~~~~~nutrition nazis 2012~~~~~

Seriously, Ruth Heidrich is some kind of hero, got a PhD in nutrition after her diagnosis, and her daily diet is austere, spartan, but every element makes sense.

There are evidence-based alternative cancer therapies, and then there's Ger$on. Can't say I predisposed to embrace a protocol including injections of raw calf liver.

Two videos that may please those in favor of evidence-based integrative medicine, or with an aversion to mother-in-laws.
G Therapy for Cancer
G Therapy vs. Chemotherapy

the raw liver injections aren't used anymore.

and dude: I like you, I like your research, you bring good depth to any discussion...but the mother in law crack was crass & in poor taste. and that's me being polite & restrained.

My apologies. It's late here, the bottle is empty, and MILs are common comedy fodder. It was inconsiderate, and I probably shouldn't attempt comedy in my state.

thank you

There is a very interesting question of how one can bring any levity to discussions of physiology. At root, we learn that we are awesomely complicated machines, which is in itself potentially a rather depressing thought. I wonder if La Mettrie was welcome in the parlors of Paris, Leiden or Berlin. Probably not the conversation for this thread or time.

Sanpaku, thank you very much for gathering all of this together. I really appreciate it a lot, especially that link to the papers. I'll be watching it and learning before deciding how to respond properly to my friend. What I'll be looking out for is what the evidence says about cancers that don't seem to be highly aggressive. I just got a second email from her that says hers is 'slow', and partly benign/calcified, but I don't know to what extent has actually metastasized in the lymphatic system - it's in there, but there is a specific test that seems to be able to tell you something about the chances of the lymph system allowing the establishment of the cancer elsewhere. I don't know what the results of that were.

VG, that's a very interesting and positive story - long may things continue as they are for your MIL! I sent my friend a holding reply that said: this scares me a lot, and yet I see what you are saying and I know there are no guarantees with chemo and surgery, and I will do some research myself. (I am cheating with Sanpaku's help). That's the most honest thing I can say. When I've read more I'll say more about the most positive evidence I can find. If I find things that cause me to ask myself whether this approach really fits her specific situation, maybe I'll say something about that too. It depends how strongly I think it would contribute to the research picture she herself is trying to build.

ljubjana, I'd also like to point you to Mark McCarty's magnum opus so far: Low-Fat, Low-Salt, Whole-Food Vegan: Staying Lean and Healthy into Ripe Old Age, where he puts everything together in 218 pages and 1100 references - one of the best guides to a health promoting lifestyle you'll find anywhere, and its free. The 35 page section on cancer prevention neatly summarizes the IGF-I/cancer story better than I've seen anywhere else.

My other nutritional guru of late is Vincent Giuliano, who may yet convince me to supplement more extensively. Search his Anti-Aging Firewalls blog for "cancer" and you'll find some very up-to date summations of current research on foods and supplements with antiproliferative effects.

Thanks Sanpaku.

ljubljana, I came across the site Food for Breast Cancer a few moments ago and its clearly one of the most extensive, best researched sites on nutrition & cancer.

Also, I wanted to share a couple papers that do an excellent job reviewing mechanisms and foods that can reactivate tumor suppressor genes silenced by epigenetic modifications in cancer. This may be most potent nutritional intervention after cancer is diagnosed, and its an extremely active research field at the moment.

Stefanska, B., et al. Epigenetic mechanisms in anti‐cancer actions of bioactive food components–the implications in cancer prevention. British journal of pharmacology 167.2 (2012): 279-297.

Gerhauser, Clarissa. Cancer chemoprevention and nutri-epigenetics: State of the art and future challenges. Natural Products in Cancer Prevention and Therapy. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. 73-132.

The latter includes a comprehensive (as of 2012) "shopping list" of sorts for an anti-cancer epigenetics diet.

Thanks, I'll take a look at these and probably send them to my friend, especially that site.. I did some skimming around the papers you very kindly linked to, but not as much as I meant to, and my friend has gone quiet. Might see her in August as she might be in the UK.

It's funny, I was just thinking the other day about epigenetics and diet - I was remembering that a workshop was put on by UK research funders for bio and soc sci researchers. It was an attempt to bring both disciplines to bear on a bunch of broad-brush research questions. I wasn't there, but apparently the consensus was that everyone felt it was way to early to try to apply any kind of interdisciplinary approach to this set of problems. So totally not an area I know anything about, and things might have moved on a lot since then, at least on the bio side.

are ppl still interested in this stuff

cutty's not around much anymore, at least i don't think, but maybe we could still talk about this

i already stopped drinking soda, eating sweets and pastries, etc. so that's been good. but now i should probably do more at some point.

getting off sugar is the most important thing in my experience. i weigh like 25 pounds less than i did in high school and the only real difference is that i don't drink soda.

not sure if i am healthier though, but i think the soda was fucking with my energy levels back then because i feel more "balanced" now. i drink green smoothies too now which make me feel better. i wish i knew enough to have a real nutritional philosophy though, like cutty seemed to have.

i already stopped drinking soda, eating sweets and pastries, etc. so that's been good. but now i should probably do more at some point.

― markers, Monday, October 14, 2013 10:31 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

q is what have you replaced them with?

it's a great first step tho

the sugar is def a huge thing

xpost

i can help., whatcha need markers.

