If I wanted to kill something, I would starve it and stop feeding it. I would figure out the least violent path with a 100% guarantee that it would die.
Seriously, it isn’t rocket science that a person can only go without food and water so long before they eventually shrivel up and die, right?
So, when your baby gets cancer, you begin racking your brain, thumbing through research, sleep less and read more…until all of the sudden you feel like you have lost complete control and know nothing.
You realize while sitting in the hospital, your precious child is under the control of someone else and their well-being is in the hands of complete strangers. You sit back and watch people coming in and out of his room with medicine, advice, needles, monitors and paperwork.
So…this was me for the first week following Kicker’s diagnosis. I was numb and didn’t care to look even up the word, “Leukemia.” And honestly, in the hospital setting I didn’t have any reason to “research” anything. The doctors told us what Leukemia was, what they were going to do about and that was that!
But, I have never let a doctor take control of my children’s health.
This had nothing to do with arrogance, but it was more about my education and mommy instincts. My background in holistic health specialized in nutrition and equipped me with an understanding of basic anatomy, physiology and hands-on experience supporting the root cause to diseases and illnesses. I had the tools and knowledge to keep my children healthy…until this point!
Thankfully, we had a team of alternative practitioners working alongside the conventional care physicians. However, about a week or so later, my “mommy instincts” and education kicked in. I wanted to assist in killing the cancer and helping to remove it from his body. So, I began trying to figure out what I would or would not feed my son during treatment.
Cancer Education
As a foundation, it is important to state that for the most part, a person’s body only has 2 sources of fuel: sugar (aka. glucose) and fat.
Now, cancer is a disease that begins in the cell. Therefore, it is essential to understand how a cell is nourished. If the genetic material, DNA, of a cell becomes damaged or changed, it will then produce mutations that affect the grown and division of normal cells. And when this happens, cells do not die when they should and new cells form when the body does not need them. Therefore, the extra cells may form a mass of tissue, or tumor. And in the case of Leukemia, a person will have a plethora of cancerous cells floating in the bloodstream forming “liquid tumors.”
Sugar Feeds Cancer
There have been numerous scientific studies done to prove that cancer cells feed on sugar, glucose. In fact, Dr. Otto Warbug won the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his discovery that cancer cells have a fundamentally different energy metabolism in comparison to healthy cells and that cancer cells tend to feed on sugar. And more recently, Dr. Thomas Seyfried confirmed Dr. Warbug’s findings:
“When we’re dealing with glucose and [cancer] management, we know from a large number of studies that if respiration of the tumor is ineffective, in order to survive, the cells must use an alternative source of energy, which is fermentation. We know that glucose is the primary fuel for fermentation. Fermentation becomes a primary energy-generating process in the tumor cell. By targeting the fuel for that process, we then have the capability of potentially managing the disease.”
So, Dr. Seyfried’s work confirms that sugar, glucose, is the primary fuel for cancer cells. Therefore, removing it from the diet and providing an alternate fuel for the body, such as fat, can dramatically reduce the growth rate of cancer!
Fat Fuel
So, after understanding the role of sugar, my next question was “Why can healthy cells survive on fat alone, but cancer cells cannot?” And then I found this great explanation by Dr. Dominic D’Agostino, PhD:
“Your normal cells have the metabolic flexibility to adapt from using glucose to using ketone bodies (fat metabolized). But cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility. So we can exploit that.”
So, basically, cancers cells have a fatal flaw…they do not have the metabolic flexibility that regular cells do. This means that they cannot adapt to using fat for fuel.
Halle-freaking-luiah!!
Ketogenic Lifestyle
So, if cancer cells need glucose to thrive and carbohydrates turn into glucose in the body, then cutting out the carbs of a person’s diet will starve the cells. In fact, it will turn the body into a “fat burning machine” by simply implementing a Ketogenic Diet. There have also been studies done showing that when a cancer patient implements a Ketogenic Diet, doctors have been able to reduce the amount of chemotherapy by at least 50% and still effectively remove the cancer from the body.
I mean, just think what could happen if conventional began implementing this type of dietary plan for all of their oncology patients!!
That being said, I do believe that chemotherapy and other conventional cancer drugs can be necessary and helpful in killing cancer. I am grateful for the research that has gone into those treatments. However, chemotherapy is a cytotoxic poison, and radiation is devastating to the human body. There are so many terrible side effects from these treatments, both short and long term. And I do not believe that this should continue to be accepted as “the best we can do.” Instead, let’s look at a more integrative and holistic approach to a disease that is killing more and more people every year!
Recommendation
A nutrient dense, real food diet in which a person replaces carbohydrates with moderate amounts of high quality proteins and hight amounts of beneficial fat is the diet that is beneficial for almost everyone…no matter whether the individual has cancer or not. I even recommend this to my athletic clients, pediatric clients, weight loss clients, etc.
And on a side note, if a person still struggles with the false assumption that eating fat makes a person fat, I suggest they read this!
Finally, here’s an example of what Kicker eats daily. In fact, this was his “food journal” from yesterday. And for more recipe ideas, purchase my 30 Day Real Food Meal Plan here.
Kicker’s Food Journal
Upon Rising:
- 12oz meat stock (Click here to learn more.)
- 1 cup Organic Pastures Raw Kefir (Click here to learn more.)
Breakfast:
Snack:
- Organic apple with a spoonful of sunflower seed butter
Lunch:
- Organic Applegate Chicken and Apple Sausage
- Homemade sauerkraut
- Goat milk yogurt, served with blueberries
Snack:
Dinner:
- Butternut Squash Lasagna
- Salad with homemade ranch dressing
Additional Resources
If interested in learning more about the benefits of a Ketogenic Diet for cancer and disease, I would suggest starting here:
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