Cancer is a selfish and self-centered cell. It voraciously sucks in prime resources, ignores orders, and demands its own way. One way to deal with cancer —don’t give it what it wants! In fact, restricting the things it likes most may prevent cancer ever gaining a foothold.
Deprivation is something of a foreign concept in modern society. Depriving yourself of valuable food is not a good idea, but we tend to go eat what and when we want, with little regard for how good it is for us. Obesity, which is a clear risk factor for cancer, is rampant in our affluent society, and fat signals the immune system to increase inflammation, which is a breeding ground for cancer. Much of the Standard American Diet (SAD) is inflammatory. And much of the SAD provides excesses of the very things cancer craves.
Let’s not make this easy for cancer.
An article published by Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology notes that, “Tumors consume up to 30 times more sugar than normal tissue.” A standard way of finding cancer is to inject sugar which is bound to a radioactive material into the body, then use a PET/CT scan to find where that sugar congregated. That works because cancer greedily grabs the sugar. The amount of glucose that cancer cells use is 200 times more than normal cells. These large numbers make sense: cancer is marked by rapid growth, and that growth requires sugar.
Excess sugar also means a spike in insulin, as well as “insulin-like growth factors” such as IGF-1, which are known to stimulate many cancers to grow rapidly. Many cancers develop extra insulin and IGF receptors on their surface, making them more responsive to the insulin family. So there is an indirect link between sugar and cancer development. Another is the development of obesity, which we know promotes inflammation, which spurs cancer.
This may surprise you. Proteins are built from amino acids, and some amino acids promote cancer. Cancer cells must make proteins to function and signal other cells, so without proteins the cancer cannot survive. Certain amino acids are particularly necessary to cancer growth. One such amino acid is L-phenylalanine, which cannot be made by the body. Major sources of this amino acid are meat and dairy products.
A study conducted at the Nanyang Technological University, found that L-phenylalanine was so excessively consumed by cancer that it could be used as a transporter of drugs into the cancer cell with minimal impact on healthy cells. The study implied that scarcity of this amino acid would inhibit cancer growth — that’s the real value of the study.
A Controlled Amino Acid Therapy (CAAT) cancer process seeks to limit phenylalanine, tyrosine, and methionine. Tyrosine also found at high levels in meat and dairy products, as is methionine. Reducing or halting consumption of meat and dairy products cuts the intake of these three cancer favorites significantly, and a balanced plant-based diet still provides you with essential levels of these amino acids. Plant-based diets including nuts and seeds will provide all essential amino acids, but not excessive amounts. The key here is to provide essential nutrition to the body without feeding the sugar and protein-crazed cancer. This is where low sugar plant sources excel.
The body has one trick that isn’t available to cancer — autophagy, or “self-eating”, where the body breaks down existing cells and harvests the amino acids it needs.. While that sounds terrible, the body is very selective at what it chooses to break down, seeking out damaged or mis-formed proteins. This process clears out the trash while giving the body sustenance. Then it uses the amino acids harvests from these proteins to build new proteins.
This “secret weapon” engages through fasting, and also through limited dieting. There are a few ways to promote autophagy:
- Full fasting (with plenty of water) for a few days
- Intermittent fasting, where the time from finishing eating dinner to eating again is 14-16 hours.
Full fasting for two to three days is considered to give the full benefit of autophagy. At 72 hours, the body has reached the maximum rate of old cell breakdown and rebuilding. Since food contains water, additional hydration is needed during this period from pure water to make up the deficit. Intermittent fasting gives time for the body to counter the insulin cycle period, increase cell sensitivity to insulin, and begin autophagy. Exercise, especially intense exercise, triggers autophagy particularly in muscle tissue.
Less is more
Deprivation, done strategically, is health-promoting. Eating a plant-based diet, with “good” fat sources such as avocados, and depriving yourself through proper fasting all help your health while making life hard for cancer. While cancer can adapt to chemotherapy drugs, it has no defense against deprivation — except reverting to normal cell operation. Since it is so greedy, deprivation hits cancer particularly hard.
Don’t “feed the beast”! Nourish yourself, not the cancer. If you don’t have a cancer diagnosis, realize that cancer cells pop up at times in any body, and you want those to be destroyed instead of growing — don’t give them an advantage. Avoiding the self-indulgent lifestyle is a key to living long upon the Earth.
Dr. Nemec’s Comments:
It is simple math. What you feed grows and what you deprive dies. Simple as that. Cancer needs a lot of fuel and a lot of complete protein to grow and multiply rapidly. It makes common sense to do a plant based diet low in carbs and avoid all complete animal protein including all dairy, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs. These are all complete proteins and will rapidly stimulate growth. Let us look at it, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. What you focus on you increase in your life and what you do not focus on decreases in you life. This is a rule of quantum physics. So if you focus on what you don’t have then you increase more of that very thing. Try to lose weight by stepping on a scale ten times a day and you will not lose a pound. Instead focus on living a healthy life and living each moment to the full and you will be surprised at how fast that extra weight will drop off. We have helped people on their health journey for over the last 35 years.
Here are the ways we can help:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Total Health Institute but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Total Health Institute along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.