My Personally Recommended Diet and Nutritional Supplement Plan for Cancer Prevention and Treatment

Cancer patients or their families often consult me about whether they should avoid certain foods while taking Chinese medicine and in daily life, and whether they need to take some nutritional supplements. This question is hard to answer in general; today I will write an article on this subject to explain.

But limited by space, this article addresses common dietary and nutritional questions. Although these are suitable for every cancer patient, and even for every healthy person hoping to prevent cancer, for some patients with special circumstances (such as those with a history of food allergy) or those severely nutritionally deficient because of tumor consumption, these recommendations are still not enough.

More professional dietary guidelines require patients to read some professional books themselves. Patients with an allergy history may refer to *Allergies and Vitamins* by Damien Downing, chairman of the British Society for Ecological Medicine; this book offers allergy patients many dietary and nutritional support options. Mid- and late-stage cancer patients may refer to the *American Cancer Society Guidelines on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Cancer Prevention* and the *Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) Guidelines on Nutritional Therapy for Patients with Malignant Tumors*; both guidelines are very authoritative and are continually updated. The three books I mentioned above all have both paper and electronic editions, which readers can very conveniently buy.

Below I will discuss my own brief recommendations for cancer patients on food prohibitions, diet, and nutritional support.

The list of food prohibitions I give most cancer patients is usually like this: no smoking, no alcohol; avoid pickled vegetables, salted vegetables, hot pot, sweet potato, citrus fruits, barbecue, fried foods, seafood, shrimp, crab, spicy and greasy foods, spoiled or moldy foods, rooster, carp, and the like.

At the same time, I also tell patients not to eat foods they are allergic to; seafood, shrimp, and crab on the above list are foods many people are easily allergic to, and they are on this list because they often trigger patient allergies. If some patients are not allergic to seafood, shrimp, and crab, eating them in moderation will not be a big problem. But some patients' tumors often grow rapidly after eating allergenic foods; I once saw a Ewing sarcoma patient in whom, within less than 15 minutes of eating crab, the tumor had obviously changed because of an allergic reaction, and in the days that followed the tumor grew rapidly—though this patient had actually not been allergic to seafood before falling ill.

Food allergies often lead to interruption of a patient's anti-cancer treatment, because an allergy often causes some serious reactions in the body; a severe allergy can even cause kidney problems or shock. The author once encountered an ovarian cancer patient who went into shock several times because of allergy; this directly affected her anti-cancer treatment, forcing it to be interrupted for a time, and her condition progressed rapidly as a result.

Seafood, crab, and shrimp are only the most common allergenic foods; actually the list of allergenic foods is long. Beef and mutton can also cause allergy in some patients; many patients are allergic to peanuts, and some are allergic to milk. Most of the "fawu" (triggering foods) often spoken of in ancient TCM belong to allergenic foods. Some people develop urticaria on the body after eating these allergenic foods; others, after eating them, develop oral ulcers, difficulty breathing, swelling of body tissues, or diarrhea and constipation; some severe allergic reactions cause kidney failure and shock.

The reasons for no smoking and no alcohol are known to the great majority: cigarettes are a strong carcinogen, and many people get cancer precisely because of long-term smoking. As for alcohol, some people think it is beneficial to the body, believing that a small amount of drinking has some benefit for coronary heart disease patients; but alcohol raises the risk of cancer in normal people, and for the great majority of cancer patients, alcohol is something that accelerates their death. So from the standpoint of cancer prevention and anti-cancer, my personal recommendation is a ban on alcohol, not merely a limit. If some patients truly cannot abstain from alcohol, at least they must limit the amount, to no more than one drink a day.

Various pickled foods, such as the cured fish, cured meat, sausage, and salted vegetables we commonly eat, all contain nitrite—a strong carcinogen. Many of China's common cancers are related to this traditional dietary habit of ours; people who start eating such foods from childhood are more prone to digestive-tract tumors, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, lymphoma, and other malignant tumors. Such foods simply should not exist on anyone's table; these foods not only cause cancer but also very easily cause hypertension and stroke. Most stroke patients who do not smoke have a history of eating pickled foods. The nitrite content in hot pot is also very high; so when enjoying such delicacies, we should think about the health price we have to pay.

Barbecue and fried foods are also recognized by the WHO as carcinogenic foods, and most people in China like to eat them. The benzo[a]pyrene in barbecue and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in fried foods are both highly carcinogenic, and these foods are harmful to our bodies. The author once encountered a patient who developed colorectal cancer right after starting college; this patient was long addicted to spicy strips, barbecue, and fried foods, and at only nineteen years old had late-stage colorectal cancer. The reason he developed these bad eating habits was that his parents neglected their duty to discipline and care for him. A person's dietary habits are formed in childhood and are very hard to change when grown.

There is also a class of foods that easily cause flatulence, such as sweet potato. Many cancer patients, believing everything they hear, eat sweet potatoes to excess and even have "sweet-potato meals," thinking it fights cancer. The anti-cancer effect of food is not that miraculous; if there really were such a miraculous dietary therapy, cancer would long ago have ceased to be a world medical problem. Among these patients eating sweet-potato meals to fight cancer, many developed the problem of intestinal flatulence—abdominal distension, constipation, stomach pain, insomnia, and various symptoms without end.

