Does anyone have any comment on this from Chris Woollams site?
I am a convert to be honest but want to hear, I won’t argue, the other side.
Sugar anyone?: Does anyone have any comment on... - My Ovacome
Sugar anyone?
Written by
Sherrym
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40 Replies
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yes I agree its the same in Limerick hospital they offer cakes buns tea sugar, etc to cancer patients in for chemotherapy and maintenance, they should offer green juices, less processed food, more fresh food it is all full of preservatives and then there is no proper nutritional advice I have asked doctors what foods are best to eat and they refuse to give helpful answers.
Is this simply the strength of the sugar industry?Or simply doctors being over cautious?
Obviously, in patients beyond medical intervention any food is better than none. Of course, sweets & crisps may be more palatable to many & indeed, keep some going longer.
Just don’t know
Just posted a reply on your other sugar thread. xx
I think dieticians, oncologists and all the medical profession could benefit from looking at this in greater depth and pass on the benefit of knowledge to us patients too.
I think hospitals tend to cater to a general desire for highly processed foods because they are becoming more and more the norm as many people lose the skill to cook good basic ingredients. My evening meal tonight is roasted tomatoes with garlic cloves and oregano, this will be had with pasta. It’s so easy, tasty and really quite nutritious and inexpensive and only takes around half an hour in the oven + pasta cooking time. I have to confess on Saturday we had a meal that was less than ideal but we’d been really busy working in the garden all day building raised beds ready for next years veggies and salads, as in all things it is a balance, being sensible and so long as we try to remove as many of the highly processed foods from our diets as possible we can only benefit, we are what we eat .
I totally love chocolate but limit myself to occasional treats, our food is turned into sugar by our body so the less sugar we consume the better especially if the cancer cells like it, let’s starve the gremlins as much as possible and let’s hope the medics get involved in this too, it may possibly be that they’re not aware or possibly don’t understand nutrition and the benefits of healthy unprocessed food. ❤️Xx Jane
I am sure I read that the Mayo cancer clinics in the USA give metformin along with chemo to BLOCK glucose. Plus, it does help in breast & ovarian cancer cases.
Might google that to check
Doctors get about 2 hours of nutrition class. Consider that.
Yep - during chemo sessions all I was offered was biscuits, chocolate and cakes to snack on. I took in my own snacks but I always felt a bit snooty refusing the sugary offerings. Towards the end of my cycle the volunteer started bringing a jug of fruit-infused water she had prepared herself on my behalf, which was a lovely act of kindness.
The same in hospital - on the intensive care ward I could only have a light diet - but jelly and ice cream puddings were perfectly fine, apparently. I did have a small fentynol-induced rant at one doctor about the lack of nutritious food possibly making recovery slower.....at which point he prescribed me Fortisip haha. So I gave up then.
On the surgical ward the same thing, daily puddings, cakes, sugar sprinkled on sugary cereals. What was harder was that everyone was surprised that I wasn't mad keen on it.
Amazing!! Such utter ignorance & disregard for the wishes of direly sick patients, & yet no-one intends to be unkind!
No, everybody was absolutely as kind as they could be. The doctor who offered me Fortisip thought he was doing the best for me. It's the same thinking as if when a pain killer makes someone sick (as morphine does to me) they offer anti-sickness drugs rather than seeing if the pain killer can be stopped or reduced. I suppose medics are trained that way, to seek a medical solution to the problem.
This is what is going through my mind: One of my first symptoms was severe iron deficiency anaemia. I just read an article which said that cancer feeds on iron or red blood cells or whatever but it would be crazy to stop taking my iron tablets. What I'm thinking is the cancer is going to take what it needs and is always going to get sugar from your food no matter what you eat.
Put in its simplest form all food is converted into glucose by the body, I'm not convinced by the diet argument. On this forum I've followed those who have followed various no sugar, macrobiotic, organic, vegan diets and unfortunately I have not witnessed any greater survival rates. I personally cut right back on dairy, meat and sugar when I was first diagnosed then recurred after 3 years. I went back to a standard healthy diet, with extra ginger included and have recurred after 4 years. I do however believe that a healthy diet gives a great foundation to tolerate treatments and feel well.
I found eating strictly, stressful and not as enjoyable so have now I feel life is too short for disciplined eating. It's whatever fits for you I feel as long as you are getting the right nutrients.
I do feel hospitals should offer healthier food. However on their meagre allowance (something like £1.20 per day per patientl), it is easier to provide high carb, fill em up cheap rubbish.
