Health & Wellness
You know: the dieters' wishful thinking on whether eating celery is a sum negative activity, or not.
He was certainly entitled to speak. His name is Dr. Gerald Krystal and he's a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at University of British Columbia, as well as Distinguished Scientist at the Terry Fox Laboratory at the BC Cancer Agency.
We were perched like vultures over a buffet table, commenting on the many ways to die. Fats, salts, sugars, alcohol: pick your delicious poison. I like 'em all.
The dietary folklore related to celery hardly registers in Dr. Krystal's purview. He started his career as molecular biochemist working on cell signalling, which is to say the ways cells communicate with each other. Delightfully, he describes it as a molecular square dance, with cells reacting to specific instructions that we're still just beginning to comprehend.
What we call cancer, the medical profession refers to as malignant neoplasm. For reasons researchers are still trying to establish, cells spontaneously divide and grow uncontrollably creating malignant tumours. These tumour cells can then invade other parts of the body. Unfortunately, many of us are all too familiar with this hideous science lesson called metastasis.
But here's what I was surprised to learn. I might have had cancer several times in my life. Same goes for you. The immune system - well-supported - is a trooper. It's capable of dispatching proliferations and inflammations, vanquishing many invaders without you ever being aware of it. How real is the threat of cancer in a lifetime? No one knows for sure, but here's a surprising statistic: Patients on immune-suppressant drugs following organ transplantation have a 100-fold increase of cancer incidence. When the body's natural defences are inhibited, cancer cells can easily run amok, and they do so 100 times more often than in other people.
So, what makes the critical difference in what wins this silent battle: cancer, or your immune system? This is the question that has occupied much of Dr. Krystal's career.
He began by observing that Positron Emission Tomography - PET scans used for tumour and inflammation detection - revealed a particular pattern of deoxyglucose use. Apparently, cancer has an appetite for glucose that is three times that than of other cells; that's what the PET scan is looking for. This rapid ingestion of glucose leads to the secretion of lactic acid which decreases cellular pH and - here's the aha! moment - that's what encourages metastasis. And where does the body get all this glucose? Well, it gets it from the standard Western diet; a diet, it turns out, that's perfectly designed to kill us all.
I was doing my best to wade through Dr. Krystal's research, Googling every third word. In the basest of laymen's terms I'll tell you that his findings hinged on a suspicion that it might be possible to starve cancer by blocking a tumour from accessing glucose. Dr. Krystal set about to see if it was possible to affect tumour growth or - perhaps even better - tumour initiation by affecting blood glucose levels. At the time he started his inquiry, this theory flew in the face of the prevailing science. Almost a decade after he began, his findings reveal that diet may play an even larger role than previously suspected in who gets cancer and which cancers metastasize.
Cancer, it turns out, craves carbs. Typically, the maleficent Western diet is made up of over 50% carbohydrates and only 15% protein. Protein has a unique capacity to enhance a body's immune system but most of us don't get nearly enough of this essential nutrient. We love our fats, however, but the wrong sort of fats in the wrong amounts can also prove deadly.
The foodstuffs we favour create a hospitable environment for cancer in a variety of ways. Calorie-rich, but nutrient-unbalanced, our grub tends to render us immuno-incompetent. That's a big word that means defenceless. Obesity, unhealthy in and of itself, is a widespread side effect of the typical Western diet, but also a source of systemic inflammation. Inflammation engenders DNA damage which increases the risk of cancer.
Dr. Krystal's team continues to explore the subject of diet-related tumour growth and initiation. The clinical trials with mice, however, suggest that we should all be making massive shifts in what we eat. Almost half the mice on the western diet developed mammary cancers by middle age, whereas none of the mice on the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet did. Only one of the test mice achieved a normal life span on the standard western diet, with the rest of dying early of cancer-associated deaths. More than 50% of the mice on a low-carbohydrate diet, however, reached or exceeded a normal life span.