Everyone should pay special attention to which foods cause their own bloating, and make a list; if a certain food easily makes us gassy, we should avoid it. The reason I personally put sweet potato on the food-prohibition list is that most people get flatulence from eating it, especially over a long period and in excess.

Citrus, on the other hand, is, as my folks back home say, a fruit that "easily causes shanghuo (internal heat)." The author was born in a citrus-growing area; as a child, whenever oranges were ripe, I loved eating citrus. The elders always limited us from eating too much citrus, because after eating a large amount of citrus, most people develop oral ulcers and excess stomach acid. Oranges are an acidic fruit; eating too many causes acid regurgitation and heartburn, oral ulcers, and various sores and boils easily breaking out on the body. So ancient TCM classified oranges as damp-heat fruits, believing that eating too much citrus easily causes sores and boils on the body; this is also a conclusion drawn from real-life experience. Wang Hongxu, author of *Waike Zhengzhi Quansheng Ji (Life-Saving Manual of Surgical Patterns and Treatments)*, even said that patients with well-abscesses and ulcers must not eat oranges for life, or the disease will recur.

Unfortunately, the widely circulated claim is that eating more citrus fruits has an anti-cancer effect; so many cancer patients, just as they extol the sweet-potato meal, extol the practice of eating large amounts of citrus to fight cancer. The result is that many people ruin their stomachs. Most cancer patients, after Chinese and Western treatment, already have gastrointestinal function not as good as normal people; eating in excess these foods that easily adversely affect the stomach is simply adding frost to the snow.

I recently read a book called *Asking the Right Questions*, by Neil Browne; it is a work teaching people critical thinking, and is a textbook used by many undergraduate students in the United States. I found this book quite interesting and recommend that readers read it.

This book mentions that people have two modes of thinking: one is the sponge-like mode, which accepts whatever it learns without doubt; the other is the gold-panning mode, according to which people think carefully about the information they encounter before choosing or rejecting it, not readily accepting all sorts of views. The book also mentions that critical thinking is divided into weak-sense critical thinking and strong-sense critical thinking: weak-sense critical thinking is the method of thinking that defends one's own views and defeats the views that oppose us; strong-sense critical thinking treats all views objectively and rationally, and if some views already existing in one's mind are unreasonable, they too must be overthrown.

We live in an age of excessively developed information; it is indeed very necessary to master the skills of thinking and learn to make good choices among the various sources of information. Cancer patients making poor choices about the information they receive will directly affect their lifespan.

Besides the food prohibitions listed above, what other dietary recommendations do I have for cancer patients? Actually, the recommendations I want to give I have already repeatedly mentioned in past articles: choose seasonal fresh foods and fruits; vary the types of food; balance meat and vegetables, with foods of animal origin making up about 20% and foods of plant origin about 80%. Doing this maximally ensures nutritional balance; if you do these things, there is simply no need to take any tonics.

If I must recommend some nutritional supplements, then I personally recommend that everyone (including cancer patients and non-cancer patients) supplement some vitamins: vitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, and the like. For B vitamins one can choose a vitamin B complex, or choose B1, B2, and B6 separately; a B complex contains B1, B2, and B6, but also niacinamide and calcium pantothenate. These vitamins can be supplemented over the long term, but there is no need to buy the expensive kinds. I myself also supplement vitamins, but I buy the cheapest ordinary vitamins at the pharmacy, the kind that cost a few yuan for 100 tablets; I spend only twenty or thirty yuan a month on vitamins.

Patients with a history of kidney stones should not supplement vitamin C, because supplementing vitamin C easily causes recurrence of kidney stones; most people who eat more vegetables and fruits are not deficient in vitamin C. Patients with prostate problems should also take care not to choose a B complex; they can choose vitamin B1, B2, and B6 separately, because the calcium pantothenate contained in a B complex increases the risk of prostate cancer—in fact the human body is not deficient in pantothenic acid. Patients with prostate problems should also not supplement vitamin D, for the reason that vitamin D also increases the risk of prostate cancer.

I do not quite recommend that people supplement large doses of various vitamins; supplementing according to the dose on the vitamin label is already enough. Especially people who supplement vitamins long-term should not use super-large doses. People who supplement vitamins normally do indeed have fairly good immunity, able to resist most infectious diseases, and also have a certain auxiliary anti-cancer effect.

Patients with relatively poor immunity can also regularly use thymosin (the cheap domestic thymosin will do; there is no need to use expensive imported thymosin, as the two have about the same effect) or interleukin, but this needs to be used after consulting a doctor; patients should not use it on their own. The Chinese medicines Huangqi (Astragalus) and Yimi (Coix Seed) are food-medicine dual-use tonics that enhance immunity and are suitable for the great majority of cancer patients; I generally suggest that patients cook porridge daily with one liang each of Huangqi and Yimi.