Anyone tried the Budwig Diet?

[motosue]

I have seen a lot of good reviews of the Budwig Diet on the internet. It has worked on various types of cancers. Has anyone here ever tried it and what were your results please. Thank you very much.

Wilfred

[AlanLawrenson]

My brother has been broadly on the Budwig diet for about three months. He has also been taking five mushroom-based Chinese herbs for 6 months. Before he started on flaxseed oil and cottage cheese, his PSA was rising until it reached 19.9 before FOCC.

He also had a growth that was 'squeezing' the ureter and escalating his creatanine levels to dangerous levels. He has metastatic prostate cancer that has spread to bones, lymph system, etc. After 4 weeks his PSA dropped to 9.7 and his creatanine dropped as well. 4 weeks later and his PSA is at 6.4, his creatanine level is normal and he looks and feels terrific. In two weeks he will have next PSA test.

He also does the following: no sugar; no meat; no processed foods; a little red wine (resveratrol); only filtered water; peace of mind (no stress); heaps of exercise; heaps of veggies; berry fruits, vitamin D; vitamin C,

I have an acquaintance who has done similarly on Budwig.

[pjoshea13 in reply to AlanLawrenson]

Hi Alan,

Very interesting. Your brother has serious PCa. Has he refused conventional treatment?

-Patrick

[AlanLawrenson in reply to pjoshea13]

Hi Patrick

He was put on Xtandi (enzulutamide), but discontinued it as it made him unable to drive, due to its side effects. He is very much against chemo as its main action is to destroy your immune system right when you need it most. Also it has appallingly low 'cure' rate. He has been on ADT a number of times.

By the way I enjoy your supplement commentary. I publish a best seller book on PCa last year. A second edition will be launched on Amazon in early August. It will have an extra 75 pages mostly dedicated to diet , supplements and alternative treatments. I am very active in Sydney on the support group and seniors speaking circuit. I don't go into as much technical detail as you do, as the average layman can't cope with it. Have a look at my web site at anabcofprostatecancer.com.au .

[pjoshea13]

Hi Wilfred,

Over the years, I have had online contact with men who became excited about Budwig. She claimed a phenominal cure rate with her mix of flaxseed oil & quark (cottage cheese is used as an approximation). But there are two issues for men with PCa. Flaxseed oil is extremely high in alpha linolenic acid [ALA], an unstable omega-3 fatty acid that studies have linked to aggressive PCa. Secondly, dairy products are also linked to aggressive PCa.

I joined the big Budwig group for a while. Very popular. Lots of posts every day, but very little on PCa. I looked at old messages & it seemed that the PCa cases were newly diagnosed. Where were the PCa survivors? I asked the group if there were any men out there who had been using Budwig for 12 months. Silence. I might have got the same response if I said 6 months.

Think abount the numbers. There are over two million men currently living in the U.S. who have had a PCa diagnosis at some time. If Budwig, Hoxsey & any of the other old cancer cures worked, the word would get out.

In your internet travels, you might run across references to Cliff Beckwith. He had stage IV PCa. He tried Budwig & his cancer seemed to go away. He started his own Budwig site. Attracted testimonials from non-PCa cases & pet owners. He was a true believer. Must have convinced many men to try it.

What Cliff neglected to tell people, was that he was on ADT too. When that failed, Budwig failed too. But he never lost faith in Budwig.

The Budwig mix is intriguing. She warned against using flaxseed oil by itself. Seems that the ALA must interact with the sulfurated protein in the cottage cheese. If it has any effect on other cancers, I don't know. There is no credible evidence that it cures PCa, IMO.

-Patrick

[motosue in reply to pjoshea13]

Thanks Patrick. Your email was insightful.

Wilfred

[Magnus1964]

I have a friend with bladder cancer that went on the Budwig diet. He was on it for about 2 years when his cancer returned. Did it keep the cancer at bay for 2 years? I don't know. I might come to the conclusion that it slowed the progression.

[motosue in reply to Magnus1964]

Thanks Magnus1964. That's good to know.

