In this post I am going to discuss diet. This is always a big topic in the cancer world as everyone has an opinion on what is the best diet for cancer. It’s also a difficult topic because all cancers are not the same. A diet that works for one type of cancer, may not work for another so a cookie-cutter approach for all cancer types is not ideal.
When I was diagnosed my first thought was, I need to change my diet! I always knew I had a very poor diet, but I never worried about it because I was never overweight. I thought I could eat whatever I wanted because I exercised and stayed in shape and thought I was healthy. How wrong I was. I heard a quote once, “you can’t out exercise a bad diet.” How true this was for me.
Maybe you already know you need to eat healthier, but with all the options out there, how do you decide what to do?
Please Note: In this post I will be using the term endometrial cancer, which is the most common form of uterine cancer. However, this advice applies to women with other types of uterine cancer including serous, clear cell, sarcomas, etc.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE STANDARD (SAD) AMERICAN DIET
Also often called the Western diet, this represents what the majority of people in westernized, developed nations eat.
1. This diet is typically composed of prepackaged foods, refined grains, fast food, high sugar drinks, processed meats, fried foods, and ultra-processed foods. These foods are created with formulations of ingredients modified using chemical processes and contain minimal amounts of whole foods.
2. They process these foods to have long shelf lives, minimize microbial contamination and they can be massively produced. For most people this means less prep work and is time-saving. I know I practically lived on frozen dinners and out of a box or a can for most of my adult life because I didn’t like to cook!
3. These types of food are also engineered to be hyper-palatable, which facilitates overeating, food addictions and obesity. Read that sentence again. Food that is engineered. That just doesn’t sound right does it? When you watch a video of someone using Doritos to start a fire you have to wonder what they are putting in our foods?! Watch Here
4. Many of these modified ingredients carry a term “GRAS” (generally recognized as safe)! GRAS ingredients are not regulated.
Experts estimate more than 1000 GRAS substances have entered the food supply without FDA or public knowledge. The FDA and the public know little about the safety of these ingredients. And other known GRAS-designated ingredients are believed to pose significant health risks. Read More
5. Statistics show that ultra-processed food items now make up 60% of the adult diet and 70% of the diet of children! 73% of foods in the grocery stores are now ultra-processed.
6. The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) recommended guidelines for the American diet are 45-65% of your daily calories from carbohydrates, 20-35% from fat, and 10-35% from protein. This is not how we used to eat.
7. This way of eating has now been linked to an epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer! Did you know that 77% of Americans are now considered overweight or obese?! What has happened?
Three articles on the health risks of eating ultra-processed foods
HIDDEN DANGERS IN “HEALTH” FOODS
So let’s say you are trying to eat healthier. You buy fruits and vegetables, meats, non-dairy products, whole-grain breads, brown rice, and cut back on sugar and saturated fat. Is all of that really good for you though?
- Non-organic and even organic produce have pesticide residues. Due to the poor soil quality, lack of biodiversity in the soil, and water pollution, the produce we eat is now no longer as nutritious as it used to be just 50 years ago. In fact, pesticides sprayed on crops can spread up to 5 miles!
- Non-organic meat often has antibiotic residues, which can lead to antibiotic resistance in humans. Did you know that even animals that are not given antibiotics can still have resistant bacteria due to exposure to antibiotics in the environment?! Read More
- Conventionally raised cows are often fed GMO (genetically modified organism) grains such as corn and soy to fatten them up. Cows were not meant to eat grain at all! The grains they are eating are not healthy for us either. And it gets worse – cattle may be fed a variety of other substances to fatten them up. They include candy (such as gummy bears, lemon drops, and chocolate) to boost their sugar intake and plastic pellets to substitute for the fiber they would otherwise get from grass. Cattle feed can also contain parts of slaughtered hogs and chickens that are not used in food production, and dried manure and litter from chicken barns! Read More
- Hormones are added by injection or into the feed to increase milk production and fat. The added hormones can disrupt the body’s hormonal balance and increase the risk for endometrial cancer. Read More
- Many of the non-dairy milks, yogurts and other vegan or vegetarian products are filled with preservatives, gums, fillers and other artificial ingredients.
