Macrobiotic Articles

CANCER
The word “cancer” comes from the Greek term karkinos, which means crab. Hippocrates, who first applied it to medicine, evidently likened tumors to the crablike properties or spread of the disease. He taught a dietary approach to cancer, and through the ages there have been many reported recoveries using natural means.
In the modern era, health reformers have linked cancer with diet since the early 1800s. Modern medicine, however, generally ignored this relationship until the 1970s. One of the 20th century pioneers in nutritional research was Dr. Albert Tannebaum, director of the department of cancer research at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. In an address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science on August 4, 1944, he stated: “At the present time there is widespread interest in the relationship of nutrition to tumors . . . It is likely that a natural diet contains a more adequate quality, quantity, and balance of essential components than our present day synthetic diets. Nutritionists are beginning to believe that synthetic diets may give effects quite different from natural diets. Fundamentally, it is the natural diet that is of interest in human nutrition and disease.”
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• Protective Mechanisms of Plant-Quality Foods - In a review of the epidemiological data, including both cohort and case-control studies, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reported that plant-quality foods have preventive potential at all cancer sites and that consumption of the following groups and types of vegetables and fruits is lower in those who subsequently develop cancer: raw and fresh vegetables, leafy green vegetables, Cruciferous vegetables, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, and raw and fresh fruit, including citrus fruit and tomatoes.
Foods high in phytoestrogens, particularly soybean foods (high in isoflavones) or grains and fibrous vegetables high in precursor compounds that can be metabolized by bacteria in the intestines into active agents are associated with a lower risk of sex-hormone-related cancers.
Biologically, plant foods may slow or prevent the appearance of cancer because of anticarcinogenic substances including: carotenoids, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, dietary fiber (and its components), dithiolthiones, isothiocyanates, indoles, phenols, protease inhibitors, allium compounds, plant sterols, and limonene.
“At almost every one of the stages of the cancer process, identified phytochemicals are known to be able to alter the likelihood of carcinogenesis,” the researchers concluded. “For example, glucosinolates and indoles, thiocyanates and isothiocyanates, phenols, and coumarins can induce a multiplicity of phase II (solubilizing and usually inactivating) enzymes; ascorbate and phenols block the formation of carcinogens such as nitrosamines; flavonoids and carotenoids act as antioxidants, essentially disabling the carcin-ogenic potential of specific compounds; lipid-soluble compounds such as carotenoids and sterols may alter membrane structure or integrity; some sulphur-containing compounds suppress DNA and protein synthesis; carotenoids can suppress DNA synthesis and enhance differentiation; and phytoestrogens compete with estradiol for estrogen receptors in a way that is generally antiproliferative.”
“Consumption of diets low in plant foods results in a reduced intake of a wide variety of those substances that can plausibly lower cancer risk,” the researchers concluded. “In the presence of a diet and lifestyle high in potential carcinogens (whether derived from fungal contamination, cooking, or tobacco) or high in promoters (such as salt and alcohol), overall risk of cancer at many epithelial sites is elevated. Plant foods appear to exert a general risk-lowering effect; the patterns of exposure to cancer initiators and promoters and of genetic susceptibility may determine the variations in the site-specific risks of cancer seen across populations.”
Source: J. D. Potter et al., “Vegetables, Fruit, and Phytoestrogens as Preventive Agents,” IARC Science Publications 139:61-90, 1996.

