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Diet

    The ingredients for a cancer-free life seem to be: relative poverty, a diet-heavy in rice or pasta and vegetables, olive oil or tofu - add in sunshine music and laughter. The Mediterranean diet of olive oil, pasta, vegetables with a little wine and lots of grapes has been put forward by some as a healthy diet that we should adopt. Certainly it is a tempting one!A number of people have gone beyond is, and argue on the basis of individual case studies that diets can also cure cancer. This view is strongly condemned by the orthodox profession. But they offer no support for these assertions, which are simple the opinions of surgeons and oncologists with little or no training or experience in the nutritional sciences. Here, are some of the diets for which cancer cures have been claimed.

The five-week juice fast cure
    Anna Frahm is one person who believes that diet can cure cancer. Hers was a breast cancer that had metastasised to the backbone - and even to the bone marrow. She went through every form of conventional therapy - surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, hormone therapy and finally an autologous bone marrow transplant. They all failed. Instead, she went to see a nutritional counsellor. Following a strict juice diet, she claims that all signs of cancer quickly left her. Her diet was as follow:

8 30am    Grapefruit juice with olive oil. She brewed a pot of Jason Winter's
Tea to sip throughout the day.
9 00am     Apple juice with fibre cleanse, plus enemas
10 00am    Green drink with vitamin C powder
11 00am     Apple juice with fibre cleanse
Noon    Carrot juice, acidophilus
1 00pm    Green drink with vitamin C powder
2 00pm     Apple juice with fibre cleanse
3 00pm    Carrot juice
4 00pm    Green drink
5 00pm    Apple juice with fibre cleanse
6 00pm    Carrot juice
7 00pm    Green drink with vitamin C powder
8 00pm    Carrot juice
9 00pm    Green drink with vitamin C powder
10 00pm    Apple juice with fibre cleanse

    The ingredients for the juices were organically frown apples and carrot, mixed half-and-half with distilled water. No tap water was allowed. The juices have to be drunk soon after they are made, as the nutritients quickly oxidise. This is the start of a programme that led on to a largely raw vegetarian diet supported by enzymes, amino acids and vitamin and mineral supplements; strengthened through morale-boosting activities and exercise. Following this diet rigorously all signs of her cancer were gone in five weeks.

The Gerson diet
    Gerson's diet consists of fresh juices of compotes, stewed fruit, potatoes, oatmeal and salt-less rye bread. Everything must be prepared fresh, and salt completely excluded. After six to twelve weeks, animal proteins can be added in the form of pot cheese (salt-less and creamless)yogurt made from skimmed mile, and buttermilk. One underlying principle is to exclude sodium as far as possible and to enrich the body's tissues with potassium - 'to the highest possible degree'. Because it is easier to digest than a normal diet, the body digests each meal faster so larger portions and more frequent meals need to be eaten. Patients are encouraged to eat and drink as much as possible.
    The following are forbidden on Gerson's diet: tobacco, salt, spices, tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, alcohol, refined sugar, refined flour, candies, ice-cream, cream, cake, nuts, mushrooms, soy beans and soy products, pickles, cucumbers, pineapples, all berries (except redcurrants), water (stomach capacity is needed for the juices), avocados, all canned foods, preserves, sulphured peas, lentils and beans, frozen foods, smoked or salted vegetables, dehydrated or powdered foods, bottled juices, and all fats and oils. Hair dyes are also forbidden. Although this diet may seem easy to follow in principle, almost everyone on it will suffer some degree of nausea, headaches, gas, depression and even vomiting. Gerson recommends peppermint tea, served with some brown sugar and a piece of lemon, as a cleansing drink to take away any bad tastes or inability to stomach the diet.

The Moerman diet

    The required daily doses of the eight substances were as follow:

    Citric acid helps the blood flow, iodine is important for stimulating the thyroid gland. It also works with sulphur to help oxygenate cells. Iron is needed to prevent anaemia. To should be noted that Moerman's liking for iron is not universally accepted among the vitamin and mineral supplement advocates. Iron has also been implicated, in other studies, as a cancer-promoting agent. It is hard to say at this stage that is right.
    Prohibited foods are meat, fish and shellfish, alcohol, animal fats, artificial colouring, beans, peas, lentils, mushrooms, potatoes, red
cabbage, sauerkraut, cheeses with high fat and salt content, margarine and other hydrogenated oils, coffee, cocoa or caffeine-containing teas, egg whites, sugar, salt, white flour and tobacco.