so i have water, seltzer, and orange juice. i've had a little decaf tea too. not too bad. on the eating side, i do have some good things, like oatmeal, some fruit, and other shit too, but as you can maybe tell it's kind of not a perfectly regular thing yet. like, tonight i ate tons of garbage. a lot of ruffles. some fries from burger king. oh, i have yogurt. so there's that! but it's this mixture now of this super salty bad shit and then healthy stuff too. i should work in the direction of lessening the amount of the former that i ate.

eat, rather.

more than once i've thought of just cutting out all the bad stuff, but that hasn't worked yet. i doubt i've tried very hard tho

i think gradual is ok! you have to experiment to figure out what keeps you satisfied--it's not going to be perfect. oatmeal, i tried that shit for years but it's not for me,

markers, in terms of 'sugar', what you want to do is keep your glycemic index (GI) levels 'flat', meaning no real lows or real highs a lot.

There are different paths that lead to that point. If gradually cutting stuff out works for you, continue on that.

But just so you know, most packaged drinks (unless it's black coffee) will have 'sugar' your body does not need.

Pure fruit extracts are okay, but think of it this way: would you really down 10 oranges in one sitting? The point is there are too many fruits in a cup of fruit extract and this can mess with your GI levels, as well.

I'll tell you my approach based on some scientific data which can be interpreted different ways, but I'll tell you how I interpret it.

First of all, I am not a biologist or a physiologist, so if someone is more aware of the intricacies of the following process, please correct me if I am wrong.

I'm going from memory, but fruit extract only contains the juice which after undergoing this process, is highly hydrolyzed. This means that it is digested and goes into your blood stream faster. When you eat fruit whole, it isn't as hydrolyzed and the rest of its parts help slow down digestion and decrease the speed at which it is 'released'.

So, juice (fruit extract) is like throwing a lot of sugar into your body fast, while eating a fruit is slowly releasing that sugar.

hi cutty

Yep, cut out the soda. Whether its the fructose in HFCS or the phosphate additives, its not good news. In general, it doesn't seem a good idea to drink your calories (whether soda, milk, juice, or alcohol).

I hydrate with a couple cups of unsweetened black coffee at dawn, a pot of green tea (with a squeeze of lemon juice) in the afternoon, and hibiscus tea (brewed from flor de jamaica) after dinner. All are well documented health foods, even the coffee.

oh wait please tell me more about the health benefits of jamaica tea; I like that stuff a lot (though I do sweeten it with sugar).

also is jamaica really different from hibiscus or is it the same damn flower?

Same flower - I just wanted to point out that there were alternatives to Red Zinger tea in the latin groceries. You can eat the petals after a brew, too.

Aside from having pretty much the highest antioxidant content of any herbal tea, hibiscus tea is notably effective in management of high blood pressure, might be neuroprotective, and inhibits angiogenesis in incipient cancers.

Cool, thanks! I'll pick some up today. How do you brew yours?

I love jamaica, which by me is labeled "sorrel." I drop one or two blossoms into a pint glass with hot water and sometimes a peppermint teabag, add honey, drink at night. I think it might be a diuretic, although when you drink tea by the pint it's hard to tell exactly which of those things is making you have to pee at 6am.

I look forward to drinking it hot! For now, however, I must focus on iced because otherwise I will die of excessive heat, both internal and externally-produced!

My older lady friend's #1 protip for managing hormonal heat problems is to always carry a fan. I need a fan!

Basically make it with hot water and then refrigerate! Personally I'd stir some honey in while it was still hot but maybe you'll like it unsweetened.

Nah, I need some sugar--but not as much sugar as your typical Mexican jugo vendor has incorporated.

Has the big honey industry scam been discussed on IL Xor yet?

The nutrition gang here seems to be quite small.

are you talking about funny honey?

that's it, ya

Have been moving towards eating a low GI diet for the past week or so, mostly because I want my body to use fat more efficiently as a fuel. This has been hard cos I'm someone that's used to living on bread and potatoes the whole time, I probably ate about one loaf of bread a day and I'm trying to replace that with more beans/nuts/fruit instead. Have to say I feel terrible at the moment, my energy levels are just so wiped out, my brain is shot and I'm slurring my words like a drunkard the whole time. Is this perpetually drained state a common thing? I thought it might be due to something else like overexercising, but yesterday I lapsed and had a really sugary flapjack and within a minute I felt fantastic and back to my usual self. Guessing that the depleted energy is probably just my brain telling me that I'm tired just so it gets to have all the glycogen for itself and I'm sure I'll adjust in time, but holy shit, this is grim.

bread lovely bread :(

you need to add more fat to your diet to get through that low carb flu stage. After a 10 days or so you will start to feel better.

yeah, my nut consumption has gone through the roof and is costing me a small fortune

you have to just sort of power though it until your body adapts but it's tough, especially if you are getting a good amount of exercise in. i drank a lot of bulletproof coffee and it helped. http://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-recipe/

prbly gonna give that a miss but thanks anyhow!

is there a current nutrition nazi thread?

i don't think so

i ate a lot of kale this summer and im never gonna die

now i cant remember what i was gonna ask!

Seems silly to start a 2015 thread for just the month of gluttony, so let's just run this one out OK

I'm going to Portugal and I'm going to learn to love tinned sardines and I'm going to bring them back and actually eat them this time. Last time sardines were a thing around ILX, I bought probably seven tins of highly recommended brands and never ever opened even one. And then I moved and they. . . did not.