• The Cancer Prevention Diet - In The Cancer-Prevention Diet, Michio Kushi introduces the macrobiotic approach to cancer, including complete dietary and way of life guidelines for 25 major types of malignancies. The book includes summaries of hundreds of nutritionally oriented medical studies, including many dietary observations from the Renaissance through the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as contemporary recovery stories.
“From the macrobiotic view, cancer is the final stage in a sequence of events in an illness through which individuals in the modern world tend to pass because they fail to appreciate the beneficial nature of disease symptoms. A healthy organism can deal with a limited amount of excess nutrients or toxic materials taken in the form of daily food. This imbalance can be naturally eliminated through daily activity, sweating, urination, bowel movement, or other means. However, if the person continues to overconsume, the body begins to fall back upon abnormal measures for elimination including colds, fever, coughing, skin disease, and other symptoms. From the macrobiotic perspective, such sickness is a natural adjustment, the result of the wisdom of the body trying to keep us in natural balance.
“However, in modern society these symptoms are generally suppressed or controlled with drugs, surgery, and other methods which separate people from the natural workings of their own bodies. If minor ailments are treated in this symptomatic way with no adjustment in what we eat, the excess held in the body eventually begins to accumulate in the form of fatty-acid deposits and chronically troublesome mucus, and manifests in vaginal discharges, breast or ovarian cysts, kidney stones, or other worrisome conditions. In this state, the body is still able to localize the excess and toxins consumed. By gathering the unwanted material in local areas, the rest of the body is maintained in a relatively clean and smooth functioning condition. From the macrobiotic view, the process of localization is part of our natural healing power, saving us from complete break-down. In contrast, the modern view looks on those localizations as invasive enemies that have to be destroyed and removed.
“As long as excess continues to accumulate and exceeds the body’s normal or abnormal discharge ability, it must be stored somewhere. These storage depots gradually grow and become tumors, and when they are filled they spread and overflow into new areas, or what are called metastases.
“As long as we continue to take in excessive nutrients, chemicals, and other factors that serve no purpose in the body, they must continue to accumulate somewhere in order to continue our normal living functions. If we don’t allow them to accumulate in limited areas and form tumors, they will spread throughout the body, resulting in a total collapse of our vital functions and death by toxemia. Cancer is only the terminal stage of a long process. Cancer is the body’s healthy attempt to isolate toxins ingested and accumulated through years of eating the modern unnatural diet and living in an artificial environment. Cancer is the body’s last drastic effort to prolong life, even a few more months or years.”
Source: Michio Kushi with Alex Jack, The Cancer-Prevention Diet, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

• Diet Linked to 30% of Cancers - In a report on diet, lifestyle, and cancer, a Harvard School of Public Health study attributed 30 percent of cancer deaths to diet and obesity, 30 percent to smoking, and 5 percent to lack of exercise. Carcinogens in the workplace, family history of cancer, and viruses were responsible for 5 percent of cancer deaths, while alcohol, socioeconomic status, and reproductive factors each were associated with 3 percent. The report recommended eating more vegetables and fruits to reduce the risk of cancer of the lungs, esophagus, and larynx; eating more beans and grains to reduce cancer of the stomach and pancreas; eating less red meat to prevent colorectal cancers; eating less animal fat which is associated with prostate cancer; exercising daily and avoiding ultraviolet light from the sun.
Source: “Harvard Report on Cancer Prevention, “ Cancer Causes & Control 7 Supplement 1:S7-9, 1996.

• Diet vs. Conventional Treatment - The National Cancer Institute reported that radiation therapy and chemotherapy were ineffective and in some cases produced toxic side-effects as follow-ups to surgery in the treatment of cancer. “Except possibly in selected patients with cancer of the stomach, there has been no demonstrated improvement in the survival of patients with the ten most common cancers when radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or both have been added to surgical resection.” In an autopsy study, researchers reported that 44 percent of 250 cancers examined had been undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and 57 percent of the people with the missed diagnoses died as a result of the malignancy or its complications.
Source: Steven A. Rosenberg, “Combined-Modality Therapy of Cancer,” New England Journal of Medicine 312:1512-14; Elizabeth C. Burton, M.D., et al, “Autopsy Diagnoses of Malignant Neoplasms,” Journal of the American Medical Association 280:1245-48, 1998.

• Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Reduces Cancer Risk - In a review of 200 studies that examined the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and cancer at selected sites, researchers found that consumption of these foods offered a significantly protective effect in 128 of 156 dietary studies in which results were expressed in terms of relative risk. For lung cancer, these foods were protective in 24 of 25 studies after control for smoking in most instances. Fruit was protective for tumors of the esophagus, oral cavity, and larynx in 28 of 29 studies. Vegetables and fruit were protective in 26 of 30 studies for the pancreas and stomach, as well as in colorectal and bladder cancers (23 of 38 studies). For malignancies of the cervix, ovary, and endometrium, a significant protective effect was shown in 11 of 13 studies. In breast cancer, a protective effect was found to be strong and consistent in meta analysis. Overall, the relative risk of cancer was about twice as high for those eating few fruits and vegetables compared to those who ate plenty of these foods. “In 1854, John Snow stopped a cholera epidemic simply by taking the handle off the pump. The research presented above suggests that consumption of fruits and vegetables may be a handle that, if manipulated by public policy, clinical advice, and public education, could have a substantial impact on a wide range of cancers,” the researchers concluded.
Source: Gladys Block et al., “Fruits, Vegetables, and Cancer Prevention: A Review of the Epidemiological Evidence,” Nutrition and Cancer 18:1-29, 1992.