The patient parking lot next to the BC Cancer Agency was full the day I visited. As I made my way up the stairs, I couldn't help but think that we do, indeed, dig our own graves with a spoon.
The good news, however, is that it really does take more calories to digest a stick of celery than are found in celery. The other good news is that celery can't hurt you one bit.
Next week: so what does a cancer researcher have for breakfast, anyway?
Comment: For more on the ketogenic diet (high fat, moderate protein and low carb) and cancer see:
The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
Can a High-Fat Diet Beat Cancer?
Diet for cancer cure: Starving cancer ketogenic diet a key to recovery
Sugar makes cancer light-up in MRI scanners
Reader Comments
Conversely, those that would read the article and change nothing probably wouldn't check further with the links provided, or would not alter their diet anyway. Wishful thinking maybe but saying this is blatant disinfo seems a bit much and rather black and white thinking in my opinion.
highly suspicious but when I do it's because I've noticed things such as this:
"Well, it gets it from the standard Western diet; a diet, it turns out, that's perfectly designed to kill us all. "
I could be wrong but something tells me that you would have to know exactly what you're doing to promote a diet that is almost the exact opposite of what your constituents (i.e. the public) should be eating. If this is the case than the fact that this is going on is insidious, which unfortunately is also an understatement.
while i completely agree with the concept, and HIGHLY recommend everyone read the book sugar blues written by william dufty...
this article is complete hogwash and has zero basis in reality. the body and its tissues need glucose, so for someone to try to find a way to 'starve' an area of glucose is just further disease spreading bs that is just more of the same death and pony show that is the third leading cause of death in our nation: conventional medicine.
this 'research genius' ...that just happens to be a highly placed official that is part of the organization that DENIES the proof that rick simpson provided and the reality that cannabinoids CURE cancer with no negative side effects whatsoever. yet they fund more millions into the hands of drug peddling butcher/priests who the populace deify to the extreme, even so much as to allow the mass murder for profit that is what our 'health care' system amounts to.
harumph...
sugar is a dreadfully addictive drug that kills. so is our planet destroying energy grid but we aren't going to give that up until we face the facts and stop giving our attention and support to murderous, torturing QUACKS like Dr. Gerald Krystal and his ilk.
grow your own food, support local systems. turn the healing plants into smoothies you can make in your own home, from plants you saw growing. create local, sustainable energy systems and eliminate our use and the waste products of coal burning, hydro-frakked gasses, petrochemical and nuclear based energy systems. stop supporting war with your tax dollars and end the mythos of a debt based economy and the fiat currency illusion of mortgages and credit.
care about your neighbors, share what you have, offer compassion and steward our home.
cancer comes from the lack of all that...and is one of many symptoms of the consequential reality of allowing predatory leaders who are sociopathic psychotics make the pertinent decisions here on earth.
there are lots of cancer cures, none of them are the result of bs research like this article delineates.
Yes, it is advisable to cut carbs to around 150g/day for a metabolically-healthy sedentary individual (athletes may have more requirements if they perform lots of glycolitic exercise) and much lower, KETOGENIC levels, for the metabolically-deranged, those with neurological problems, and those with cancer (yes, cancer cells have a much harder time using ketones than glucose). The big caveat, however, is that one must get into nutritional KETOGENESIS - not only can the liver only process a limited amount of protein per day for calories, but protein is converted more into glucose than into ketone bodies.
Basically, look up ketogenesis, whereby you'll be getting 80%+ of calories from healthy animal fats and selected saturated vegetable fats (coconut oil especially is preferred due to its MCT content; some MCTs are converted almost directly to ketones. Note that MCT oil distilled from coconut oil is preferable to CCO for those who are sensitive to CCO's salycilates). The article's claim that fats universally occasion poor health is nonsense, although excess polyunsaturated fat, especially from vegetable oil (or factory-farmed poultry & pork) is quite deleterious.