter of figuring out which company is making use of your online influence.
I'm not suggesting that people should stick to plant-based diets if they don't work, but I am suggesting that they're the preferable starting place, more so when we don't know the history of the person too well and the cancer is advanced.
Hi Gustavo,
The fact that people have to negotiate with themselves to eventually consume their desired foods shows it’s not without fear and/or guilt. Again, the goal is to unburden ourselves.
I knew why you quoted Gerson, and I mentioned Dr. Morse’s diet because it’s plant-based. I was comparing apples to apples, and all the foods besides fruit that Gerson found conducive to healing exacerbated the cancer in Dr. Morse’s patients so if outcomes can be that different on the same type of diet, I don’t think it unreasonable of me to believe animal foods also conducive to healing.
I acknowledge that undesirable exposure to certain potentially problematic compounds can happen with animal-based diets, just like I acknowledge that undesirable exposure to certain potentially problematic compounds can happen with plant-based diets—as you said, they aren’t infallible—and yet, that doesn’t prevent me from seeing the potential healing on predominantly animal and plant diets.
“As for the last comment, it had nothing to do with your food habits, but your defense of diets rich in animal products as part of a cancer therapy rather than deprioritizing them for particular cases.”
When I treated 4 of my loved ones who had cancer, none were given the exact same protocol—3 were plant-based, 1 being Gerson. My mum was the only one whose diet was rich in animal products, and for a specific reason. After developing chronic diarrhea that led to rectal surgery while vegan, she no longer tolerated a plant heavy diet, even juice triggered diarrhea. We emphasized particular animal foods based on her and our family’s history, tissue weaknesses, stats and symptoms, which is why she was on a dairy-based diet and not a meat-based one so no, I don’t defend diets rich in animal products rather than deemphasizing them for particular cases, however, I will give credit where credit is due.
My mum was the only one out of the 4 who survived cancer, but she ultimately succumbed to the pulmonary embolism from the clots she developed after her hysterectomy so I know all too well what it’s like to treat people on the brink of death, and that’s exactly why I apply more than just plant-based and don’t just relying solely on it because I take the time to know people’s history before treating someone where one slip under my care could be fatal. My life for well over a decade now has revolved around trying to help people overcome disease and watching the ones closest to me die so I say what I say not without careful consideration, but with an understanding that I’ve tried to impart on others in hopes that they don’t have to experience it firsthand to “get” it, while knowing the sad reality that some do.
Take care.
