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By Matt Stone

I voiced a few words about cancer a few weeks back when it was announced that Angelina Jolie was having both of her breasts removed for cancer prevention.?Now it’s time to dig in a little deeper.

I would say the two most prominent cancer treatment diets out there are the Budwig Protocol and Gerson Therapy. While I have great disdain for extreme diets, wacky diet gurus, false promises, and the mystical hype?circus sideshow that is the alternative health movement…at the end of the day I would much rather go on an extreme diet than get a body part removed or get’the standard nuke and puke (radiation and?chemotherapy)?and all of those brutal and ineffective approaches. Assuming that it could actually work.

Could?one or both of these protocols really work?? If so, what would be the mechanism(s)?

I don’t have time to fully’summarize and explain’the two protocols. Get on that Google thing if you are that interested in them. But from my research on the topic it’s certainly plausible that these methods could indeed have some anti-cancer effects. One thing that both have in common is a radical overhaul of dietary fats, and dietary fat has long been indicated as having a role in the development of cancer.

Gerson Therapy is all about limiting total fat intake. For all practical purposes, Gerson Therapy is a liquid diet revolving primarily around fresh fruit juice with no added fat.The original protocol included calf liver juice as well, but that’s too uncool today. Campylobacter n’ all. And yes, it has been shown, at least in furry creatures, that really limiting fat intake, the intake of the “essential fatty acid” linoleic acid (also known as omega 6) in particular, has a very powerful anti-cancer property. Taking all the rodent research in, it would appear that a low-fat diet that only contains very saturated sources of fat such as coconut oil, beef tallow, dairy fat, etc. in small amounts,?would be king.

Some research also suggests that omega 3 is protective, perhaps because omega 3 has opposite properties to omega 6 in many respects, and megadosing on it as prescribed in the Budwig Protocol (up to 8 tablespoons of flax oil per day blended with cottage cheese?if you gotz the cancer) displaces a lot of that supposedly?cancer-promoting omega 6.

There’s also some evidence that starving yourself will send tumors into regression – although I suspect this is very temporary and in the end counterproductive?like all the other benefits ascribed to self-starvation (weight loss, lowered blood pressure, reduced blood sugar, etc.). And any?highly-regimented diet often results in?incidental calorie restriction.

I don’t have enough real-life experience with either strategy to declare a winner, or declare two losers or two winners from this short menu. But it is interesting to see that both protocols seem to operate primarily by big changes in fat intake that work to displace the one fat that has managed to work its way into the global food supply in unprecedented amounts during the rise of cancer over the last century or so. Our buddy LA.

No major groundbreaking advice here, but if I was just some regular Joe and found out I had cancer, I would probably have lots of fruit and juice with’some salty cheese, beef, and other low-PUFA delights?(blended with flax oil?? Eesh. I dunno about that – like the bad guy in Karate Kid II, I might just choose to “Die”) and spend lots of time outside in the sun trying to enjoy myself.

Okay fine, that’s not really true. I would probably travel the world like Anthony Bourdain and do and eat lots of morally-questionable things. While blasting Peter Cetera classics like the one above in public places. And doing?nothing that resembles either one of these diets because I?am highly skeptical of them both.

Know anyone who has tried these protocols or other alternative therapies with great success or failure? Do share.

A few interesting studies on the topic…

Requirement of essential fatty acid for mammary tumorigenesis in the rat.

Promoting effects of high-fat corn oil and high-fat mixed lipid diets on 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene-induced mammary tumorigenesis in F344 rats

Dietary fat in relation to mammary carcinogenesis