- Even heavy cream, which used to be straight from milk has carrageenan, polysorbate 80 and other chemicals to make it last for months in the refrigerator section. This is why it’s so important to look at labels carefully.
- All types of rice have been shown to contain arsenic.
- Farm-raised fish are typically fed unhealthy GMO grains like wheat and soy as well as palm and canola oil. They are also treated with antibiotics and depending on where the fish comes from, there can be chemical residues from pollution in the meat.
These are just a few of the hidden dangers in what are considered healthy foods.
WHAT ARE ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF EATING RIGHT NOW?
Here is a list of the different diets out there.
- Standard American Diet (SAD) and it is sad
- Mediterranean
- Ketogenic (low-carb, high fat, moderate protein)
- Plant based
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Paleo
- Carnivore
With all these variations on eating, how do you know which one to choose and follow? Do you even want to or are you willing to clean up your diet? This can be a very difficult, but necessary step.
WHY DO YOU NEED TO CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE EATING?
While diet alone may not be enough to cure you of cancer, it is a very important part. Besides all the factors I just listed, diet plays a huge role in some key drivers of endometrial cancer, which I am going to discuss below.
Obesity and diabetes are two of the biggest drivers of the increased rates of endometrial cancer in the United States.
These changes, they explained, include increasing rates of obesity, which can increase levels of estrogen and has been estimated to account for nearly half of all endometrial cancer cases in North America. Read More
1. METABOLIC SYNDROME
Obesity and metabolic syndrome often go hand in hand and there is a high incidence of endometrial cancer in women with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is becoming more and more prevalent in the United States and interestingly, endometrial cancer rates are rising along with it.
Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a grouping of 5 factors that put a person at risk for endometrial cancer. If you have 3 of the 5 factors you have metabolic syndrome.
- Obesity
- High blood pressure
- High blood sugar
- High triglycerides
- Low HDL, which is your good cholesterol
Obesity, diabetes and hypertension are known as the “triple syndrome of endometrial cancer” because many women with endometrial cancer have these 3 problems. Read More
Adipose tissue is a storage place in your body for estrogen and toxins. Excess fat is also inflammatory. Even women who look thin on the outside, may be “obese” on the inside with lots of fat around their organs, which is just as dangerous.
Did you know that endometrial cancer is over 2 times as common in overweight women with a body mass index of 25-29.9 and 3 times as common in obese women with a body mass index >30?
Here is a quick calculator to see what your body mass index is.
2. INSULIN RESISTANCE
Insulin resistance is a pre-cursor to diabetes and often occurs simultaneously with metabolic syndrome. It is when the cells in your body and organs are not responding well to the insulin hormone your pancreas is producing. Insulin is what lets glucose (sugar) from the foods you eat into your cells.
When the cells aren’t letting the glucose in, it builds up in the blood stream causing hyperglycemia (high blood sugar). This signals the pancreas to make even more insulin. Eventually this leads to hyperinsulinemia, which is a risk factor for endometrial cancer. If this goes on long enough, type 2 diabetes can result.
The results suggest that hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance are risk factors of endometrial cancer. Read More
3. HYPERGLYCEMIA (HIGH BLOOD GLUCOSE)
Glycolosis is one process that normal cells use to produce energy. It is the partial breakdown of glucose (sugar) by enzymes in the cells and does not require oxygen. In the late 1920s, Otto Warburg discovered that cancer cells still have a high rate of glycolysis even when oxygen is abundant, which is called the Warburg effect or aerobic glycolysis.
This means that cancer cells can use oxygen and other enzyme reactions and further breakdown the glucose for even more energy than normal cells can. Endometrial cancer cells have increased aerobic glycolosis. This metabolic alteration can promote the high rates of proliferation of endometrial cancer cells.