Love to all. 💐💐
Thanks for the reminder about ginger! X
I find I have cravings for certain things. Never thought about celery unless I was making chicken soup, potato, macaroni or chicken salad. Suddenly I couldn't live without it if it wasn't in the house. What nutritional value does celery have?
& I respect your opinion along with disagreeing.
I think the least availability of glucose in the body is the safest condition
Hi. Having tried to be a healthy eater prior to getting cancer, I was horrified to be told to eat all the stuff I had avoided, just to gain calories. I ignored this advice as it felt wrong. I also faster during chemo, so always refused food offered to me during treatment.
Jenny
It might depend where you are on the cancer journey too. I am stage 4 and couldn’t put on weight during chemotherapy so was told there were no rules and to eat what I fancied. Maybe that is why hospitals try to,tempt us. To be honest I didn’t fancy much, but now I am on steroids it is a different story. Bizarrely I have recently gained an addiction to Marshmallows! Maybe it is something to do with the stoma. To be honest I feel I have enough to cope with without stressing over my diet. So I just go with what my body seems to be telling me. I have always had a sweet tooth but as I lived for many years in the tropics mostly took my sugar in fruit form.
My oncologist told me that diet makes not a whit of difference to cancer - and that's cancer generally, as well as ovarian. Apparently, there has been research (not sure who by or what form it took) which showed no link between food and cancer, I remain unconvinced by her statement; given the massive increase in rates of cancer generally in the last 50 years, and particularly during the last 20 (its now 1 in 2, when it used to be 1 in 20), unless the human race has naturally mutated in an attempt to wipe itself out, there has to be an explanation. There are two fairly obvious factors which have changed dramatically - the food we eat, and levels of pollutants.
I'm sure most of us know that, in order to get the same level of nutrients from one orange as we did half a century ago, we now have to eat 4 - with tomatoes, it'd be eight instead of one. That's to do with how we grow the foodstuffs, poor soil management, and the use of nitrate fertilizers instead of feeding the soil (I'm a horticulturalist). And that's without what gets sprayed on the crops as they grow. Despite many fungicides and pesticides being withdrawn by the EU in the last 40 years because of risk to human health, many are still in the environment generally, and many are still licensed for use by professional growers. About half the treatments used are systemic, meaning the pesticide/fungicide is throughout the fruit or vegetable because it penetrates all the tissues, and cannot be washed off. Glyphosate deserves a special mention - for some 20 years, growers of cereal crops in the UK and throughout Europe routinely spray the crop (let's say it's wheat or oats) about 3 or 4 days before harvesting, so that the stubble left behind after cropping just dies. Unfortunately, a percentage of that glyphosate is present in the grain after it is processed, which means every cake, biscuit or slice of bread you eat also comes with a dose of glyphosate. The doses are low - but if you eat non organic bread, cereals, cakes and biscuits daily, that low dose is, obviously, magnified.
I think what the researchers forget is the synergy of interactions - yes, one slice of bread might only have a small percentage of glyphosate - but its in almost every other grain or cereal based thing we eat, and that builds up. Include all the pesticides one person may consume from a diet including fruit and veg, not to mention what's possibly in meat, fish, dairy and eggs, and the list of possible contaminants gets higher and higher, depending on what a person eats. Then there's the lord knows what stuff food manufacturers routinely include in our processed or ready to eat foods, the list goes on and on. It is worse in the USA - at least in the EU, we operate under the Precautionary Principle,which says that an ingredient must be proven to be safe to be used, whereas in the States, you can use anything you like UNTIL its proven unsafe. But it's not enough, even so.
On top of that, there are nano particles of plastic in the sea, the soil and even the air we breathe, as well as the more well known pollutants in our air, and heavy metals in oily sea food. So it seems to me to say that what we eat has no impact on cancer in any way is illogical at the very least, whether they can prove a link or not.
Given all the other air, soil and sea borne pollutants we're exposed to, one might think there's not much point in trying to eat healthier food - but in some cases, it does make a difference, and in many cases it may extend a lifespan of someone with cancer. So although its not proven in scientific trials, and maybe if we've got cancer already its too late, I consider its worth making some changes in an attempt to slow the cancer down at the very least.
With respect to the medical professionals, they get about 3 hours nutritional training during their 7 years of medical training - it is a much neglected area. And yes, I totally agree that the attitude of medical professionals, when you have a health problem or maybe a reaction to a medication,is to offer another drug to offset what's happened with the first drug or whatever the problem is/was. Got a problem? take this, and then that, and that and that... as if medications are some sort of total panacea,when some simple adjustments might make a difference instead. With any drug, there's always a price, and sometimes it might be one you're not prepared to pay...