[AlanMeyer]

Unfortunately, especially now in the age of the Internet, you can find large numbers of testimonials for every conceivable scientifically untested cancer cure. It's possible that some of these thousands of cures actually help. It's also more than possible that some of them hurt. What is known for sure is that, despite all of the testimonials, there is no _scientific_ evidence for them.

My search of Pubmed for (Budwig diet cancer) returned only two hits, each of which said they could not find any studies showing it or other cancer diets to be effective.

There is an article at Sloan Kettering about it at:

mskcc.org/cancer-care/integ...

See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan...

Budwig came out with her theory in 1952, at a time when no one understood causes of cancer and before even the structure of DNA was understood. I don't think there's any evidence that her theory about the cause of cancer was right and, in fact, what we know today about the genesis of cancer goes in entirely different directions.

Beware of taking patient reports seriously. Many of them are well meaning but they're often completely wrong. As an example, I read the testimony of a man who said that he had "compelling proof" that a macrobiotic cured his prostate cancer. Pushing a bit, I found out that, oh by the way, he also had radiation and ADT, but he was sure that had nothing to do with it. It was his diet that cured him.

Personally, I would be very surprised if anyone were cured of any kind of cancer by the Budwig diet.

Should you try it? It probably won't hurt you if you do (unless the theory that dairy products are involved in PCa is true, and even then it won't hurt much.) The main thing is that you get the best scientifically validated treatment that you can get, and also check with the doctor treating you to be sure that anything you try is not conflicting with what they're trying to achieve in the treatment.

Best of luck.

Alan

[motosue]

My cousin who just got diagnosed with prostate cancer Gleason 6 and 7 , he said. He is trying to stop the cancer by diet and is doing the Budwig Diet and will watch the PSA before going on to radiation seeds etc. Today he is in UCSF and having a consultation with the Dr. there about doing the seed implants but first plan to do this diet and wait and see what happens. His last PSA was a 4 and the previous one was 4 but I'm not sure if he starting doing the diet in between the two blood tests or about when he did his blood test and got the second PSA of 4 ( to level off his PSA). I am going to keep a close eye on what he's doing. Hope he don't hurt himself by waiting and doing this diet.

Wilfred

[AlanMeyer in reply to motosue]

Hi Wilfred,

Please keep in mind that, unless there's a dramatic change in PSA, which there often is with surgery, radiation, ADT, or chemo, it's very, very hard to tell whether something is working or not. And if more than one treatment is in play it can be near impossible to figure out which one is responsible for the change except by reference to studies of other people with each of the treatments.

If I'm right about the lack of efficacy of the Budwig diet, then your cousin will, in effect, be trying active surveillance. If his cancer is not aggressive, his PSA may stay fairly stable whether or not he changes his diet in any way. If it does stay stable, that's not proof that the Budwig diet is working, so it's imperative that he continue the *active* in active surveillance.

Incidentally, you can search for all kinds of "cures" on Google by searching for "X as a cure for cancer" where X is anything from "prayer" to "calcium" to "almonds" to "herbs" to "tea" to "exercise" and who knows what else. You'll very often find testimonials from people insisting that X cured their cancer, not to mention hundreds of thousands of claims that oncologists either don't know anything or are purposely hiding the cures in order to make more money treating people. Beware! Scientific method is an alien concept to most of us human beings.

Alan

[motosue in reply to AlanMeyer]

Thanks Alan for your thoughts. Yes, my cousin won't do any treatment until he sees that the Budwig Diet doesn't work. He wants to try to control his cancer natural ways. So that's all he'll do for now. Yes, he'll do active surveillance. I agree, he had better be ACTIVE in watching the PSA. Thanks.

[goulds5 in reply to motosue]

I was just wondering if there was an update on your cousin??? My husband's PSA was 4. We were thinking of trying the same thing before the seeds were put in.

[motosue]

A few days ago, I wrote to people with prostate cancer who gave good reviews on the Budwig Diet so I emailed them to ask how were they doing. I believe these reviews were from 2004 through 2010 or thereabouts. So far NO REPLYS from these guys on if this diet helped them and on how they were doing. Hmmmmm.