Alternative Cancer Therapies
Sugar and White Flour  

The Uncomfortable Facts

All the non-government, non-official sources of dietary advice agree that sugar is a very real problem and should be avoided. Practitioners of alternative cancer therapies have a remarkable agreement on this fact. I’ll cover some of the rationale for why this should be the case and then deal with the problems it may cause.

Dr Otto Warburg received a Nobel Prize for his cellular biology work around sugar and cancer. His work showed that normal cells use oxygen respiration for energy whereas cancer cells use sugar fermentation for growth and energy. This means that cancer cells take up sugar preferentially to normal cells. Glucose excess to ideal requirements is understood to support cancer cell development.

There is also the suggestion that those with cancer probably also have a fungal infection which not only keeps the immune system busy but also, as the fungus dies, the cells give off a poisonous toxin which further suppresses the immune system. This is considered to be highly controversial to practitioners of conservative medicine. I'll discuss this further on another page. In the meantime you need to know that if you have such an infection that the fungus feeds on sugar.

From a self care perspective it therefore becomes a good idea to keep sugar intake low. But it is more complicated than that. Some foods are converted easily to glucose, such as white flour, most breads, pasta and rice. When we look at our diets, especially for those eating a “normal western diet” of commercially provided foods, many eaten from restaurants and fast food outlets, the issue of food is particularly challenging.

If you attempt to cut out all processed foods and all foods containing grains it is easy to think that there is nothing left to eat. This is an indication of just how far we have moved from nature.

But now is the time to decide to take charge of your life. You are alive and here now. Take a deep breath and decide to start again from the beginning when it comes to food. Stop looking at what you can’t have and start by working on what is good for your body. You are looking to avoid cancer feeders and to increase natural cancer killing foods.

Your forebears used to manage without many processed foods and before shops they grew all of their own foods. Further back in the mists of time we developed the capacity to live off animals and plants available in the region where we lived. Our bodies were made to live off fresh herbs, nuts and fruits and animals we could catch. We ate what nature provided. And what nature provided would spoil if left for too long.

Don't try replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners as this only prolongs the agony of giving it up. It usually only takes a week or two to get used to eating without it.

When our health is challenged we need to get back to basics, to eating as close to nature as possible for 20 of the 21 meals we eat a week. Ideally you would have no sugar or flour based products at all. Ideally you will go to eat vegetables and fruits high in phenolics and antioxidants.

Rather than worrying about looking up phenolic and antioxidant values the easy way is to look in the fresh fruit and vegetable markets and select the deepest green, yellow, red and blue/purple fruits and vegetables. These become the basis of your eating, to which you add range fed eggs and meat.

If this is all to hard, then focus on just one meal at a time.

[And for those people asking where the research is that the work of Warburg is easily available and other research which supports these statements is starting to turn up in the literature. This is one area where clinical experience rules. People just do better when they reduce sugar and anything made from white flour to almost zero as the practitioners of alternative cancer therapies can attest.]