Mainstream docs still don’t understand cancer nutrition

Ironically, the medical system as it currently stands is afraid of nutritional counseling. I’ve been practicing for 30 years—and this has always been the case.

Most doctors still aren’t able to have an informed conversation about food. And they’re still fearful and dismissive of the guidance that real experts in the field have to offer patients.

Case in point: The latest commentary from the annual meeting of the Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology (APSHO)—which perfectly sums up my problem with know-nothing mainstream attitudes on cancer nutrition.

The blind leading the blind

As you might expect, the first thing they went after is the ketogenic diet. You know, like the A-List Diet and the Hamptons Diet before that. The exact diet plans that I’ve been curing people with for decades.

Their argument (and I quote) is:

“Sugar does feed cancer, but sugar feeds every other cell in our body, so it’s not really just about sugar. We know that the relationship between sugar and cancer is more about glucose metabolic regulation, and when people have hyperglycemia for days on end, it increases the metabolic cascade that involves insulin-like growth factor 1 and changes the environment and how your cells behave.”

Well, duh! How much more obtuse can they get?

Of course it’s not just about sugar. It’s specifically about high blood sugar, which they at least seem to understand. But what they don’t seem to get is that—in an era distinguished by a 40 percent obesity rate—a whole lot of cancer patients are living in a constant state of hyperglycemia.

But they don’t stop there. They also say that patients on ketogenic diets aren’t going to get “the full complement of vitamins and minerals that you would get in a healthy diet.” And they recommend a multivitamin with trace minerals, calcium, and vitamin D.

Perhaps I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth—at least they’re recommending supplements at all. But it’s sheer idiocy to believe that anyone doesn’t need nutritional supplements in this day and age. (Though I’ll have you know that my A-List Diet delivers better nutrition than any other eating plan out there.)

Then they go on to discuss alkaline diets—which simply involve choosing foods that are more alkaline than acidic. (The July 2013 issue of my monthly Logical Health Alternatives newsletter gives you a nice alkaline diet cheat sheet.) This is yet another diet that I recommend, as it’ll help you feel better at any weight or condition. (You can track the effects in the pH of your urine.)

But here’s what they have to say about eating more alkaline: “It’s really a marketing scam, trying to get people to buy very expensive alkalinized waters and water-dispensing machines that will fix your cancer because you are going to make your body more alkaline.”

There’s your helpful “expert” advice, folks. I suggest you ignore it and find someone who actually knows what they’re talking about…

Misguided advice or malpractice?

I don’t know when it’ll actually happen, but I truly hope that one day, conventional medicine realizes that we’re all in this business for one reason: to make our patients better. It just so happens that there’s more than one way to skin that cat.

And the sooner mainstream oncology tables its negativity and starts addressing patients’ needs, the better. Because guess what? The rise of specialized cancer diets and integrative supplement protocols was largely brought about by actual patients out there demanding it.

So conventional doctors ought to be providing it, too. But how can they when they hang their hats on outdated dogma and dismiss every new nutritional discovery as a scam?

To me, counseling cancer patients on nutrition is clear and simple—I do it every day. But for some reason, conventional doctors still don’t know what to say to their patients who raise these questions.

Most are light years behind in nutritional science, as I point out pretty regularly in this space. In fact, a patient recently told me about a newsletter she received from a major medical group in Boston, which reported that you can get all the nutrition you need from what you eat.

Again… sheer idiocy.

The thinking behind this advice is outrageously old-fashioned—and just plain wrong. It’s coming from an institution with a great deal of authority, which makes it even more galling that they would be perpetuating myths like this.

But it happens all the time, everywhere. And whether it’s because no one has told these doctors what to say—or because hospital administrators and insurance companies discourage them from using their own brains—the end result is the same. So who really cares?

It’s truly infuriating—and in my mind, nothing short of malpractice. But if they want to make me out to be the huckster here, then let them. My job is to make you—the patient—as healthy as you can be. And my track record speaks for itself.

Source:

“Oncology Patients Increasingly Ask About Diet: What to Say?” Medscape Medical News, 10/29/2019. (medscape.com/viewarticle/920543)