Like many of us, I remain unconvinced that 'lack of scientific evidence' is a reason not to attempt a change in diet - there was a 'lack of scientific evidence' when BSE first started, and I'm old enough to remember very clearly the Government Minister (John Gummer) trying to get his 5 year old daughter to eat a burger in a bun in front of the tv cameras to prove how safe beef was. As it happens, she did not comply, luckily - probably just didn't fancy a burger at the time...
Very interesting. I think ‘pollutants’ of one type or another do play a (big?) part (how can our bodies process plastic/pesticides/petrol fumes?).
Maybe these things lower our immune system, which usually is so good at destroying ‘rouge’ cancer cells...
I have read also that some cancers ARE directly connected to certain foods (eg. excess meat for colon cancer, ‘burnt’/over cooked food is carcinogenic etc.) I don’t know how the Oncologists can say there is NO link...🤔
Exposure to many pollutants may also cause DNA mutations which then lead to cancer - like glyphosate for instance, with that big court case going on in the States currently. And you're right, even the NHS says processed meats carry a higher risk of cancer, along with food cooked at high temperatures (grill, barbecue, even the oven) and particularly,burnt. But to be fair, what she meant was eating or avoiding certain foods when you've got cancer will have no effect, rather than your diet generally and the chances of getting cancer.
My husband was told by various doctors and specialists that 'despite what you might read' there was no nutritional link for his severe eczema. For years he took the steroids and used the creams, no improvement = stronger cream, but it was only when he stopped using the creams and cut sugar, fizzy drinks, alcohol, dairy and wheat from his diet that the eczema cleared up.
After 3 months he could reintroduce foods but his skin has remained pretty clear.
It just frustrates me that we are not being encouraged to at least try nutritional approaches alongside our other treatments.
I understand the difficulties involved with researching food links as there are so many variables, but I was still disappointed not to be asked anything about my diet or lifestyle when I was diagnosed and still now when I have review appointments. Collecting this kind of data could make all the difference.
There is a chink of light on this subject though not necessarily to do with cancer - Dr. Rangan Chatterjee - he's the one on the tv in that Doctor in the House series, who firmly believes and has proven that most of our modern illnesses can be reversed by changing what we do in terms of food, exercise and stress. He recognised a huge lack in his medical training, and got himself training in nutrition; he was (maybe still is) a GP - I know he's done a couple of TED talks and he has a webiste. Let's hope he's a leading light for change within the medical profession in the approach to the more 'esoteric' aspects and causes of illness, and the way they can be altered/treated without drugs as far as possible. In other words, he's looking at causes, and not just throwing drugs at stuff...
I’ve read his book, very good & has a common sense approach
Not do I. Especially as lifestyle is responsible for many cancers & other diseases. According to most reports.
Lifestyle? For goodness sake, that’s what we ingest too isn’t it??
Lunacy
Thanks for taking the time to write this, stuff I know on the periphery, yet move on as if I don't know any of it. Now I don't have the energy to grow my own food, sometimes not the energy to cook & I love to cook. But I am going to take what you said and try to introduce it into my life thing at a time
Its exhausting though, trying to work out how to avoid all these things, and restricting one's diet - much easier to turn a blind eye, or think sod it, I can't be bothered... But if you do only one thing, switch to organic flour, organic bread and organic cereals - Waitrose does Dutchy Organics jumbo porridge oats and muesli... And cut out dairy, unless you're on an otherwise restricted diet for other reasons. My doctor made a fuss when I stopped most meat and all dairy 5 months ago, worried about calcium intake - weirdly, my blood calcium is now very good, when it was poor when I ate dairy... must be all those beans and legumes and leafy veggies I replaced with. But... there are moments when I'd kill for a piece of Brie...
Thanks for your answer, it really helped take the impossibility factor away. I live in the US so I'll have to search for other things. How can I know for sure I'm getting organic flour? I can make my own bread if I get someone to put my bread machine on the counter. What words should I look for? Or how can I research the company? Or do I just trust?
Oh dear, I don't know what to say. In the UK, the word 'organic' on food products means just that - its organic, grown without pesticides and in soil free of weedkillers and the like, so my organic flour will not contain glyphosate. Maybe you can check whether 'organic' means that in the USA as well... even if you make your own bread, it needs to be with organic flour. If I can find out the status of 'organic' in the US, wlll get back to you... But if you're in the States, then meat is something to avoid most or all of the time, your meat''s worse than ours for growth hormones,chlorines and antibiotics I'm afraid. And I seem to recall that Canola (which is what we here know as rapeseed oil) isn't just unadulterated rapeseed oil, its something to avoid... forgotten why,but will do a bit of research...