It basically means endometrial cancer cells prefer glucose for fuel and can use it more efficiently than normal healthy cells. Read More
When it comes to diet, the higher your blood glucose, the more you could be feeding the cancer cells allowing them to grow and proliferate and spread. Read the conclusions section in this study. Read More
Women with type 2 diabetes are more than twice as likely to get endometrial cancer as someone without diabetes. Diabetes can also lower the chances of survival. Read More
SO WHAT DIET IS BEST FOR UTERINE CANCER?
THE KETOGENIC DIET
A ketogenic diet is low-carbohydrate, moderate protein and high fat. Typically it is 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbohydrates of your daily calories. If you eat 2000 calories per day, that would mean about 165 grams from fat, 75 grams from protein and 40 grams from carbs.
I know some people will be shocked to read this.
We have been led to believe that the best diet for cancer is a plant based diet (vegan, vegetarian) and juicing. It is all over the internet with influencers hailing the benefits of plants to help cure cancer and condemning meat and fat as bad. While plants are beneficial for healing from cancer, you need to be careful which plants you are eating.
I quickly became a firm believer in the plant based way of eating after seeing so many people online talking about it and saying how it helped cure them of cancer. We all want the miracle right?! I was desperate and was willing to try anything to get well. I followed this path after my diagnosis and became a strict vegan for almost a year. I was drinking so much carrot juice that I turned orange!
I was wrong and had to learn what I’m explaining to you here the hard way and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.
Little did I know the vegan diet is actually very deficient in so many things including protein, fat and vitamin B12. I quickly became emaciated and anemic (low red blood cells), my hair was falling out and I was sick to my stomach all the time and getting weaker by the day.
I also didn’t realize that this high sugar, high carb diet was leading to a severe candida overgrowth in my intestines. Candida is a yeast that normally lives in the intestines, but can sometimes get out of control, especially with a diet high in carbs and sugar, which a plant based diet with juicing is. Fruits and vegetables contain fructose, sucrose and glucose, which are all forms of sugar.
Juicing instantly raises your blood sugar because you are drinking all those carbohydrates without any of the fiber to offset it. Not only that, but there is no fat and protein either to help slow the absorption of all that sugar.
I was inadvertently feeding my cancer cells and starving my healthy cells! During the time I was following this diet regimen, the tumor in my body almost tripled in size! Do NOT do this please!
Dr. Google will tell you to avoid high fat and red meat to fight endometrial cancer. It will say to eat lots of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, starchy vegetables like potatoes and legumes and start juicing. While this may be very beneficial for other types of cancer, it is not good for endometrial cancer.
According to Dr. Nasha Winters, an integrative, functional medicine doctor who survived stage 4 ovarian cancer when she was a teenager, the best diet for endometrial cancer is a ketogenic, low-carb, mediterranean type diet. Lots of healthy low-carb vegetables and healthy meats and fats, avoiding grains, potatoes and other starchy, sugary vegetables and high sugar fruits.
TODAY’S PRO-TIP ON YOUR HEALING JOURNEY
I recommend you please take this advice seriously and start to change your diet. Even starting with small steps in the right direction can help!
It took me a long time to believe in this new way of eating and figure out how to do it. I encourage you to do your own research if you do not believe me. I now wish I would have started on this way of eating right from the start instead of the plant based and juicing approach I took.
The ketogenic diet is very beneficial for many cancer types, but especially uterine cancer.
Here is a good book to read for more detailed information.
Keto for Cancer: Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy as a Targeted Nutritional Strategy by Miriam Kalamian EdM, MS, CNS with forward by Thomas N. Seyfried, PhD
Not all keto diets are the same and some forms are unhealthy. In my next post I will be sharing more details about the proper ketogenic diet that will help you heal from cancer and avoid the “dirty keto” diet. I will also cover all of the amazing benefits of this way of eating. Stay tuned.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” – Hippocrates