The macrobiotic diet
    From a macrobiotic point of view, cancer is simply a sign, among others, that the body is in a disharmonious state. The objective, then, is to restore harmony. The only way we can achieve this is through dietary means. This is true even when there appears to be a direct carcinogenic cause - e.g. skin cancer caused by too much exposure to sunlight. Certainly, inhabitants of hot countries do not appear to suffer higher incidences of melanoma. The macrobiotic diet consists of the following:

    The way in which we eat food is also important. Each mouthful should be chewed fifty-seventy time before swallowing. Avoid eating three hours and before sleeping. Eat only hungry; drink only when thirsty. Give thanks and respect to the whole world of living beings, and to all those who make the food available. One of the surprising features of the macrobiotic diet is its avoidance of fruits. This avoidance isn't absolute, but fruits are advised only occasionally, in the proper climatic zone and in the appropriate season. A person in Europe in winter should not be eating bananas or oranges. Also to beavoided, in addition to red meats, dairy products any form of processed food, are cooking spices and herbs, butter or margarine, iodised salt, ginseng, eggs and yogurt . another surprise is the ban on any kind of vitamin or mineral supplement.

The Bristol detox diet
    This is mainly a juice diet, which is completely vegan. It consists of ninety per cent raw food and is strictly salt and sugar free - not even honest should be taken. Each meal can be accompanied by wholemeal bread or wholegrain rice. The foods that should be eaten may be chosen from the following list:

    Eat plenty of : alfalfa sprouts, almonds, beansprouts, sprouted aduki and mung beans, runner beans, soy beans, beetroot, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrot juice, cauli-flower, chicory, fennel, fenugreek, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, summer lettuce, home-made muesli, rolled oats, brown rice, rye bread, sprouted sunflower seeds, wheat berries.


Eat in moderation:    
    Apple, apricot kernels, apricots, arti-chokes, bananas, bay leaves, beans of all kinds, wholemeal bread, bulgar wheat , carrots, cashews, Chinese cabbage, corn on the cob, courgettes, conscious, fresh figs, grapefruit, grapes, hazelnuts, kiwi fruit, lentils, marrow, melon,millet, fresh dried mint, oranges, peas, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, whole-wheat semolina, spinach, swedes, turnip. The onlysurprise in this list is the low value given to the onion family, especially to garlic. As with the macrobiotic diet, great attention should be given to chewing the food slowly, in a calm frame of mind. For further information contact the Bristol Cancer Help Centre.


Fasting
    Doctors, by and large, take it as an article of faith that it is important to eat well in order to maintain the health and vigour of the body. Even max Gerson opposed the idea of fasting, because it would result in vitamin and mineral deficiencies, so weakening the body further. However, there is a great deal of evidence that fasting can have a positive effect on health.
    Fasting as a way of achieving physical and spiritual purification is a common aspect of religious life - it is frequently mentioned in the Bible. The ancient Greek philosophers were also frequent fasters. Before someone could be accepted as a student by Pythagoras, he to undergo a forty-day fast. In addition to its therapeutic value it was, presumably, a means of determining who had the necessary discipline for study. Asclepius is the Greek god of healing, and healing through fasting was a regular feature of life at his temples. Many of the great ancient doctors, from Hippocrates to Avicenna, have recommended healing fasts.Fasting works because of a process known as autolysis, or self-digestion. For example, when a tadpole starts to turn into frog, its first grows four legs. It then rids itself of its tail-but the tail does not fall off. Instead, it is taken back into the body and absorbed. While this is occurring, the tadpole-frog does not eat. Autolysis is a controlled process, by which the least essential parts of the body are self-digested. This is also true in starvation; the body seeks to preserve the most essential organs and tissues by allowing the least important to be digested first. This is very important when it comes to cancer. Cancer tumours are recognised as being the least essential tissues in the body, and are easy victims of the autolytic process.


The grape diet
    The grape cure is not the first, or only, single food diet that has been put forward as a health cure. In Victorian times, a diet of pure raw lean beef was considered to be the perfect health regime. Similarly, in India, a diet of urine alone for several weeks on end is supposed to be cleaning. A diet of plain steamed brown rice has also been proposed by some as a cleaning diet that releases a great of healing energy.The grape cure consists of eating grapes-skin, pips and all -and nothing but grapes, for a period of four weeks.During this cure, there must be at least one bowel movement every two days- if not, an enema or colonic is necessary - because the faces are the main channel for the elimination of toxic matter. Shackleton also recommends a glycerin suppository for the purpose of encouraging a bowel movement.Anyone following a toxin-removing regime will suffer badly in the first week from headaches, but these will gradually disappear. These headaches are a barometer of your condition. The worse they are, the more toxins you have in your body that need to be eliminated.


Food to avoid
    1. All refined polyunsaturated oils, i.e. cooking oils and margarine. These have a depressing effect on the immune system. They also interfere with the cells' use of oxygen to burn the basic foodstuffs to produce energy. The result is a cell that is potentially cancerous.
    2. All animal fats. These should be avoided because they are full of ynthetic hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. According to Dr Livingston, chicken especially should be avoided because it contains, in very high quantities, a microbe implicated in cancer generation, which she called progenitor cryptocides. Since intensively farmed livestock is often fed chicken manure, beef and pork meats may also be affected. This microbe can change its form from something similar to bacteria to another form to a virus. This microbe is present in large numbers in cancer patients. Milk may also be dangerous according to Dr Livingston, as eighty to ninety per cent of cattle carry leukemia.