Found this
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Org...
which suggests you do have organic food products - organic food sold over there is monitored by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and should be certified. A google search for organic bread or flour or cereal in the USA might be helpful for you, but don't exhaust yourself too much worrying about it all, especially if you're weak - sounds like you need to keep eating to keep your strength up, whether its organic or not.
A bit of common sense is always necessary - when my CA125 starts to double, or I get obvious symptoms, I'll be back on the coffee and walnut cake, chocolates, cheese and anything else I fancy in a heartbeat, might as well eat what I fancy if I'm on my way out (I was Stage 4b when I had surgery, no chemo, I've had eight months of being well so far, due another check next week).
You've been a big help trying to help me sort this all out. Son coming next week for a visit, so it will be his job with bread machine. I'm not a big meat eater, beef maybe once a month, have been craving the cheese and chicken soup for a long time, Been at this for 20 months now, and feeling miserable due to all the belly pain and constant commotion in that area. Taking NAC antioxidant which son recommended and it has helped with brain fog. Now to tackle 1 more thing. Sister has been nagging me about all organic vegies. I guess the brain has finally accepted hearing the alarm bells so on to changes. Guess it takes so many alarm bells ringing for so long and now so loud. I'll keep you posted.
Many blessings and thanks, Eileen
I was reading a month or two ago that bone broth is fine, so I make bone broth from organic chicken carcases which I'm lucky enough to be able to buy, with lots of veggies in, strain, freeze, then use as soup with more chopped up veggies in. Its delicious! And I highly recommend Sari Foods Non-fortified Nutritional Yeast - I eat it out of the pack, it tastes like cheese, even though its a powder, so helps a lot with cheese cravings. Full of B group vitamins and beta glucan, which fights cancer... only available via Amazon in the UK, but is actually made in the States. Take care...
I will check that out and remember there are a few Richards whole foods in the area. I just hate the way they tackle you just as you enter the store. Maybe I have to put up both hands in self defense. Actually nest time I'm out to grocery store I'm going to start with the flour. I am really into the soup, so a new batch is in order too. Everyone have a nice, happy weekend. Eileen
I am with you
My son lives in California & there seem to be lots of stores offering organic & other things. Check yr local area & find somewhere you trust.
Try Stevia instead of sugar, Eileen. It was available in the US many years before the Uk. The Germans & Spanish also had it years ago, & my sister in law sent it to me when I was v ill
Tried it, made my throat burn just like all the others. But thanks for the input. If I really want to make this work, I'l have to be locked up for about a week with only what I should eat. After hospital stays, even tho there was always bread, potatoes, ice cream, I could stay off sugar for about 2 1/2 weeks. Once I touched it, I went down the rabbit hole. So that tells me how addictive it is.
Trying to quit, not succeding. Eileen
Such a debate and I’ve not even had time to read the comments above.
From what I’ve read/ been told, it’s not the actual ‘sugar’ that is bad, it’s what the sugar DOES. Eg it spiked insulin in the body.
Eg coffee: the coffee itself is OK but the caffeine IN it, shoots up adrenalin in the body and it is the effects of high insulin and adrenaline that the danger factors.
I’ll take a read above. Nicky xx
It is so confusing. So many different articles on sugar re cancer.
I had lost a lot of weight pre and post op and was told to eat ice cream/custard etc.
Sherrym• in reply to
🤢think that wd have made me sicker.
Stewed fruit with whole fat yoghurt?(soy yoghurt is good too)
I ate loads of organic chicken soup with plenty of brown rice, veg & tiny potatoes. A friend made it for me at first. ONLY thing I cd keep down
• in reply toSherrym
Don’t worry I didn’t eat the foods they suggested!!
I made loads of soup. Homemade wholewheat bread. Lived on that for weeks. Not full of calories but nutritious.
Just scary that I was been given the advice to eat high sugar foods.
I have read a lot of articles regarding this - and although I don’t adhere to it now (I’m back to work in an office and the biscuits are everywhere!!) I did cut out sugar in between my chemo cycles and 100% found the side effects more manageable from it. I was less sick, less headaches, less nauseous and I didn’t suffer so much from the aches and pains. I had chemo on the 27th December (my 4th dose) and had sugar over Christmas Day and Boxing Day and that cycle was horrific for the side effects. I would certainly recommend doing a keto diet even if it was just during treatment. xx
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